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How cats saved besieged Leningrad from an invasion of rats. Tailed Heroes

On March 1, Russia celebrates the unofficial Cat Day. For our city, cats are of particular importance, because they were the ones who saved besieged Leningrad from an invasion of rats. In memory of the feat of the tailed saviors, sculptures of the cat Elisha and the cat Vasilisa were installed in modern St. Petersburg.

The cat predicted enemy raids

In 1941, a terrible famine began in besieged Leningrad. There was nothing to eat. In winter, dogs and cats began to disappear from the streets of the city - they were eaten. When there was absolutely nothing left to eat, the only chance to survive was to eat your pet.

“December 3, 1941. “They ate a fried cat,” writes a ten-year-old boy, Valera Sukhov, in his diary. “Very tasty.” Carpenter's glue was made from animal bones, which was also used for food. One of the Leningrad residents wrote an ad: “I’m exchanging a cat for ten tiles of wood glue.”

Wood glue was made from animal bones. Photo: AiF / Yana Khvatova

Among the history of wartime, there is a legend about a red cat-“listener”, who lived near an anti-aircraft battery and accurately predicted all air attacks. Moreover, the cat did not react to the approach of Soviet aircraft. The battery commanders greatly respected the cat for this unique gift; they provided him with rations and even one soldier as a guard.

Cat Maxim

It is known for certain that one cat definitely managed to survive the blockade. This is the cat Maxim, he lived in the family of Vera Vologdina. During the blockade, she lived with her mother and uncle. Among their pets they had Maxim and the parrot Zhakonya. In pre-war times, Jaco sang and talked, but during the blockade, like everyone else, he was hungry, so he immediately became quiet, and the bird’s feathers came out. In order to somehow feed the parrot, the family had to exchange their father’s gun for several sunflower seeds.

Valera Sukhov's diary: "We ate a fried cat. Very tasty." Photo: AiF / Yana Khvatova

Maxim the cat was also barely alive. He didn't even meow when asking for food. The cat's fur was coming out in clumps. The uncle almost with his fists demanded that the cat go to be eaten, but Vera and her mother defended the animal. When the women left the house, they locked Maxim in the room with a key. One day, while the owners were away, the cat was able to climb into the parrot's cage. In peacetime there would be trouble: the cat would certainly eat its prey.

Murka the cat in a bomb shelter in the arms of her owner. Photo by Pavel Mashkovtsev. Photo: Cat Museum

What did Vera see when she returned home? Maxim and Jaconya slept, huddled tightly together in the cage to escape the cold. Since then, my uncle stopped talking about eating the cat. Unfortunately, a few days after this incident, Jaco died of starvation. Maxim survived. Perhaps he became the only Leningrad cat to survive the siege. After 1943, excursions were taken to the Vologdins’ apartment to look at the cat. Maxim turned out to be a long-liver and died only in 1957 at the age of twenty.

Cats saved the city

When all the cats disappeared from Leningrad at the beginning of 1943, rats multiplied catastrophically in the city. They simply thrived, feeding on the corpses that lay in the streets. The rats made their way into the apartments and ate the last supplies. They gnawed through furniture and even the walls of houses. Special brigades were created to exterminate rodents. They shot at the rats, they were even crushed by tanks, but nothing helped. The rats continued to attack the besieged city. The streets were literally swarming with them. The trams even had to stop to avoid driving into the army of rats. In addition to all this, rats also spread dangerous diseases.

The cat Vasilisa walks along the eaves of a house on Malaya Sadovaya Street. Photo: AiF / Yana Khvatova

Then, shortly after breaking the blockade, in April 1943, four wagons of smoky cats were brought to Leningrad from Yaroslavl. It was smoky cats that were considered the best rat catchers. A queue of many kilometers immediately formed for the cats. A kitten in a besieged city cost 500 rubles. It would have cost about the same at the North Pole in pre-war times. For comparison, a kilogram of bread was sold from hand for 50 rubles. Yaroslavl cats saved the city from rats, but could not solve the problem completely.

At the end of the war, a second echelon of cats was brought to Leningrad. This time they were recruited in Siberia. Many owners personally brought their cats to the collection point to contribute to helping Leningrad residents. Five thousand cats came from Omsk, Tyumen and Irkutsk to Leningrad. This time all the rats were destroyed. Among the modern St. Petersburg cats, there are no native inhabitants of the city left. All of them have Siberian roots.

Cat Elisha brings people good luck. Photo: AiF / Yana Khvatova

In memory of the tailed heroes, sculptures of the cat Elisha and the cat Vasilisa were installed on Malaya Sadovaya Street. Vasilisa walks along the cornice of the second floor of house No. 3, and Elisha sits opposite and watches the passers-by. It is believed that good luck will come to the person who can throw a coin onto a small pedestal near the cat.

