The Cats Who Guard the Hermitage

If you think that St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum is famous only for its great collections and masterpieces, you are
mistaken. It is a little known fact outside St. Petersburg that this city’s most
prestigious museum has the largest feline museum staff in the world – estimated at about a hundred souls.
It is their daily duty to
protect the Hermitage’s treasures from rats and other uneducated vermin who cannot tell the difference between a 15th
century tapestry and a husk of corn. The furry custodians have done such a fine
job that they enjoy the
protection of museum
officials and especially its
director, Professor Mikhail Piotrovsky.

It is believed that the first cats appeared at the royal palace under Empress Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great. At least first historical evidence dates to her time, when Elizabeth requisitioned 30 neutered cats from the governor-general of Kazan. Elizabeth, a beautiful woman obsessed with fashion, obviously had a need to protect her tremendous wardrobe from predators. The cats were sent to court and served the crown faithfully until the end of their days.

As far as the history of mice at the Hermitage is concerned, the first person who wrote about them was Catherine the Great. In her correspondence with Voltaire, the mighty empress once complained that the only admirers of the Hermitage treasures were herself and the mice.

Certainly, today’s feline inhabitants of the Hermitage basements and courtyards are not direct descendants of Elizabeth’s royal mousers. In the years of the Leningrad blockade, many cats died or left the city to escape starvation, and the Hermitage was no an exception. Cats appeared again in the museum only after the end of the Second World War.

“It smells like cats,” visitors commonly exclaim upon venturing into the Hermitage basements for the first time. To which museum staffers reply, “cats smell better
than rats.”

The cats regard the Hermitage basements and courtyards as their territory, particularly the basements, because they are heated.

Every museum workshop — restorers, joiners, electricians, plumbers and others — has its favorite cats. “They make us better than we are,” said a plumber. Cats are not allowed in the exhibition halls, however, but Hermitage workers speak of the legendarily elusive Maria Vasilievna, who liked to bear her kittens under the throne in the Throne Room and pestered museum security workers by setting off motion detectors.

In fact, cats are favored characters in the museum’s unwritten history. Each cat has its personal character, many their personal names. While traditional names (Masha, Vasily, Barsik, Murzik) prevail, only in the Hermitage could you meet a cat known as Van Dyck. She got her nickname because she got stuck in the ventilation duct of the Van Dyck room. “I’ve never heard such haunting cries before,” recalled a museum guard. It took several hours to rescue the howling cat.

Katerina, who lives near the director’s office, is named for Catherine the Great, who founded the Hermitage’s art collection.

Mus’ka (dimimutive of Maria), a lame mother-cat with a dozen kittens, showed uncommon persistence in fighting for her living space, slated to be destroyed during reconstruction of the museum’s entrance. Mus’ka never became reconciled with the new architecture, and left her “marks” in ticket-offices and even by the administrator’s desk. Thus did nature take vengeance on civilization.

Pirate, a big, great, one-eyed cat, lost his eye in a fight, and is deserving of T.S. Eliot’s poetic description: “a real fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.”

During the crisis years of perestroika, the Hermitage was in danger of becoming a shelter for cats. As many museum room guards are female
pensioners of very modest means, some brought their pets to the Hermitage, hoping that they would be better fed there. Still other employees brought sick and orphaned cats into the museum from the streets. As a result, the cat population multiplied. Something had to be done.

To begin with, most of the cats were sterilized and many were placed in new homes. But, even with lower numbers, the food problem remained; leftovers from the canteen were no longer enough to feed the cat army.

At that time, the Drawing Studio of the Hermitage School Center made an important contribution toward the cats’ social safety net.

Founded in 1957, the world famous Drawing Studio teaches art to about 100 children aged 5-11. About half have whiskered pets at home, so it was only natural that the children’s hearts were moved by the “cat issue.” One boy came up with the idea of a charity auction and was enthusiastically supported by the Studio’s director, Dr. Boris Kravchunas.

“Cats are most significant for children in a megalopolis,” Dr. Kravchunas said, “because for many little boys and girls, they are the only piece of nature around them. I found the idea of an auction very important, not only because of its moral significance, but also because it was another chance for the children to get in touch with nature through their creative work.”

Young participants prepared for the auction in earnest, creating feline-themed paintings and sculptures. The event took place at the end of 1997. Though the works were bought chiefly by the artist’s parents, the profit was spent on cat food and on a dinner-party in the basement. But this turned out to be just the
beginning…

On April 1, 1999 (April Fools Day during the Year of the Cat, according to the Chinese Zodiac) the Hermitage opened an extraordinary exhibition in the reading room of the museum’s Scientific Library. The one-day show was entitled “Cats: Friends of Science and Sensuality” and consisted of the young painters’ work of their own cats and those in the Hermitage basements. Actually, the title referred back to Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, or rather it is a line from Spleen et Idéal, LXVI. “Les Chats: Amis de la science et de la volupté…” It was the Hermitage’s first entirely philanthropic exhibition: visitors could place a donation in a cat-shaped box. The money gained was used to buy cat food and flea collars..

This youthful enterprise threw down a challenge to adult artists. As a result, on March 7, 2001, a special one-day show took place in a Hermitage basement. Two contemporary artists from St. Petersburg, Yuri Lukshin and Vera Pavlova, together with the Hermitage photographer Yuri Molodkovets, presented portraits of the museum’s feline protectors. It was a closed event for museum staff and mass-media (and the cats, who proved not to be easily frightened by camera flashes). This public relations blitz resonated in the city and attracted the attention of compassionate citizens eager to help the cats that help the Hermitage.

Today, the “cat problem” is under museum officials’ control. The cats have a “curator” and press-attaché: Maria Khaltunen, secretary to Director Mikhail Piotrovsky. In addition to the usual kitchen leftovers, the cats now receive a special monthly allowance from the staff. Every month on payday there appears at the director’s office an envelope with a whiskered muzzle drawn on it. Inside are the proceeds from the “cat tax” on staff, affixed at one ruble per person. Not a high fee, but, considering the number of staffers in this huge institution, it assures that the cat guards will be safe and comfortable. The money is not only spent on cat food, but also pays for visits by a veterinarian.

Petersburgers have gotten used to being proud of this unusual feature of their greatest museum’s life. And those who have adopted kittens from the Hermitage’s cellars do not miss an opportunity to mention the royal provenance of their pets.

“Cats,” said Kravchunas, “are like the Penates — Roman patron gods of the home and, especially, of storerooms.”

Indeed, the cats take care of the Hermitage and the museum takes care
of its cats.  RL