The Great Cat Migration

Did 5,000 Siberian Cats really save Western Civilization?   (Spoiler Alert:  Nope.)  The story goes something like this:

During the Siege of Leningrad, virtually every cat in the city disappeared.  Some starved, some froze to death, and some were eaten by people who had reached the unfortunate stage of starvation at which Fluffy with gravy begins to sound less appalling than it normally would.

With the cats gone, millions of rats poured into the city.  They marched through the streets in vast gray armies, attacked food warehouses, gnawed through electrical wires, overran the Hermitage Museum, and prepared to eat their way through several centuries of European art.   Rembrandt Tartare.

Then, following the breaking of the siege, the Soviet government launched the Great Cat Migration.  Five thousand specially selected Siberian cats were collected in Tyumen, Omsk, Irkutsk, and other distant cities.  They were placed aboard a special train and transported thousands of miles to Leningrad.

When the train arrived, the doors were opened, the cats charged into battle, the rats were annihilated and Western civilization was saved.  The cats were installed in the Hermitage, where their descendants continue guarding the Rembrandts, Leonardos, and assorted imperial furniture to this day.

It is a wonderful story.  Unfortunately, it may contain almost as much fiction as the average congressional budget proposal.

The actual story begins in 1745, when Empress Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, issued a genuine imperial decree ordering that 30 of the finest and largest mouse-catching tomcats be obtained from Kazan and delivered to the imperial court.

Kazan cats were reputed to be particularly formidable mousers.  Apparently, eighteenth-century Russia had already developed regional cat rankings, although ESPN had not yet begun televising the playoffs.

The decree specified that the cats should be large, good at catching mice, properly fed during the journey—and castrated.

That last qualification becomes important whenever someone claims that the cats currently living at the Hermitage are direct descendants of Elizabeth’s original Kazan cats.  Unless eighteenth-century Russian veterinarians were remarkably incompetent, those 30 tomcats did not leave descendants.

Nor, strictly speaking, did Elizabeth introduce cats to the “Hermitage Museum.” The present Winter Palace was not begun until 1754, and Catherine the Great did not establish the art collection that became the Hermitage until 1764.  Elizabeth brought cats to the imperial court.  The later palace and museum inherited the tradition.

Over the following centuries, cats were kept in the Winter Palace to control mice and rats in its kitchens, storerooms, corridors, and cellars.  As the palace accumulated paintings, furniture, tapestries, books, and other objects upon which rodents might dine, the cats became unofficial guardians of the imperial collections.

They were not art critics, but they were certainly more useful than most art critics.

Cats, Rats, and the Siege of Leningrad

The Siege of Leningrad began in September 1941 and lasted until January 1944.  It was one of the most appalling episodes of the Second World War.  Hundreds of thousands of civilians died, most from starvation, cold, and disease.

During the Siege of Leningrad, virtually every cat in the city disappeared.  Some starved, some froze to death, and some were eaten.  There was nothing historically unusual about people eating rodents—British sailors, for example, ate shipboard rats known as “millers,” apparently because the animals emerged from the flour stores looking as though they had been working the night shift in a bakery.  Cats, however, were household pets, and eating the family cat required a rather more desperate adjustment in culinary standards.  By the winter of 1941–42, many Leningraders had reached precisely that point.

The disappearance of the cats contributed to a serious rodent problem.  Rats threatened what little food remained and damaged buildings, wiring, archives, and stored materials.  The Hermitage was not immune, although most of its greatest treasures had already been evacuated to Sverdlovsk before conditions became completely disastrous.

Popular accounts often say that every cat in Leningrad died during the siege.  That is probably an exaggeration.  Contemporary records mention individual cats appearing in the city by early 1943, and several families later claimed that their pets survived.

The most famous was Maxim, whose owners reportedly protected him throughout the siege, occasionally locking him in a room to prevent a hungry relative from turning him into dinner.  Maxim may indeed have survived the entire siege.  Calling him “the only cat in Leningrad to survive,” however, would require a citywide feline census conducted under conditions in which the government had more pressing administrative concerns.

What can be said with confidence is that cats became extremely rare and extremely valuable.  By 1943, a kitten could cost several times the price of a loaf of bread.  Once people no longer needed to consider cats as food, they again wanted them as pets and rat catchers.

Enter the Meowing Division

This is where history begins turning into folklore.

According to one version, after Soviet forces opened a land corridor into Leningrad in January 1943, city authorities ordered four railway cars filled with gray or “smoky” cats from the Yaroslavl region.  These cats supposedly arrived while the siege was still underway and immediately began exterminating rats.

According to another version, the great shipment occurred after the siege ended in January 1944.  This time, approximately 5,000 cats were collected across Siberia, with Tyumen serving as a major collection point.  Residents donated household pets, officials rounded up strays, and a special train carried the animals to Leningrad.