In honor of the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory, I would like to raise this not quite regular topic. In this post, I collected stories of cats in besieged Leningrad (and also read the “bonus” story about a dog). At first it will be scary and sad, but this is the harsh truth, you can’t live without it. Next I promise wonderful and happy stories =)

Shawarma with kittens

T Just after reading the stories about the Blockade, I thought that not everyone would find the joke “did this shawarma meow or bark before?” “I asked unnecessary questions.” Indeed, at that time of wild famine and complete absence They ate food from cats and dogs, and what’s more, even people….

In 1941, a terrible city began in Leningrad. The city was blocked on all sides by the enemy, who managed to deprive the townspeople of even those small supplies of products that were stored in the Badayevsky warehouses, completely bombing them. In this hungry and cold time, people had to eat their beloved pets to survive.

At first, those around them condemned the “cat eaters.” “I eat according to the second category, so I have the right,” one of them justified himself in the fall of 1941. Then excuses were no longer needed: a meal from a cat was often the only way to save life. Carpenter's glue was made from animal bones, which was also used for food. One of the Leningrad residents wrote an ad: “I’m exchanging a cat for ten tiles of wood glue.”

“December 3, 1941. Today we ate fried cat. “Very tasty,” 10-year-old Valera Sukhov wrote in his diary.

“We ate the neighbor’s cat with the entire communal apartment at the beginning of the blockade,” says Zoya Kornilieva.

“We had a cat Vaska. Family favorite. In the winter of 1941, his mother took him away somewhere. She said that they would feed him fish at the shelter, but we can’t... In the evening, my mother cooked something like cutlets. Then I was surprised, where do we get meat from? I didn’t understand anything... Only later... It turns out that thanks to Vaska we survived that winter..."

“When the war started, my Mom was 17 years old. She lived on the first floor of one of the apartments on the Petrograd side. And under the apartment where my Mom lived with her neighbors, there was a basement in which mice and rats always lived, from the moment the house was built (from June 1909). That apartment had 3 rooms and 1 (for all) cat.

The tenants (as the residents of the apartment were called in Soviet times) fed him equally, and how much they loved him - history in the person of my Mother is silent about this. The only thing she said was that Vaska (that was the cat’s name) preferred to sleep on her aunt’s sofa. From which I concluded that Vaska loved Aunt Dusya most of all. And then the war began. And then the Blockade began. And the Leningraders, tormented by hunger, began to eat everything and everyone. They ate glue, paper if there was glue on it; They ate first pigeons, then crows, then rats...

The very last on this nightmare list were dogs and cats. They ate them too. True, not all. Mom told me that some people often came to them - to her and to her aunt - and asked to give Vaska back. First for money. Then, when money ceased to be something worthwhile, for tobacco. But both Mom and Aunt Dusya by that time already understood WHY they wanted to get their cat, and they refused. Moreover, Mom, who worked at the Engels Plant (later “Svetlana”) went back and forth every day (!!!) (and could have lived at the plant like others!) not only because of Aunt Dusya, but also because of Vasya.

“I didn’t save him, Lenka, you know, I didn’t save him! I trudged home for too long, I didn’t have time. Aunt Dusya cried and said that two people came, grabbed Vaska and took them away! They gave her money and ran away. Cannibals, filthy creatures! We Aunt Dusya and I put those pieces of paper in the potbelly stove; we didn’t need them since Vaska was stolen!”

Mom, my mother, swollen from hunger, who went to work every day from Pudozhskaya Street to Engels Avenue, crawling over the corpses of dead Leningraders, until the end of her days in October 1997, could not forget that Siege cat, which she and her aunt tried to save and preserve - from my 375 grams of bread, 125 for Aunt Dusina) and 250 (for Mom’s)..."

Kitten is a symbol of life

However, some townspeople, despite the severe hunger, took pity on their pets. In the spring of 1942, an old woman, half dead from hunger, took her cat outside for a walk. People came up to her and thanked her for saving it.

A woman who survived the blockade recalled how in March 1942 she suddenly saw a skinny cat on a city street. Several old women stood around her and crossed themselves, and an emaciated, skeletal policeman made sure that no one caught the animal.

In April 1942, a 12-year-old girl, walking past the Barrikada cinema, saw a crowd of people at the window of one of the houses. They marveled at an extraordinary sight: a tabby cat with three kittens was lying on a brightly lit windowsill. “When I saw her, I realized that we had survived,” this woman recalled many years later.

Cats in the service of the Fatherland

Among the wartime stories there is a legend about a red cat “listener” who lived near an anti-aircraft battery and accurately predicted all air attacks. Moreover, the cat did not react to the approach of Soviet aircraft. The battery commanders greatly respected the cat for this unique gift; they provided him with rations and even one soldier as a guard.

But the main “battle” for cats began after the blockade was lifted.“Darkness of rats in long ranks, led by their leaders, moved along the Shlisselburgsky tract (now Obukhov Defense Avenue) straight to the mill, where they ground flour for the whole city. They shot at the rats, they tried to crush them with tanks, but nothing worked: they climbed onto the tanks and safely rode on them. This was an organized, intelligent and cruel enemy...”

