How Did They Come Up with That?

Quick, what role did Pauline Wayne play in the Taft Administration?  And what did President Theodore Roosevelt think of Emily Spinach?  And long before Dwight Eisenhower became president, who was the “Old Ike” who lived at the White House?

Pauline Wayne held the position of First Cow from 1910 to 1913.  This was back when pasteurized milk was not commercially available, and President Taft liked fresh cream in his coffee, so Pauline grazed on the White House Lawn until the next president (the arrogant stuffed shirt, Woodrow Wilson) decided that live-in livestock was not in keeping with the dignity of the Presidency.  

Wilson, who kept canaries, promptly changed his mind about keeping exotic animals during World War I, when there was a national labor shortage.  Wilson used sheep instead of groundskeepers to maintain the White House Lawn.  One of the sheep, Old Ike, was a notoriously bad-tempered Shropshire Ram, who routinely threatened the staff until he was given tobacco to chew.

And, of course, Emily Spinach was a garter snake that Alice Roosevelt, the daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, carried around in her purse and occasionally produced at formal White House dinners to shock the guests.  Alice named the snake after an Aunt Emily, whom Alice claimed had an equally flexible spine, and after spinach because the snake was green.  When complaints about Alice’s outrageous public behavior reached the president, he replied, "I can either run the country or I can attend to Alice, but I cannot possibly do both."

The strange names of pets came to mind this morning while Charlie was sitting in my lap.  (Charlie is a black cat, not to be confused with Charli, my granddaughter, or Charlie, my friend and bridge partner, or even, Charles, his son.)  I’m allergic to cats, so we have five of them.  Charlie (The cat who is named after the 15th century Burgundian Duke, Charles the Bold) loves to climb into my lap and rub his wet nose up and down my arms, producing burning red welts that last for about an hour.  Obviously, a better name for an acid-dripping black monster would be “Alien”.

Once you start thinking about the pets of prominent people, it is almost impossible to stop.  For example, when Lord Byron was at Oxford, he was forbidden to keep a dog—so he kept a bear.  The bear was nameless (probably because you don’t need a name for something until you have two of them and whoever heard of someone with two pet bears?).

Pablo Picasso was fascinated by the Diego Velazquez painting, Las Meninas.  (So am I, see the blog about it here.). In total, Picasso painted forty-four different versions of the Velasquez paintings, fifteen of which included his pet dachshund, Lump.  Picasso painted a portrait of the dog on a dinner plate that was used to feed the dachshund.  That plate recently sold at auction for an undisclosed price (between $20,000 and $90,000).  (I’ll sell you Charlie’s dish for $20 and will paint anything you like on it.)

In 1960, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 5, the first spacecraft to orbit the Earth and safely return with two live dogs.  One of the dogs was Strelka, who later gave birth to a litter of puppies.  When Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev visited the While House, First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, inquired about the dogs, so Khrushchev sent one of the puppies, Pushinka (Russian for Fluffy) to the president’s wife.  The dog was extensively x-rayed and examined with a magnetometer by the CIA before being given a home at the White House.  When Pushinka became pregnant by the President’s dog Charlie—no relation to my cat—the President dubbed the resulting litter “pupniks”.  As of this writing, Pushinka’s descendants are still alive.

Lots of writers have kept pets whose names tell us more about the writers than their pets.  Mark Twain had a cat named Sour Mash.  Dorothy Parker’s cat was name Cliché.  Ernest Hemingway had several six-toed cats, one of which was named Marilyn Monroe.  Beatrix Potter wrote stories about Peter Rabbit, but called her own pet bunny, Benjamin Bouncer.

Equally revealing are the names singers have given their pets.  Frank Sinatra had a dog named Ringo, while David Bowie kept a cat named Elvis.  One of my favorite tunes is the song, Martha, My Dear from the Beatles’ White Album.  Part of the lyrics include:

Martha my love,
Don't forget me,
Martha my dear.
Hold your head up,
You silly girl,
Look what you've done.

When you find yourself in the thick of it,

Help yourself to a bit of what is all around you, silly girl.

I only recently learned that Martha was Paul McCartney’s English sheepdog.  

Sometimes, the pets of the famous are just inexplicable.  Boris Karloff was famous for portraying several frightening monsters including Frankenstein or the Mummy, so you would expect that he kept vampire bats or a jar full of spiders.  Actually, Karloff kept a penguin named Oscar in his backyard pool, personally feeding Oscar fish.  (To be fair, Karloff also kept a pet leopard.)

Since it’s that time of the year, I should probably end with the story of Abraham Lincoln’s first Thanksgiving.  On October 3, 1863, Lincoln signed a proclamation making the last Thursday of November a national “day of Thanksgiving and Praise.”  A citizen sent Lincoln a live turkey to be used for the holiday feast, but Lincoln’s ten-year-old son, Tad, taught the bird to follow him around the White House lawn and named him Jack.  When Tad learned that the bird was to be slaughtered, he interrupted a cabinet meeting, demanding the bird be spared.  Lincoln hastily wrote out a note granting the bird a stay of execution—thus starting an annual tradition that is still honored.