Someone always has to be the best. This holds true for cats as well as for humans, as Towser the Mouser demonstrated.
Towser was the distillery cat for Glenturret, a Scottish whisky maker. She worked from 1963 until 1987, and in her time she killed 28,899 mice.
This is an estimate… but it is a fairly scientific one. The number was calculated by Guinness Book researchers who observed Towser’s morning output over an extended period of time, and extrapolated the remaining numbers.
Towser first came to their attention because of her efficiency. She would not merely kill mice, but carry the bodies to a specific area of the floor where the person who supervised the stills would find them every morning. The workers noticed the prolific mousing skills of the cat who had jumped into action on her first night and had never appreciably slowed down.
When the Guinness people verified her output over the course of months, they found she averaged three kills per night. Her long life allowed her to pad the total into a record which has never been broken.
Towser had a statue erected in her honor near the distillery and many of the bottle labels from Glenturret have pawprint images in her honor.
In 2017, they even released a limited-edition whiskey named for Towser. They’d done such things before… for actors Ewan McGregor and Gerard Butler, for tennis great Andy Murray and for the Earl and Countess of Strathern. Never, previously, for a cat. It is assumed that they have a lot of pride in their record-holding former employee.
It can be hard following in the footsteps of a legend, though. This simple truism was demonstrated after Towser’s death. The next cat brought in as the distillery protector was a friendly cat named Amber….
… who, during her tenure with the company, never caught a single mouse.
Question of the night: straight, rocks, part of a mixed drink, diluted, enrobed in chocolate or in a cake, how do you prefer your whiskey?