All types of weapons, bombings and fires were powerless to destroy the numerous rodents that were destroying everything around. The gray creatures devoured even those crumbs of food that remained in the city. In addition, due to the hordes of rats in the city, there was a threat of epidemics. No “human” methods of rodent control helped. And cats - the main enemies of rats - have not been in the city for a long time. They were eaten.

After breaking the blockade, in April 1943, four wagons of smoky cats were brought to Leningrad from Yaroslavl. It was smoky cats that were considered the best rat catchers. A queue of many kilometers immediately formed for the cats. A kitten in a besieged city cost 500 rubles. It would have cost about the same at the North Pole in pre-war times. For comparison, a kilogram of bread was sold from hand for 50 rubles. Yaroslavl cats saved the city from rats, but could not solve the problem completely.

Another “batch” of cats was brought from Siberia to fight rodents in the basements of the Hermitage and other Leningrad palaces and museums. It’s interesting that many of the cats were domestic cats—residents of Omsk, Irkutsk, and Tyumen themselves brought them to collection points to help Leningraders. In total, 5 thousand cats were sent to Leningrad, who completed their task with honor - clearing the city of rodents.

The descendants of those Siberian cats still live in the Hermitage. They are well taken care of, fed, treated, but most importantly, respected for their conscientious work and help. And a few years ago, the museum even created a special Fund for Friends of Hermitage Cats. Today, more than fifty cats serve in the Hermitage. Everyone has a special passport with a photo. All of them successfully protect museum exhibits from rodents.

Three under one blanket

It was from this story that I got the idea for this post....a very touching story.

“My grandmother always said that she and my mother survived the severe blockade and hunger thanks to our cat Vaska. If it weren't for this red-haired hooligan, they would have died of hunger like many others.

Every day Vaska went hunting and brought back mice or even a big fat rat. Grandma gutted the mice and cooked them into stew. And the rat made good goulash.
At the same time, the cat always sat nearby and waited for food, and at night all three lay under one blanket and it warmed them with its warmth.

He felt the bombing much earlier than the air raid alert was announced, he began to spin around and meow pitifully, his grandmother managed to collect her things, water, mother, cat and run out of the house. When they fled to the shelter, he was dragged along with them as a family member and watched so that he would not be carried away and eaten.

The hunger was terrible. Vaska was hungry like everyone else and skinny. All winter until spring, my grandmother collected crumbs for the birds, and in the spring she and her cat went hunting. Grandma sprinkled crumbs and sat with Vaska in ambush; his jump was always surprisingly accurate and fast. Vaska was starving with us and he did not have enough strength to hold the bird. He grabbed the bird, and his grandmother ran out of the bushes and helped him. So from spring to autumn they also ate birds.

When the blockade was lifted and more food appeared, and even then after the war, the grandmother always gave the best piece to the cat. She stroked him affectionately, saying, “You are our breadwinner.”

Vaska died in 1949, his grandmother buried him in the cemetery, and so that the grave would not be trampled, she put a cross and wrote Vasily Bugrov. Then my mother put my grandmother next to the cat, and then I buried my mother there too. So all three lie behind the same fence, as they once did under the same blanket during the war."

This is how our mustachioed and tailed pets can act nobly, there is another similar story:

“We had a cat when we were kids. My father was taken to war. My mother was often sick and could not work on the collective farm. The family has four children. We could have starved to death if it weren't for our cat. She would go out at night and bring back not mice in her teeth, but pieces of meat and bread. Not for himself, but for us. She left it on the table and left again. Probably from some closets. Mother took the meat, washed it and cooked soup for us. This is how we lived through the winter, and then the older children began working on the collective farm.”

And the next story is about friendship between animals.

Cat and parrot

“In our family, it got to the point that my uncle demanded the cat to be eaten almost every day,” Peskov quotes the words of the animal’s owner, Vera Nikolaevna Volodina. - When my mother and I left the house, we locked Maxim in a small room.

We also had a parrot named Jacques. IN good times Our Jaconya sang and talked. And then he got all skinny from hunger and became quiet. The few sunflower seeds that we exchanged for daddy’s gun soon ran out, and our Jacques was doomed.

The cat Maxim also barely wandered - his fur came out in clumps, his claws could not be removed, he even stopped meowing, begging for food. One day Max managed to get into Jacone's cage. At any other time there would have been drama. And this is what we saw when we returned home: the bird and the cat were sleeping in a cold room, huddled together. This had such an effect on my uncle that he stopped trying to kill the cat...”

Soon the parrot died, but the cat survived. And he turned out to be practically the only cat to survive the blockade. They even began to give excursions to the Volodins' house - everyone wanted to look at this miracle. Teachers brought entire classes. Maxim died only in 1957. From old age.

Dental jaw for cat Marquise

“I’ll tell you about a long, selfless friendship with a cat - an absolutely wonderful person, with whom I spent 24 joyful years under the same roof. The Marquis was born two years earlier than me, even before the Great Patriotic War. When the Nazis closed a blockade ring around the city, the cat disappeared. This did not surprise us: the city was starving, they ate everything that flew, crawled, barked and meowed.

