The Cat That Saved A Pig
Cats have worked as the world’s fuzzy rodent exterminators for at least 10,000 years. That’s when wild cats cozied up to the Natufians, hunter-gatherers of the eastern Mediterranean, who were the first humans to store grain. This also made them the first humans to turn to cats for pest control. Agile and nocturnal, cats need little light to hunt. With rodents most active at night, cats became their perfect nemesis. Fast forward to present-day Champaign, Illinois, where the Blind Pig Brewery was losing thousands of dollars of ingredients each year due to mice. Even the tiniest of holes chewed into the 55-pound bags of grain and malt meant that they had to be discarded. Owner and brewmaster Chris Knight was killing three to four mice every week, and decided he needed something more efficient than mouse traps.
Enter Brewster. Jessica Sempek of Hospice Hearts (www.hospicehearts.org), a 501(c)3 organization which specializes in providing care for animals whose elderly owners are no longer able to care for them, had recently helped rescue a colony of 80 abandoned and feral cats. Brewster, a young red and white classic tabby male, was semi-feral. Sempek felt he wouldn’t do well confined in a home environment, but would be perfect for the brewery.
This story is from the December 2017 edition of Cat Talk.
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This story is from the December 2017 edition of Cat Talk.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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Library Cats felis cattus bibliotheca
Introduction - The Middle Ages, sometimes referred to as “The Dark Ages,” spanned approximately one thousand years, between 479 AD and 1450 AD. This time period is not generally considered to have been friendly to anyone, human nor animal, but it was especially hostile toward felines. Ignorance of knowledge and science was rampant among the majority of the population, with the ability to read limited to clerics and the wealthy. Myths, legends, and galliard songs spread widely throughout Europe as people migrated from place to place, searching for food and a safe habitat. Fear of the unknown and the unexplainable, particularly of witches and their cat familiars, was spread not only by the stories and songs, but by the Popes themselves. Without touching on the atrocities of medieval times, let us just say it was not the best time to be a cat.
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