Caturday felid trifecta: Cat wins a feline race for mayer of Somerville, MA bike path; Kiwi cat burglars; Gymnopédie with cats and friends; and lagniappe

For some reason the community of Somerville, MA, where I’ve just been (it abuts Cambridge) has decided to elect a cat Mayor for its community bike path!  And it was a heated and well-attended election, with 70 cats contending for the mayorship. The election is now over, but on September 5, before it took place, the Guardian described the race (click headline below to read).  Minerva, a favorite, is shown in the headline, with her sole campaign issue, “Crime”, given on her poster. Did she favor more crime or less crime? Or did she commit crime? It’s unknown.

If you click you’ll see all eleven contenders pictured, but there were a total of 70 cats running!. An excerpt from the Guardian article:

n Somerville, Massachusetts, a community bike path has, in recent months, become a hotly contested political constituency. A cat with a distinctive black smudge on her nose, Berry, had been sighted on the path by a number of concerned neighbours, who reported her missing. But she wasn’t actually anywhere she shouldn’t have been – Berry is an outdoor cat who lives in the area – so her family put up a poster dubbing her the bike path’s “mayor” to let neighbours know not to worry. It wasn’t long though before things got out of hand. How come Berry got to be mayor, asked other pet owners?

A heated election is now under way. There have been dirty tactics (at one point, Berry’s campaign sign was stolen), scandal (candidates were outraged when a local vet claimed to be “sponsoring” the race), and even death: Pirate, the candidate whose family took it upon themselves to set up the online ballot, died unexpectedly, mid-race. Voting (for Somerville locals only) ends on 5 September – and with 73 pets currently in the running, there’s plenty of choice. So who are the runners and riders?

The incumbent, Berry, faced a stiff challenge by Minerva, who hasn’t even been on the bike path:

“Make cats outside again,” reads Berry’s sign campaigning for re-election. The current mayor is a three-year-old black and white cat who can be found on the bike path “daily, when I’m not visiting my humans”, the literature says. She has a dedicated team of humans around her: seven-year-old chief of staff Amias and five-year-old chief canvasser Emmeline; as well as campaign manager Mallory, a 39-year-old scientist. Her team claims she has improved community morale and should she be elected, will “unite the community under cat supremacy”.

Self-designated mayor Berry (no caption or credit shown):

The simplest – and most intriguing – sign to have appeared along the bike path features a one-word slogan: “CRIME”. This provocative message has won nine-year-old Minerva many supporters online – despite the fact that, as an indoor cat, she has never been seen on the bike path. “Her minions monitor the path for her,” say her owners. “CRIME” remains her sole policy.

The Guardian piece.  There were actually 90 contestants:

 

And People magazine named the winner (click to read): MINERVA!

An except;

From this lighthearted local feud sprang an intense, viral mayoral race that caught the attention of the nation. According to NBC10, after a little over two weeks of voting on over 70 candidates, Minerva the cat came out the winner. Minerva stood out from other feline candidates with her one-word campaign slogan: “Crime.”

“Minerva’s platform of crime, I think, really resonated with people,” said one Somervillian to the Boston Globe. “Minerva’s platform inspired someone to steal Minerva’s sign and also steal the QR code voting sign, right before the last day of the election.”

Minerva’s owner, Daniel Abraham, shared a brief statement at the unveiling of the sign proclaiming Minerva the winner of the Bike Path Mayor race.

“Minerva asked me to say one thing on her behalf and only one thing: Crime,” said Abraham, as he stuck a sticker of the winning cat to the sign in front of a cheering crowd.

Here’s Minerva:

A bit more:

PEOPLE reached out to Somerville’s mayor, Katjana Ballantyne, during the race, and she shared her early endorsement for Berry.

“Berry does have my endorsement as a proven leader defending our bike path values. I also admire her approach to rat control,” said Ballantyne at the time. “This race has been absolutely purr-fect for our community, capturing our creativity and community spirit. Nothing brings people together like debating whether Puzzle’s platform calling for more catnaps is fiscally responsible.”

Here’s a really nice YouTube video showing the contentious election and the winner:

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For some reason New Zealand is plagued with cats who steal the clothes and possessions of neighbors, and trying to investigate the first one I found several other Kiwi Cat Burglars. I’ll show two, the first one (from RNZ, click to read) is the thieving Nico. The title shows him returning home in Hamilton with a sock, of which he’s stolen over 20o.

 And from One News, with a picture showing Nico with a pair of purloined knickers.

