If it weren't for Vaska the cat, we would starve to death

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Siege Leningrad …

My grandmother always said that both she and my mother, and I, her daughter, survived the severe blockade and hunger only thanks to our cat Vaska. If not for this red-headed bully, they would have starved to death, like many others.

Every day Vaska went hunting and brought in mice or even a big fat rat. My grandmother gutted mice and cooked stew from them. And the rat made a good goulash.

At the same time, the cat always sat nearby and waited for food, and at night all three lay under one blanket and he warmed them with his warmth.

He felt the bombing much earlier than the air raid was announced, he began to spin and meow pitifully, his grandmother managed to collect things, water, mother, cat and run out of the house. When they fled to the shelter, as a family member, they dragged him along and watched him not to be taken away and eaten.

The hunger was terrible. Vaska was hungry as everyone else and skinny. Throughout the winter until spring, my grandmother collected crumbs for the birds, and from spring they went hunting with the cat. Grandmother poured crumbs and sat with Vaska in ambush, his jump was always surprisingly accurate and fast. Vaska was starving with us and he didn't have enough strength to keep the bird. He grabbed a bird, and grandmother ran out of the bushes and helped him. So from spring to autumn, they also ate birds.

When the blockade was lifted and more food appeared, and even after the war, grandmother always gave the best piece to the cat. She stroked him affectionately, saying - you are our breadwinner.

Vaska died in 1949, his grandmother buried him in the cemetery, and, so that the grave would not be trampled, put a cross and wrote Vasily Bugrov. Then my mother put my grandmother next to the cat, and then I buried my mother there too. So all three lie behind the same fence, as they once did during the war under one blanket …

In general, the residents of the northern capital have a special attitude towards cats - it is not for nothing that a monument to a cat was unveiled in the courtyard of the main building of St. Petersburg State University in 2002. This is a tribute to thousands of animals that died during the terrible 900 days of the siege of Leningrad. The townspeople dying of hunger ate them all. At first, the cat-eaters were condemned, then excuses were no longer required - people wanted and tried to survive …

When in the spring of 1942 one old woman, half-dead from exhaustion, took out her cat - skinny, shabby, but alive - for a walk, passers-by stopped in surprise, spoke to the old woman, admired, thanked! Then, according to the recollections of one of the blockade women, a cat, emaciated to the bone, suddenly appeared on a city street. And the policeman on guard, who himself looked like a skeleton, made sure that no one caught the animal!

Or such a case: in April, a crowd of spectators gathered at the Barrikada cinema. Not for the sake of the film: just lying on the windowsill, basking in the sun, a tabby cat with three kittens. “When I saw her, I realized that we had survived,” says a St. Petersburg woman who was then only 12 years old.

Indigenous Leningrad cats actually do not exist, only a few survived. Those purrs that now live in St. Petersburg courtyards are the descendants of Yaroslavl guest workers brought to the city as part of the famous cat mobilizations. The first took place immediately after the blockade was broken on January 18, 1943. It was almost impossible to get a cat or a cat home then: when the brought Yaroslavl settlers were handed out to the population, huge queues lined up. They say that on the black market in January 1944 they gave 500 rubles for a kitten - ten times more expensive than a kilogram of bread!..

The second cat mobilization took place after the lifting of the blockade, to save the funds of the Hermitage and other Leningrad palaces and museums. This time the murk and leopard were recruited already in Siberia.

I must say that the cats also fought regularly against the fascist invaders. Among the legends of wartime there is a story about a ginger cat - "rumor". He nailed to an anti-aircraft battery near Leningrad and warned the soldiers about enemy raids, and did not react to Soviet planes. The command, which at first did not believe in this miracle, eventually became convinced of the accuracy of the feline forecasts and took the red-haired hero for allowance, assigning a special person to look after him …

So take care, dear citizens, cats. At least respect them. Do not treat them with disdain - in a difficult time, perhaps they will save your life!..

© Copyright: Sergey Voronin Aristarkh Graf, 2016