Soon we went to the rear and returned only in 1946. It was in this year that cats began to be brought to Leningrad from all over Russia in trains, as the rats overpowered them with their impudence and gluttony...

One day, early in the morning, someone began to tear at the door with his claws and scream at the top of his lungs. The parents opened the door and gasped: a huge black and white cat stood on the threshold and looked at his father and mother without blinking. Yes, it was the Marquis, returning from the war. Scars - traces of wounds, a shortened tail and a torn ear spoke of the bombings he had experienced. Despite this, he was strong, healthy and well-fed. There was no doubt that this was the Marquis: a wen had been rolling on his back since birth, and a black artistic “butterfly” adorned his snow-white neck.

The cat sniffed the owners, me, and the things in the room, collapsed on the sofa and slept for three days without food or water. He frantically moved his paws in his sleep, meowed, sometimes even purred a song, then suddenly bared his fangs and hissed menacingly at an invisible enemy. The Marquis quickly got used to a peaceful, creative life. Every morning he accompanied his parents to the factory two kilometers from home, ran back, climbed onto the sofa and rested for another two hours before I got up.

It should be noted that he was an excellent rat catcher. Every day he deposited several dozen rats at the threshold of the room. And, although this spectacle was not entirely pleasant, he received full encouragement for the honest performance of his professional duty. The Marquis did not eat rats; his daily diet included everything that a person could afford at that time of famine - pasta with fish caught from the Neva, poultry and brewer's yeast. As for the latter, he was not denied this. On the street there was a pavilion with medicinal brewer's yeast, and the saleswoman always poured 100-150 grams of what she called “front-line” yeast for the cat.

In 1948, Marquis began to have troubles - all the teeth in his upper jaw fell out. The cat began to fade away literally before our eyes. The veterinarians were categorical: euthanize him. And here my mother and I, with bawling faces, are sitting in the zoo clinic with our furry friend in our arms, waiting in line to euthanize him.

“What a beautiful cat you have,” said the man with a small dog in his arms. -What's wrong with him?

And we, choking with tears, told him the sad story.

May I inspect your animal? - The man took the Marquis, unceremoniously opened his mouth. - Well, I’m waiting for you tomorrow at the Department of the Research Institute of Dentistry. We will definitely help your Marquis.

When the next day at the research institute we pulled Marquis out of the basket, all the employees of the department gathered. Our friend, who turned out to be a professor at the Department of Prosthetics, told his colleagues about the military fate of Marquis, about the blockade he suffered, which became the main cause of tooth loss. An ethereal mask was placed on the Marquis's face, and when he fell into deep sleep, one group of doctors made an impression, another hammered silver pins into the bleeding jaw, and a third applied cotton swabs.

When it was all over, we were told to come back for dentures in two weeks, and to feed the cat with meat broths, thin porridge, milk and sour cream with cottage cheese, which was very problematic at that time. But our family, cutting down our daily rations, managed. Two weeks flew by instantly, and again we were at the Dentistry Research Institute. The entire staff of the institute gathered for the fitting. The prosthesis was put on pins, and Marquis became like an artist of the original genre, for whom a smile is a creative necessity.

But the Marquis did not like the prosthesis; he furiously tried to pull it out of his mouth. It is unknown how this fuss would have ended if the nurse had not thought of giving him a piece of boiled meat. The Marquis had not tried such a delicacy for a long time and, forgetting about the prosthesis, began to chew it greedily. The cat immediately felt the enormous advantage of the new device. Intensified mental work was reflected on his face. He forever linked his life with his new jaw.

Between breakfast, lunch and dinner, the jaw rested in a glass of water. Nearby stood cups with false jaws from my grandmother and father. Several times a day, and even at night, Marquis would go to a glass and, making sure that his jaw was in place, would go to doze on his grandmother’s huge sofa.

And how much worry did the cat have when he once noticed the absence of his teeth in a glass! All day long, exposing his toothless gums, the Marquis screamed, as if asking his family, where did they touch his device? He discovered the jaw himself - it had rolled under the sink. After this incident, the cat sat next to him most of the time, guarding his glass.

So, with an artificial jaw, the cat lived for 16 years. When he turned 24, he felt his departure into eternity. A few days before his death, he no longer approached his treasured glass. Only on the very last day, having gathered all his strength, he climbed onto the sink, stood on his hind legs and swept the glass off the shelf onto the floor. Then, like a mouse, he took the jaw into his toothless mouth, moved it to the sofa and, hugging it with his front paws, looked at me with a long bestial gaze, purred the last song of his life and left forever.”

A little about blockade dogs

The dog is delicate. He asks without humiliation. Her look says: “I’m dying of hunger. Maybe you can give me at least a crumb?”