An excerpt:

Nico the Great has built a reputation for nicking knickers – which is not so great for the people whose knickers he is nicking.

The feline has apparently sneaking onto people’s properties day and night, collecting their smalls and other bits and bobs.

Nico trumpets his return to his Hamilton home, meowing repeatedly when its been a successful hunting party and displaying the ill-gotten gains for his whānau.

His thieving has reached epic levels – he has collected about 200 items since April, all of which need to be returned to their rightful owners.

Nico the Great’s owner Kateshe Clark told RNZ’s Checkpoint it was an entertaining situation, “but also quite concerning and somewhat embarrassing as well”.

Clark said the majority of stolen items tended to be socks, but also women’s underwear, men’s trunks, dishcloths, tea-towels, sponges and most recently a little puppet.

She said when Nico returned home with his treasures, he was “very loud and proud” about it.

“He waltzes in and just leaves the items, usually in the hallway, for us to stumble across.”

The thefts started in the evening, but Clark said Nico’s activities have spread throughout the day.

“We’ll go out during the day and we’ll come home and there will be several socks left as gifts in the hallway for us.”

But she said they had not been able to find many owners.

“I’ve done the walk of shame a couple of times, up our long driveway and onto our street, and had some conversations with our neighbours, leaving our contact details in case they are missing any items.

“I’ve found the odd pair of socks and kids clothing that the owners have claimed, but apart from that we really have no idea how far he’s actually going to bring these items back.”

She had posted details on local social media pages, but have not had much luck.

And another perverted Kiwi cat that likes to steal knickers. He’s been named Leonardo da Pinchy. Click the AP header to read:

An excerpt:

 Most cat owners dread their pets bringing home mice or birds. But for the owners of one felonious feline in Auckland, New Zealand, there’s a worse shame — being the unwitting accomplice to an unstoppable one-cat crimewave.

His prolific laundry-pinching from clotheslines and bedrooms in the placid beachside neighborhood of Mairangi Bay has turned 15-month-old Leo into a local celebrity and earned him a new moniker. He now goes by Leonardo da Pinchy.

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And he’s got expensive taste. His frequent hauls include silk boxer shorts, thick men’s work socks — preferably with clothespins still attached — and in one mortifying episode for his humans, a brand-new 300 New Zealand dollar ($181) cashmere sweater.

“My daughter was at home sick and she rang me at work saying, ’It’s bad, it’s bad, this is the worst thing he’s brought in, it’s really bad,” said Leo’s owner, Helen North. “Because it was beautiful. I was like, ‘Ooh, can I keep that?’ But I couldn’t.”

Instead, North turned to a neighborhood WhatsApp group to return Leo’s stolen goods to their rightful owners. Her usual message: “Are these your undies?”

But the pilfered stash kept piling up: socks (piles), underwear (loads) and even a 5-foot-long stuffed snake (bizarre). On one record-setting day, Leo returned with nine items, enough for a full outfit if you didn’t mind a mix of everything from baby clothes to menswear.

“He brought in a jersey this morning at 10 past 8,” North said. “The shops hadn’t even opened.”

With dozens of items unclaimed, the embarrassed owner took her search for Leo’s victims wider this month, posting photos of his hauls on a local Facebook page along with an apology and her address. Those who showed up to claim their belongings included a woman who recognized her pink and purple underpants and a boy whose beloved and missing sports jersey was helpfully identifiable by his name printed on the back.

And here’s a video showing Leonardo and his staff. The staff is quite exercised:

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Finally, you may want to plug your ears on this one. You’ve surely heard at least the first one of composer Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies, which I consider the most mournful song ever written (listen to it here), but there are actually two more (listen to #2 here and #3 here). Here they are performed by cats and other animals:

The Gymnopédies (French pronunciation: [ʒim.nɔ.pe.di]), or Trois Gymnopédies (‘Three Nude Dances”), are three piano compositions written by French composer and pianist Erik Satie. He completed the whole set by 2 April 1888, but they were at first published individually: the first and the third compositions were published in 1888, while the second wouldn’t be published until 1895.

This took a lot of work for someone to make, so listen for at least a minute!

 

Lagniappe: Cats disport themselves with a frying pan:

Me: cats are easily entertained
*Realizes I just watched two cats watch a frying pan spin*😭😭 pic.twitter.com/VG52Z4nPxM

— Cats with pawerful aura (@AuraWithCat) October 3, 2025

 

h/t: Peter N., Bob, Ginger K., Jay