From Mr Puss on the First Fleet to Sergeant Smokey the feline digger: Tales from a ‘cat historian'

Sydney Morning Herald

3 days ago

This story is part of the August 9 edition of Good Weekend. See all 13 stories.
During World War II, one of Australia's patriotic local celebrities was Sergeant Smokey, often pictured wearing a Digger's uniform and hat, with a gas mask slung around his neck. He raised thousands of pounds for the Australian Comforts Fund to provide treasured little extras for soldiers fighting overseas by posing with visitors for paid photos. There was only one thing strange about Sergeant Smokey: he was a cat.
It's just one of the myriad ways felines have figured throughout our nation's history. Yet while we talk up the contribution of dogs, particularly working dogs, in helping to build our country, along with brumbies, goats, donkeys, camels and domesticated horses, cats have never managed to claw much of a mention.
And that's a major omission, says the woman billed as Australia's first cat historian. 'We have a very complicated relationship with cats here,' says Jodie Stewart, a researcher who's writing the country's first cultural history of cats, with one of her two moggies, Poppy, curled up by her side. 'There's so much ­written about dogs, but we've always had a relationship with cats and there's never much been written about them.'
Whether revered or reviled, cats have been purring by our sides from the earliest colonial times to today's heady heights, with photos and videos of them dominating the internet, explains Stewart. 'Their history has a real richness and depth to it, from heroism to hate. People like talking about the need for containment and the threat they pose to wildlife, but there's an awful lot more to them, and their relationship with us, than that.'
Stewart, 49, lives in the NSW Bega Valley with her partner, who works in a cheese fac­tory, of 27 years. She has dark hair framing an earnest face, a ready smile, and an excellent line in clothing featuring cats. While she grew up a dog lover (her grandfather had labradors), she switched affections when the youngest of her two daughters, Téah, 23, brought home a stray cat that instantly bonded with her. When she finished her PhD, on non-­Indigenous responses to Aboriginal history, she gravitated towards studying cats. Stewart's exhaustive research will result in a book on the history of cats in Australia being published next April.
'Their history has a real richness and depth to it, from heroism to hate.'
'It might seem odd,' she says. 'But I have always been interested in the stories we tell about ourselves, and how these stories shape our identity and understanding of people and place. I want to produce a feline history that might generate more nuanced understandings of our human-feline past. It is so complex and is proving a wonderful field to study.'
Today, there are more than 11 million cats in Australia, according to the Invasive Species Council, with up to 6 million of those living as ferals. Household cats number 5.3 million, and they're the second most popular pet after dogs.
It's been a stellar surge in the 237 years since the first two cats arrived with the First Fleet in 1788. Back then, Mr Tom Puss and Miss Puss were brought over by the colony's chaplain Richard Johnson on the store ship, the Golden Grove. 'I'd always assumed they were ratters, but they were actually companion animals,' Stewart says. 'It really shows how much we all loved cats from the very beginning.'
It wasn't too long after that Matthew Flinders' cat, Trim, stole the limelight as the country's most famous feline, accompanying the navigator and cartographer on voyages around the Australian coastline from 1801 to 1803. A year later Trim vanished, feared eaten by a hungry slave during Flinders' incarceration on the island of Mauritius.
Many believed Asian cats might have ­arrived in the country earlier, brought here by Malaysian fishermen to northern Australia. However, Stewart found two research projects – one conducted in Frankfurt and the other at Queensland's Murdoch University – which charted the genomic markers of the current cat population. Both found the country's cats were descended from European ones, which arrived during settlement and spread rapidly.
The numbers were supplemented by those from the many trading vessels that later called into Sydney with cats on board to help eradicate rats, which were a constant threat to food supplies and ropes. From the 1820s, stray cats turned feral and, being prolific breeders, their numbers skyrocketed. They were still valued for helping to keep down the number of rats, mice and snakes (one cat was acclaimed for killing 35 snakes in one day), as well as rabbits, after settler Thomas Austin released 13 of them for hunting purposes at his Barwon Park estate in Victoria in 1859 (after which rabbit numbers shot up).
