Dive Brief:
- Cats, and their role as mouse-killing guardians of the grains used in whiskey production, are celebrated in two recent media pieces.
- Punch magazine and NPR have produced pieces that celebrate the storied history of famous felines such as Towser the Mouser of the Glenturret Distillery in Scotland (he holds the Guinness World Record for mice killing) and Peat the kitten, the most recent cat to serve at Glenturret.
- The use of distillery cats is no longer needed in an era of food safety and modern technology, but the cats are still popular and are being adopted by small, next-generation distilleries here in the States.
Dive Insight:
Both the Punch and NPR pieces are worth your time if you're a) a cat person, b) a whiskey person, or c) just a fan of fun stories. But first — and we hate to be the ones to tell you this — you should know that just hours before the NPR piece first aired, Peat the kitten was apparently struck and killed by a vehicle outside the distillery.