I can’t remember how long this dog lived with me. I only remember that I was leaving, but she stayed. She didn't wag when I returned. Maybe it was difficult for her to wag, or maybe shepherds don’t wag at all. I was glad that I had someone alive at home and he was waiting for me. Sometimes I talked to her, but most of the time we looked at each other in silence. I named this dog Prosper. Prosper means "Prosperous". Looking at the feverishly burningProsper's eyes, I thought that a moment might come when one of us would go mad with hunger and rush at his random friend to eat him. But as long as I am sane, I cannot kill the creature that has asked me for shelter. The dog is so weak that, perhaps, it is not able to rush at me. In addition, shepherds are grateful and remember both insult and affection.

I started to feel myself getting weaker. I didn’t sleep well, I saw food in my dreams. I woke up every minute and listened to the ticking in the loudspeaker. It was impossible to turn off the radio - it warned of raids. But night raids were rare, and during the day and evening the Germans always bombed at the same time.

The green bread ran out, and I resumed my exploration in the apartment. Fuel also had to be found. The stools had already been burned, and so was my kitchen table. Now I turned my attention to the huge kitchen table. It will last a long time, but it will be difficult for me to cut it, and first of all I need to free it.

I pulled out the top drawer. There were kitchen knives, wooden spoons, a dough roller... Sticking my hand further away, I felt something unusual... It turned out to be a clean white nodule, the size of a fist... There was something loose in it... Maybe peas? I untied the knot and saw corn kernels. What a surprise! But where does corn come from in Leningrad? Before the war, they once sold corn grits, similar to semolina. It was possible to cook “mamalyga” from it... But you probably won’t find whole grains of corn in Leningrad... And why are they here, where there should be no edibles, and even shoved into the farthest corner and tied like a blue?.. But if they cook them, they will swell to twice their size, and I can last another two or three days...

I ate just a few grains and gave a handful to Prosper, and in the morning I divided the corn into two parts. She gave one to Prosper, and put the other in a bag and took it to Aunt Olya after the lectures.…
Prosper couldn't stand it. The green bread ran out, he ate the corn... And two days after that, when I was leaving for college, he got up and went out with me.

“I won’t hold you back,” I told him. - But really, you’re still better with me... I probably won’t kill you, and it’s a little warmer in my room than outside... I’ll be sad without you...

Still, he left. I saw him staggering towards the trash heap. Naive dog!

In 1944, in the first summer after the blockade, a city exhibition of service dogs took place in Leningrad. There is no need to say in what conditions Leningraders lived during the 900-day siege, how many lives were lost in the bombing and shelling of the city, how many people died from hunger...

And yet there were people who found the strength and courage to share the meager blockade rations with their favorites. We will never know how many such people there were. Surely not all of them lived to see the Victory. It is only known that in the paradeThere were sixteen people - exhausted, exhausted, literally reeling from weakness, almost transparent. And the same dogs walked next to them.

Among them were both purebred and outbred. The origin of most of the demobilized dogs recorded in the catalog was unknown: the documents for them were lost. But the most attention was attracted by a mongrel with mutilated ears, literally cut into ribbons by fragments of mines.

Yes, that’s right, I threw in the coin (of course not on the first try, even a crowd of onlookers gathered before I finally managed to get in), and my wish came true.)))

What I wish for you is the fulfillment of all your desires. Love your pets and remember the feats that their ancestors performed. Sometimes we should learn “humanity” from animals...

It was told how Yaroslavl and Siberian cats, brought to besieged Leningrad, helped save this long-suffering and heroic city from an invasion of rats and a plague epidemic.

And in this post I would like to put together several stories about amazing people who were able to save their animals in this hell, and about how cats saved their owners from hunger.

Cat Marquis, who survived the siege of Leningrad.

I’ll tell you about a long, selfless friendship with a cat - an absolutely wonderful person, with whom I spent 24 joyful years under the same roof.

The Marquis was born two years earlier than me, even before the Great Patriotic War.

When the Nazis closed a blockade ring around the city, the cat disappeared. This did not surprise us: the city was starving, they ate everything that flew, crawled, barked and meowed.

Despite this, he was strong, healthy and well-fed. There was no doubt that this was the Marquis: a wen had been rolling on his back since birth, and a black artistic “butterfly” adorned his snow-white neck.

The Marquis quickly got used to a peaceful, creative life. Every morning he accompanied his parents to the factory two kilometers from home, ran back, climbed onto the sofa and rested for another two hours before I got up.

The Marquis did not eat rats; his daily diet included everything that a person could afford at that time of famine - pasta with fish caught from the Neva, poultry and brewer's yeast.

As for the latter, he was not denied this. On the street there was a pavilion with medicinal brewer's yeast, and the saleswoman always poured 100-150 grams of what she called “front-line” yeast for the cat.

In 1948, Marquis began to have troubles - all his upper teeth fell out. jaws. The cat began to fade away literally before our eyes. The veterinarians were categorical: euthanize him.

And here my mother and I, with bawling faces, are sitting in the zoo clinic with our furry friend in our arms, waiting in line to euthanize him.

