- Russia's Hermitage Museum is home to some of the world's
greatest artistic treasures.
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- But many visitors would be surprised to find out an army
of cats has been guarding the building since the Tsar period.
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- Saint Petersburg's State Hermitage Museum is well known
as home to some of the world's greatest artistic treasures.
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- A lesser-known collection at the museum is an army of
cats, its praetorian guard against rats.
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- For more than 250 years, the Hermitage's resident felines
have waged incessant war against the rodents that infest Russia's most
prestigious museum, set on the bank of the Neva River.
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- In summer they stroll the institution's grounds and yard,
picking out their sinuous way between the statues and other priceless exhibits,
but in the winter the 50 strong army spends much of its time in the better-heated
basement.
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- "We consider them to be museum employees,"
said Tatyana Danilina, one of the Hermitage's human employees.
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- So much so that she and her colleagues contribute twice
a month to a fund to pay for the cats' food, a mixture of milk and cereals
prepared daily by the museum's kitchen.
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- The money also goes to pay for the cats' health expenses,
and a special room in the museum's basement is devoted to treating those
that are ill.
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- "This is where we cure sick cats and vaccinate the
ones that have just arrived," Ms Danilina said of the room where a
variety of cats of all colours and tendencies bounced around.
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- "We need 118 euros every month for the cats,"
she said, presenting a set of envelopes filled with money contributed by
employees, each marked with the name of the donor, such as "the antiquity
department."
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- "We are very grateful to everyone who helps us,
but of course it's not enough. Drugs are very expensive," she said.
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- Most of the cats are neutered to ensure they do not proliferate
unduly and to avoid occasional unpleasant odours.
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- The presence of cats in the Winter Palace, the historic
residence which houses the Hermitage Museum and was once the heart of the
Russian empire, owes nothing to chance.
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- The feline invasion began in 1745 when Emperess Elizaveta
Petrovna, Peter the Great's daughter, signed a decree ordering to "find
in Kazan (a city located in the Volga region, some 800 kilometres east
of Moscow), better cats, the largest ones, able to catch mice, and to send
them to Her Majesty's court, accompanied by a person who will look after
their health."
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- Within a few decades, during the reign of Emperess Catherine
the Great, there was already a substantial population of "Winter Palace
cats" living in the building.
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- The rat-catchers in residence managed to sit out the
storming of the Winter Palace by Bolshevik revolutionaries in 1917, but
their descendants came to a sticky end during the 1941-1944 blockade of
Leningrad, the city's Soviet-era name, by invading German troops.
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- Up to a million people died of starvation during the
siege, and pets, including the palace cats, provided one of the few sources
of food for those who lived through those terrible times.
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- But the cats were reintroduced into the Hermitage as
soon as possible after the close of World War II.
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- According to museum legend, a special train set off on
a nationwide tour, recruiting cats for service guarding the nation's treasures.
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- © 2004 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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- http://www.abc.net.au/news/indepth/featureitems/s1022316.htm
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