“Dixie is smarter than my whole cabinet! And furthermore she doesn’t talk back!”

When Lincoln took office as POTUS 16 in 1861, he had to leave his dog Fido at home in Springfield, Illinois. To fill the void, his Secretary of State, William Seward, gave him two kittens, Dixie and Tabby, who became the first felines to live in the White House. They were not official First Cats, that honour would be reserved for Socks Clinton (see post National Tuxedo Day, November 19), but they played a very important support role to the President.

Lincoln adored them, played with them and chatted to them for hours, and obviously gained a great deal of comfort and repose from their calming presence. They taught him to be more cat. Mrs Lincoln, on being asked what her husband’s hobbies were, replied  ‘cats.’ 

And it wasn’t all about Dixie and Tabby. In 1864, in the penultimate year of the Civil War, Lincoln visited General Ulysses S..Grant on the battlefield at the Siege of Petersburg (a nine-month campaign of trench warfare and attrition). In the midst of the chaos, the President heard the piteous mewing of three abandoned kittens. He not only found the time to rescue them from the horror, but also ensured that they stayed rescued. 

Lincoln is regularly voted Number One in Best President polls, and has never been out of the Top Five. He was the real deal; he led the country through the horrors of the Civil War and signed the Emancipation Proclamation to begin the abolition of slavery in the USA; but he is equally revered, by cats and cat fans, as a man who truly loved cats.

To follow Lincoln’s lead, have a look at our Clowder Essential title Be More Cat