“What a beautiful cat you have,” said the man with a small dog in his arms. "What's wrong with him?" And we, choking with tears, told him the sad story. “Will you allow me to examine your beast?” - The man took the Marquis and unceremoniously opened his mouth. “Well, I’m waiting for you tomorrow at the Department of the Research Institute of Dentistry. We will definitely help your Marquis.”

An ethereal mask was placed on the Marquis's face, and when he fell into deep sleep, one group of doctors made an impression, another hammered silver pins into the bleeding jaw, and a third applied cotton swabs.

When it was all over, we were told to come back for dentures in two weeks, and to feed the cat with meat broths, liquid porridge, milk and sour cream withcottage cheese, which was very problematic at that time. But our family, cutting down our daily rations, managed.

Two weeks flew by instantly, and again we were at the Dentistry Research Institute. The entire staff of the institute gathered for the fitting. The prosthesis was put on pins, and Marquis became like an artist of the original genre, for whom a smile is a creative necessity.

The Marquis had not tried such a delicacy for a long time and, forgetting about the prosthesis, began to chew it greedily. The cat immediately felt the enormous advantage of the new device. Intensified mental work was reflected on his face. He forever linked his life with his new jaw.

And how much worry did the cat have when he once noticed the absence of his teeth in a glass! All day, exposing your toothlessgums, the Marquis yelled, as if asking his family, where did they touch his device?

He discovered the jaw himself - it had rolled under the sink. After this incident, the cat sat nearby most of the time, guarding his glass.

So, with an artificial jaw, the cat lived for 16 years. When he turned 24, he felt his departure into eternity.

A few days before his death, he no longer approached his treasured glass. Only on the very last day, having gathered all his strength, he climbed onto the sink, stood on his hind legs and swept the glass off the shelf onto the floor.

Then, like a mouse, he took the jaw into his toothless mouth, transferred it to the sofa and, hugging it with his front paws, looked at me with a long bestial gaze, purred the last song of his life and left forever.

Cat Vasily

My grandmother always said that my mother, and I, her daughter, survived the severe blockade and hunger only thanks to our cat Vaska.

If it weren’t for this red-haired hooligan, my daughter and I would have died of hunger like many others.

Every day Vaska went hunting and brought back mice or even a big fat rat. Grandma gutted the mice and cooked them into stew. And the rat made good goulash.

At the same time, the cat always sat nearby and waited for food, and at night all three lay under one blanket and it warmed them with its warmth.

Vaska was starving with us and he did not have enough strength to hold the bird. He grabbed the bird, and his grandmother ran out of the bushes and helped him. So from spring to autumn they also ate birds.

The story of Maxim the cat

Maxim’s owner, Vera Nikolaevna Volodina, said: “In our family it got to the point that my uncle demanded Maxim’s cat to be eaten almost every day.

When my mother and I left home, we locked Maxim in a small room.

We also had a parrot named Jacques. In good times, our Jaconya sang and talked. And then he got all skinny from hunger and became quiet.

The few sunflower seeds that we exchanged for daddy’s gun soon ran out, and our Jacques was doomed.

The cat Maxim also barely wandered - his fur came out in clumps, his claws could not be removed, he even stopped meowing, begging for food.

One day Max managed to get into Jacone's cage. At any other time there would have been drama. And this is what we saw when we returned home! The bird and the cat were sleeping in a cold room, huddled together.

This had such an effect on my uncle that he stopped trying to kill the cat.”

However, the touching friendship between the cat and the parrot soon ended - after some time, Jaconya died of hunger. But Maxim managed to survive, and moreover, to become practically a symbol of life for the besieged city, a reminder that all is not lost, that one cannot give up.

People went to the Volodins’ apartment just to look at the surviving cat, a real fluffy miracle. And after the war, schoolchildren were taken on an “excursion” to Maxim.
The brave cat died in 1957 - from old age. Source

Cat means we survived

Despite the severe famine, some Leningraders saved their pets. Here are some memories.

In the spring of 1942, an old woman, half dead from hunger, took her cat outside for a walk. People came up to her and thanked her for saving it.
One blockade survivor recalled that in March 1942 she suddenly saw a skinny cat on a city street. Several old women stood around her and crossed themselves, and an emaciated, skeletal policeman made sure that no one caught the animal.
In April 1942, a 12-year-old girl, walking past the Barrikada cinema, saw a crowd of people at the window of one of the houses. They marveled at an extraordinary sight: a tabby cat with three kittens was lying on a brightly lit windowsill. “When I saw her, I realized that we had survived,” this woman recalled many years later.

It is very strange why there is still no film or cartoon about the cat-savior of besieged Leningrad. After all, there is the famous Balto, a cartoon about how a dog saved hundreds of lives by delivering a vaccine to dying people, which was released several years ago. One generation of children has already grown up on it. But the cats in besieged Leningrad did not receive this fate. Maybe because their role as saviors was as heroic as it was terrible.

