Emmy was the ship's cat on the RMS Empress of Ireland.
She was an orange tabby cat who never missed a voyage.
However, on May 28, 1914, Emmy tried to escape the ship.
The crew could not coax her aboard and the Empress left
without her. She was reportedly last seen on the roof of
the shed at Pier 27, watching her ship sail out of Quebec
City.[citation needed] Early the next morning the Empress
collided with the SS Storstad while steaming through fog at
the mouth of the St. Lawrence river and rapidly sank,
killing over 1,000 people.
I have decided to disembark any ship when the cat leaves.
The article also led me to a Wikipedia page about the Dicken Medal [1], which is fascinating.
The PDSA Dickin Medal was instituted in 1943 in the United
Kingdom by Maria Dickin to honour the work of animals in
war.
the cat was trying to show the crew that they shouldn't go (the cat could have just run away, with no chances for "coaxing", etc...). The crew just didn't listen.
> She was reportedly last seen on the roof of
the shed at Pier 27, watching her ship sail out of Quebec
City.
>Please, what number of cats did not leave the ship before a fatal voyage?
That actually doesn't matter too much. As long as the cats which do leave the ship is a predictor of disaster. Even a slight correlation, say 1%, would be useful; do you want to take a 1% risk to your life? Maybe buy an extra lifeboat or something?
Of course, the prior probability of this hypothesis is pretty low, but it isn't to superstitious people.
The internet cats on Hacker News are of a classier variety than those you find at more run-of-the-mill pages, requesting cheese hamburgers and speaking unskillfully. These cats have Wikipedia articles, with footnotes. Some are decorated veterans.
> [D]espite being ordered to keep in line, he refused to obey. He failed to keep in step,[16] and tried to headbutt a drummer. […]
> Billy was charged with "unacceptable behaviour", "lack of decorum" and "disobeying a direct order", and had to appear before his commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Huw James. Following a disciplinary hearing, he was demoted to fusilier.
As were the consequences:
> The change meant that other fusiliers in the regiment no longer had to stand to attention when Billy walked past, as they had to when he was a lance corporal.
edit:
the end paragraph about other goat troubles in the british army is mind-blowing in its britishness:
> At one time a royal goat was "prostituted" by being offered for stud services by the regiment's serving goat major to a Wrexham goat breeder. First charged with lèse majesté, the goat major was ultimately court-martialled under the lesser charge of "disrespect to an officer" and reduced in rank. The goat major claimed he did it out of compassion for the goat, but this failed to impress the court.
> Another royal fusilier goat earned the nickname "the rebel", after he butted a colonel while he was stooped over fixing his uniform's trouser-strap. The incident was described as a "disgraceful act of insubordination."
As the bear was less than a year old, he initially had problems swallowing and was fed with condensed milk from an emptied vodka bottle. The bear was subsequently fed with fruit, marmalade, honey and syrup, and was often rewarded with beer, which became his favourite drink. He also enjoyed smoking and eating cigarettes
It could also be the moment when some of us integrity engineers finally find the proper name for the helper task thats supposed to be running in the background to catch bugs when they happen..
I remember when the papers gleefully seized on the fact that Cameron, apparently, doesn't like cats and refused to have another in 10 Downing Street. What sort of world leader hates cats after all.
One could read the article linked in the OP to get a list, should one want to prior to commenting. I realize that's not How It's Done here, but it's a thought.
I agree this submission is somewhat odd for HN, but as it's here I'm going to take the opportunity to recommend the novel Blitzcat to anyone with kids. As the reviews point out it's unique in literature to have an animal main character in a non-Disney or cute style, especially exploring parts of WWII. I haven't read it for two decades but the article immediately brought it to mind as something I enjoyed.
White Fang by Jack London is excellent. Also the original Jungle Book stories by Rudyard Kipling are beautiful as well, if a little colonial in places. My favourite when I was little was Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Both are in the public domain so can be downloaded for free from various places, including iBooks.
Since we are recommending books on animals, F Anstey's talking horse is really good. It's humor. If you like PG wodehouse then you will probably like this as well.
This was my favorite of the "famous ship cats" section. Anyone who has ever owned both a cat and a laser pointer will immediately recognize this as highly probable.
I don't know about the Navy but I was at an airbase in Afghanistan and some people were feeding a cat that was hanging around our building. An email went out ordering people to not feed the cat. As an incentive to comply the NCO in charge of the area said that if the cat feeding didn't stop it would be killed, not sure if he was serious but they weren't pleased with the prospect of having a cat around.
"Unit morale dogs" were pretty common, and usually overlooked. A lot more common on the smaller bases. There were some charities to actually raise money to legally import them to the US afterward. There were also rabid dogs which bit people, got shot, got their heads cut off, and then got tested by the vets (including running them through CT machines when people got bored), so it really depended on behavior and context. I never saw cats in Afghanistan or Iraq, strangely, only dogs.
The Australians had a pet called Stretch at one of their bases in Hellmand/Kandahar area. On the cage, it said "I may look cute and cuddly, but I'm a fucking mongoose!".
Cats are known intelligence agents. Its probably not a good thing to have strays wandering around your base .. you never know what they might report back to their owner..
I've lived on several US Navy ships and can confirm, I have never seen or heard about any cats...even from the sailors with 20 years in who liked to tell "war stories."
we're in deep debt to cats and dogs who was a major player in the successful development of human civilization. These days we forgot it, kill them by tens of millions per year, and many people grow up and live without meaningful contact with the animals.
Yes it does. Your dns request for the hostname and the ip address you connect to might give away the fact that you're reading wikipedia but the actual path will be encrypted.
Yet strangely, hackers are finding this piece of news interesting. I wonder why? Could it be the idea of having a cat on a ship is interesting from a systems perspective? What's a ship's cat equivalent in a computer or human system? Some sort of roving troubleshooter?
Lots of things on HN have to do with neither hacking nor news. That's part of its charm, always has been. If PG can post about the margins of medieval manuscripts, then anything goes, so long as it isn't dumb. The only sin is to be uninteresting.
The article also led me to a Wikipedia page about the Dicken Medal [1], which is fascinating.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickin_Medal