Some accounts combine both stories: first came the Yaroslavl cats, followed by the larger Siberian feline reserve.

The details vary considerably.  Depending upon the person telling the story, there were two railway cars, four railway cars, or an entire train.  There were 500 cats, 1,000 cats, or 5,000 cats.  They arrived in 1943, 1944, or 1945.  They came from Yaroslavl, Tyumen, Omsk, Irkutsk, or all of the above.

This is generally not a sign that historians have uncovered an unusually rich collection of corroborating evidence.

In 2020, researchers at St. Petersburg State University reported that they had searched government records, wartime diaries, letters, and memoirs without finding confirmation of the famous trainload of cats.  They concluded that the mass migration story was probably a postwar legend representing a return to normal life—a time when cats could once again be pets and useful companions rather than emergency food.

That does not mean no cats were brought into Leningrad.  They almost certainly were.  Returning evacuees carried pets with them.  People bought, traded, and transported cats.  Officials probably encouraged their introduction, and some organized shipments may have occurred.

But the image of exactly 5,000 specially recruited Siberian commandos boarding the Feline Express and reporting for duty at the Hermitage remains unverified.

The recovery of Leningrad’s cat population was probably gradual and untidy.  Cats arrived from many places, reproduced, wandered into buildings, and were adopted by residents.  Traps, poison, sanitation programs, and ordinary pest-control work also helped reduce the rat population.

In other words, history did what history generally does: it unfolded through thousands of small, poorly documented actions.  Posterity then improved it by adding a special train.

Today, approximately 50 cats currently live beneath the Hermitage.  The number fluctuates because cats occasionally wander in, are rescued by employees, or are surrendered to the museum.  Others are adopted by carefully screened families.

The cats have names, identification documents, veterinary records, vaccinations, bowls, beds, and medical care.  They live primarily in the cellars, service areas, and courtyards.  They are not normally permitted to stroll through the galleries, critique the Dutch masters, or sharpen their claws on a Louis XVI chair.

Their modern pest-control value is largely preventive.  The smell and presence of cats discourage rodents from entering the area.  The cats themselves are reportedly well-fed and not always enthusiastic hunters.  One was once photographed peacefully watching a rat drink from its bowl, suggesting that feline work ethic has deteriorated since the heroic days of 1944.

The museum nevertheless treats them as honorary employees and public-relations ambassadors.  They have a veterinarian, caretakers, sponsors, an adoption program, an annual Hermitage Cat Day, and even an official spokeswoman.

Whether any are descended from the cats brought into Leningrad after the siege is impossible to establish.  Museum representatives say that a few descendants of the Yaroslavl cats remain, but there is no published pedigree or genetic study proving it.  The modern colony has absorbed stray cats and rescued animals for decades, and its members are routinely sterilized.

They are not a special breed.  They are ordinary mixed-breed cats with an unusually impressive business address.

A few wildly popular—and equally inaccurate—stories about the Hermitage cats deserve to be tossed out with the cat litter.

Peter the Great brought the first Hermitage cat, Vasily, from Holland.  Perhaps.  It is an old and charming tradition, but there is no contemporary documentation proving it.  Other versions say Peter obtained Vasily in Russia from a Dutch merchant.  Apparently, even the legendary cat’s travel documents have been misplaced.

The present cats descend from Elizabeth’s original Kazan cats.  No.  Elizabeth ordered castrated tomcats.  Their dynasty was over before it began.

Five thousand pedigree Siberian cats arrived aboard one special train.  There is no documentary confirmation.  Furthermore, “Siberian cats” may simply mean cats collected in Siberia, not 5,000 registered members of the modern Siberian breed traveling with certificates and matching luggage.

Every cat receives a government salary.  They receive food, housing, and veterinary care.  They do not receive rubles, pension contributions, paid vacation, or compensatory time for working nights.  Perhaps they should start a union.

A wealthy Frenchman left the cats an enormous fortune.  This one is partially true, which makes it ideal for the Internet.  A French admirer did include the Hermitage cats in his will.  Headlines breathlessly announced that the cats had inherited a “fortune,” conjuring images of 50 newly wealthy felines lounging aboard yachts, manipulating offshore accounts, and refusing to associate with common alley cats. 

The actual inheritance was approximately €3,000.  Divided among 50 cats, that comes to roughly €60 apiece—enough for each cat to purchase a respectable quantity of food, but probably not enough to establish a hereditary European banking family.

Still, €3,000 is €3,000.  It may not have made the Hermitage cats rich, but it did place them in a small and exclusive category: cats who have inherited more money than most cats and performed more useful government service than many humans.