1935: Epic battle between firemen and cats over burning fish

April 17, 2016 • 4:00 pm

Matthew Cobb found this tw**t from the New York Times archives, dating to October 24, 1935:

And, with some due diligence, I found the whole article. (The things I do for the readers. . . ).  The first and last sentences are classics!

Here it is, and it happened in my town:

Screen Shot 2016-04-16 at 11.19.25 AM

24 thoughts on “1935: Epic battle between firemen and cats over burning fish”

  1. Very, very many of google’s ~13,000 hits of the exact phrasing, “a goodly sprinkling,” arise as within pieces from on or before y1950.

    Before these specific black kitty cats’ descriptor, I know I had never before heard those three words put together quite like that!

    A darling phrase: “a goodly sprinkling!”
    Blue

  2. Good thing Alfred Hithcock didn’t learn about that story or we’d be afraid of large groups of birds and glarings of cats!

    It does paint a spooky picture – one cat, then more then 50! It could have been a real battle royale!

    I wonder too if it reflects how people let their animals roam free back then. My dad said even in the 50s in Ontario people let not only cats but also dogs roam free and they were forever being hit on roads.

  4. The cats weren’t looking for trouble, they just went for the halibut. They wanted to watch the fire from a good perch. I don’t know what the firemen were carping about?

      1. If you look at the 4th comment down in the tweet it gives an exact date & a link to the “timesmachine” archive for then.

  11. Love the vintage NYT cat story! I’m sure there are many of them in archives across the globe – now I’m motivated to go searching for some.

  12. I read Kon-Tiki probably around 1958, and it has always stuck with me. I have twice visited the Kon-Tiki museum in Oslo, Norway. The museum also preserves Heyerdahl’s Ra II. Interesting place and history of an explorer and adventurer.

  14. As this pertains to my profession, I yearn for the day that this or a similar set circumstances arises. Currently, my only claim to fame is the boxing in of car in the fire lane with the vehicle I was chauffeur of during an emergency X2. The schadenfreude wad delicious. 😉

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