The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg is home to
some of the world’s most valued treasures—as well as about 70
cats.
While the museum’s feline residents are not permitted inside the
galleries, they actively patrol behind the scenes and keep the
institution rodent-free.
The cats first took up residence inside the Hermitage well
before it was a museum, in 1745, when Empress Elisabeth put out a
call for the “finest cats of Kazan,” to help catch mice in what was
then a palace, according to an article by
AFP.
Later, under the rule of Catherine the Great, the cats earned
the nickname the “Winter Palace cats.”
Through war and famine, the cats’ population has ebbed and
flowed, and today there are enough that the museum has
recruited help. Staffer Irina Popovets is dedicated to taking
care of the animals.
Cats are often brought to the museum by owners who can no
longer care for them, Ms. Popovets said. And
since they’ve gained a cult celebrity status with
visiting tourists, a wedsite has been set up by the museum for
people who may be interested in adoption—of whom there
are plenty.
“It is an honor to adopt a Hermitage cat,” Ms. Popovets told
one potential cat owner.
The next step for the cats, museum director Mikhail Piotrovsky
told the AFP: “Given the Hermitage cats’ popularity, we have
decided to kickstart a process to copyright their name.”
