Brown Cat

Did you know …

That in all of recorded history, there are only three verified accounts of brown cats? It’s true.

One was a cat owned by Henry VII, who, according to legend, was eaten alive by either bats or crows. That is, the brown cat was eaten alive by either bats or crows. Henry v.7 himself was eaten alive by ferrets and eels (he fell asleep on a riverbank; ferrets got the top half, eels got the bottom).

The second brown cat belonged to a 19th century Hui Chinese farmer. Upon realizing what an exceedingly rare pet he had, he toured it from village to village, charging townsfolk to view it. At some point, however, the cat became panicked, escaped from its cage, and was crushed by the giant wooden gears of a mill. That’s a sad way for a cat to go, and it left the farmer destitute, but Chinese scientists now believe that Li Jie was the reservoir/host for a form of influenza that killed tens of thousands of people in China at that time, so it’s probably for the best that he died a little early.

The third brown cat is currently the face of The Chesterton Review’s “I’d Rather Be Queefing” campaign. In between photo shoots, he lives in an isolated biosphere suspended below hot air balloons somewhere above Southern California.