Too much attention directed at the new White House dog? Maybe so, suggests Lea-Ann Germinder of Tenafly, N.J.:
Do you know of any other presidential cats other than Socks and India? I am doing research and it seems as if Abraham Lincoln also had cats. In fairness, I work with the CATalyst Council, www.catalystcouncil.org, which is all about raising the stature of cats. Bo is great news, but it seems another presidential cat would help the cause!
According to pawsonline -- yes, that's a real Web site -- there have been many White House cats. Lincoln apparently had the first White House cat, named Tabby. And there were others:
Rutherford Hayes: Siam.
Teddy Roosevelt: Slippers and Tom Quartz.
Calvin Coolidge: Smokey, Blackie, Timmy and Tiger.
John Kennedy: Tom Kitten.
Gerald Ford: Shan.
Jimmy Carter: Misty Malarky Ying Yang.
Ronald Reagan: Cleo and Sara.
Bill Clinton: Socks.
George W. Bush: Ernie and India "Willie" Bush.
Our obituary of Socks -- painfully entitled "Everything You Wanted to Know About Socks But Were Afraid to Ask" -- can be found here.
Warning: The following is written a bit in tongue in cheek. This is what happens when it's a rainy, ugly Monday morning in Washington. Here goes.
First off, any discussion of White House pets in history will inevitably focus on dogs. FDR and Fala, Richard Nixon and Checkers ... you get
the picture. Actually, sometimes the cats do win. A clear example came in 1996, when a Bob Dole button from his presidential bid suggested his dog Leader was preferable to the Clintons' Socks, an argument that went nowhere with the voters.
But a not-so-serious look at political history shows that was one of the rare times when a cat came out on top in politics. In 2008 -- 36
years after a draft effort for Fritz the Cat went nowhere -- a real cat actually sought the presidency. And that was Kat Swift, a former Green Party official from Texas whose bid to move up and win her party's presidential nomination fell at the hands of former Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. (Not lost on anyone is the fact that as Kat Swift was losing her bid to get on the national ballot, a pit bull with lipstick was the Republican candidate for vice president.)
The lack of success for cats wasn't only limited to first names either.
Sam Katz, a Republican, failed twice in a bid for mayor of Philadelphia. Plus, no one with that last name has ever been elected to the House or Senate or governor, though several have tried.
In fact, it may be misguided for cat lovers interested in politics to be focusing their ire on dogs. Their real threat may be ducks. Howard the Duck made a serious bid for president in 1976, and
if memory serves he did better than several genuine candidates that year. If nothing else, Howard laid the groundwork that enabled another duck, albeit lame, to inhabit the White House in 2008.
OK, I'm just having fun with this. Please don't send me angry e-mails. In any event, I'll end with this tribute:
categories: Questions From The Reader
Comments
Please note that all comments must adhere to the NPR.org discussion rules and terms of use. See also the Community FAQ.
You must be logged in to leave a comment. Login | Register
More information needed to participate in the NPR online community.. Add this information