Dedicated to all the cats who saved people from death during those terrible 900 days, at the cost of their lives

Cats are the heroes of besieged Leningrad

People who managed to survive the Leningrad siege in 1942 recall that at that time there were no more cats in the city, but the number of rats increased tenfold. Sometimes hordes of rodents moved along the Shlisselburg highway to the place where the mill was located, grinding flour for all residents of the city.

In 1942–43, rats literally took over the city, as a result of which Leningrad was gripped by famine. The nasty pests were shot and crushed by tanks, but all attempts were useless. The gray invaders managed to climb onto the tanks that were coming to crush them, and marched towards them. The vile rodents not only destroyed food supplies, but were also carriers of viruses that caused terrible epidemic diseases. Residents of St. Petersburg were threatened with a plague epidemic.

You may have read about this terrible disease, which dominated Europe during the Middle Ages. And the reason was precisely that religious fans, who considered cats to be witchcraft accomplices, destroyed a huge number of them, as a result of which a lot of rats bred. The latter became the trigger for infecting Europeans and infecting them with the plague.

In the spring of 1943, the chairman of the Leningrad City Council signed a decree on the transfer of four carriages of smoky cats from the Yaroslavl region directly to Leningrad. The train delivered the “meowing division” under the strictest security.
Finally, the cats entered the fray, clearing all basements, attics and dumps of rats. The cats won and the rat army collapsed.

An interesting fact is that after the blockade was lifted, Muscovites, along with food, sent cats and small kittens to relatives and friends in St. Petersburg.

No matter how sad it may sound, cats saved Leningraders from mortal hunger by bringing their prey to their owners. And when there was absolutely nothing to eat, the only opportunity to save human life– it was cooking dinner from a cat. Animals warmed small, freezing children and were a small consolation for them in those terrible times. Therefore, many children dedicated poems and songs to furry pets.
The story of the listening cat

This is old military history about a red cat “listener” who settled with an anti-aircraft unit located near Leningrad and accurately predicted every subsequent enemy raid. The most interesting thing is that during the approach of the Soviet plane the animal did not show any signs. Thanks to his unique gift, the battery command fed the valuable cat and even ordered one of the soldiers to look after the red “listener.”

Many owners shared their allotted crumbs of bread with their pets...

Cat call

After the blockade was lifted, another “mobilization of cats” was carried out. This time, Murki and Barsiki were delivered from Siberia, especially for museums, palaces and even the famous Hermitage. Some brought animals of their own free will. The first volunteer was a black and white cat named Cupid. His owner willingly sacrificed her beloved pet in order to defeat her hated enemies. In general, about 5 thousand purring fighters were sent to Leningrad to cleanse the Hermitage of rodents. They were cared for: fed, treated, but, most importantly, respected and still respected for their conscientious work and help.

A couple of years ago, the museum created the Friends of the Hermitage Cats Foundation. Thanks to the foundation, funds are raised for various cat needs, various events and exhibitions are organized.

Today, about fifty cats “serve” in the Hermitage. Each of them has a personal passport and a photograph in it. These animals were given the honorary title of highly qualified specialists in cleaning the Hermitage basements from rodents.

Even in the cat community there is a clear hierarchy. They have their aristocrats, middle class and mob. The Hermitage cats are divided into four groups. Each group has its own strictly designated territory. They don’t go into other people’s basements that aren’t theirs, because they can get into serious trouble.

In 1942, besieged Leningrad was overcome by rats. Eyewitnesses recall that rodents moved around the city in huge colonies. When they crossed the road, even the trams were forced to stop. They fought against rats: they were shot, crushed by tanks, even special teams were created to exterminate rodents, but they could not cope with the scourge.
The gray creatures devoured even those crumbs of food that remained in the city. In addition, due to the hordes of rats in the city, there was a threat of epidemics. But no “human” methods of rodent control helped. And cats - the main enemies of rats - have not been in the city for a long time. They were eaten.
Sad but honest
At first, those around them condemned the “cat eaters.” “I eat according to the second category, so I have the right,” one of them justified himself in the fall of 1941. Then excuses were no longer needed: a meal from a cat was often the only way to save life.
“December 3, 1941. Today we ate fried cat. Very tasty,” a 10-year-old boy wrote in his diary.
“We ate the neighbor’s cat with the entire communal apartment at the beginning of the blockade,” says Zoya Kornilieva.
“It got to the point in our family that my uncle demanded Maxim’s cat to be eaten almost every day. When my mother and I left home, we locked Maxim in a small room. We also had a parrot named Jacques. In good times, our Jaconya sang and talked. And then he got all skinny from hunger and became quiet. The few sunflower seeds that we exchanged for daddy’s gun soon ran out, and our Jacques was doomed. The cat Maxim also barely wandered - his fur came out in clumps, his claws could not be removed, he even stopped meowing, begging for food. One day Max managed to get into Jacone's cage. At any other time there would have been drama. And this is what we saw when we returned home! The bird and the cat were sleeping in a cold room, huddled together. This had such an effect on my uncle that he stopped trying to kill the cat...”
“We had a cat Vaska. Family favorite. In the winter of 1941, his mother took him away somewhere. She said that they would feed him fish at the shelter, but we couldn’t... In the evening, my mother cooked something like cutlets. Then I was surprised, where do we get meat from? I didn’t understand anything... Only later... It turns out that thanks to Vaska we survived that winter..."
“Glinsky (the theater director) offered me to take his cat for 300 grams of bread, I agreed: hunger is making itself felt, because for three months now I have been living from hand to mouth, and especially the month of December, with a reduced norm and in the absolute absence of any supplies food. I went home and decided to go pick up the cat at 6 pm. The cold at home is terrible. The thermometer only shows 3 degrees. It was already 7 o’clock, I was about to go out, but the terrifying force of the artillery shelling of the Petrograd side, when every minute I expected that a shell would hit our house, forced me to refrain from going out into the street, and, moreover, I was in a terribly nervous and in a feverish state with the thought of how I would go, take a cat and kill him? After all, until now I haven’t even touched a bird, but here’s a pet!”

Cat means victory
However, some townspeople, despite the severe hunger, took pity on their pets. In the spring of 1942, an old woman, half dead from hunger, took her cat outside for a walk. People came up to her and thanked her for saving it. One former blockade survivor recalled that in March 1942 she suddenly saw a skinny cat on a city street. Several old women stood around her and crossed themselves, and an emaciated, skeletal policeman made sure that no one caught the animal. In April 1942, a 12-year-old girl, walking past the Barrikada cinema, saw a crowd of people at the window of one of the houses. They marveled at an extraordinary sight: a tabby cat with three kittens was lying on a brightly lit windowsill. “When I saw her, I realized that we had survived,” this woman recalled many years later.

Furry special forces
In her diary, blockade survivor Kira Loginova recalled, “Darkness of rats in long ranks, led by their leaders, moved along the Shlisselburgsky tract (now Obukhov Defense Avenue) straight to the mill, where they ground flour for the whole city. This was an organized, intelligent and cruel enemy...” All types of weapons, bombings and fires were powerless to destroy the “fifth column”, which was eating up the blockade survivors who were dying of hunger.
As soon as the blockade was broken in 1943, it was decided to deliver cats to Leningrad; a resolution was issued signed by the chairman of the Leningrad City Council on the need to “extract smoky cats from the Yaroslavl region and deliver them to Leningrad.” The Yaroslavl residents could not help but fulfill the strategic order and caught the required number of smoky cats, which were then considered the best rat catchers. Four carriages of cats arrived in a dilapidated city. Some of the cats were released right there at the station, and some were distributed to residents. Eyewitnesses say that when the meowing rat catchers were brought in, you had to stand in line to get the cat. They were snapped up instantly, and many didn’t have enough.
In January 1944, a kitten in Leningrad cost 500 rubles (a kilogram of bread was then sold secondhand for 50 rubles, a watchman’s salary was 120 rubles).
16-year-old Katya Voloshina. She even dedicated poetry to the besieged cat.
Their weapons are dexterity and teeth.
But the rats did not get the grain.
Bread was saved for the people!
The cats who arrived in the dilapidated city, at the cost of great losses on their part, managed to drive away the rats from food warehouses.

Cat-listener
Among the wartime legends, there is a story about a red cat “listener” who settled near an anti-aircraft battery near Leningrad and accurately predicted enemy air raids. Moreover, as the story goes, the animal did not react to the approach of Soviet planes. The battery command valued the cat for his unique gift, put him on allowance and even assigned one soldier to look after him.

Cat mobilization
As soon as the blockade was lifted, another “cat mobilization” took place. This time, murks and leopards were recruited in Siberia specifically for the needs of the Hermitage and other Leningrad palaces and museums. The “cat call” was a success. In Tyumen, for example, 238 cats and cats aged from six months to 5 years were collected. Many brought their pets to the collection point themselves. The first of the volunteers was the black and white cat Amur, whom the owner personally surrendered with the wishes of “contributing to the fight against the hated enemy.” In total, 5 thousand Omsk, Tyumen, and Irkutsk cats were sent to Leningrad, who completed their task with honor - clearing the Hermitage of rodents.
The cats and cats of the Hermitage are taken care of. They are fed, treated, but most importantly, they are respected for their conscientious work and help. And a few years ago, the museum even created a special Fund for Friends of Hermitage Cats. This foundation collects funds for various cat needs and organizes all sorts of events and exhibitions.
Today, more than fifty cats serve in the Hermitage. Each of them has a passport with a photo and is considered a highly qualified specialist in cleaning museum basements from rodents.
The cat community has a clear hierarchy. It has its own aristocracy, middle peasants and rabble. Cats are divided into four groups. Each has a strictly designated territory. I don’t go into someone else’s basement - you can get punched in the face there, seriously.
Cats are recognized by their faces, backs, and even tails by all museum employees. But it is the women who feed them who give their names. They know everyone's history in detail.

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