After Stewart fell head-over-heels for Poppy, she found she adored studying the lives of all cats and it became a labour of love. 'During the 2019-20 bushfires and then COVID, Poppy became my little shadow and would curl up in bed with me,' she says. 'I'd never felt a love like it; it was profound. She fundamentally changed my life. I have two dogs, too, a staffy called Toby and a bulldog, Luna, but with dogs, it's a very different type of love.'
Stewart found many of our best writers shared a love of cats. Henry Lawson wrote the short story Bush Cats in 1894 and Banjo Paterson penned an essay, The Cat, in The Bulletin in 1902. 'Most people think that the cat is an unintelligent animal, fond of ease, and caring little for anything but mice and milk,' Paterson wrote. 'But a cat has really more character than most human beings, and gets a great deal more satisfaction out of life.' Much later, author Ruth Park wrote a children's book, The Ship's Cat, in 1961.
But it was during the world wars that our furry friends wriggled their way into the ­nation's heart, says Stewart. 'By 1915, they'd become a fairly permanent part of our cities. The Australian print media became fascinated by them from that time. There were so many stories about cat oddities, like the cat Boots, who regularly swam at Sydney's Watsons Bay, and Tiny Tim, who ate ice-cream at the ­general store at Balmoral Beach. There were cats ­living in the trenches with 'our boys' … and veterans being cared for in convalescent homes with cats to bring them comfort.'
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Nadia Crighton, spokesperson for Pet Insurance Australia, understands why. 'Research shows that cats can really provide emotional support,' she says. 'They often get unfairly labelled as aloof or solitary, especially compared to dogs, but any true cat person knows these incredible animals form deep bonds with their humans. Simply having a cat in the home can reduce stress, lower blood pressure and provide comfort, ­especially through tough times like lockdowns. They're emotional anchors.'
Those cuddly companions have also played an important part in advertising and popular culture, Stewart notes – some say those cute cat videos spurred the social-media explosion. They've even been associated with sport, with star cricketer Don Bradman's cat displayed to the world in 1930 balancing on his tennis racquet, and Oli the cat known as a much-celebrated crew member of a yacht competing in the 2024 Sydney to Hobart.
But there is a dark side. Cats that are allowed to roam free are condemned for their effect on wildlife. John Wamsley, founder of Australia's first listed conservation company, Earth Sanctuaries, famously wore a hat made from the pelt of a feral cat to the 1991 South Australian tourism awards to protest their role in biodiversity loss.
'Bringing [cats to Australia] was just one of the worst environmental blunders we've ever made … [for] the majority of our wildlife.'
John Wamsley, founder of conservation company Earth Sanctuaries
It's no secret where the loyalties of historian Guy Hull, author of The Dogs That Made Australia and The Ferals that Ate Australia, lie. When he's told there's a book coming out on cats' contribution to Australia, he ­guffaws. 'Bringing them [to Australia] was just one of the worst environmental blunders we've ever made,' he says. 'They're all over the world, but the problem in Australia is that the majority of our wildlife is ­nocturnal, ground-dwelling and small, and they're completely ­unable to defend themselves against an alien predator.' While he doesn't mind domestic cats kept indoors or in enclosed cat runs in gardens, he'd like to see the CSIRO come up with something like myxomatosis to kill feral cats.
RSPCA Victoria recently launched a campaign to persuade cat owners to keep their pets inside. It says two in three cat owners have lost a pet from a roaming-­related incident and that letting cats wander outside results in a 300 per cent increased risk of death and a 400 per cent increase in vet bills and visits, reducing a feline's life by 10 years.
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TV vet Dr Katrina Warren supports the RSPCA's campaign. 'We know about the ­devastating effect on wildlife, with estimates that the average outdoor cat kills at least three Australian animals a week, which adds up to many millions each year – but many people still talk about a cat's right to roam,' says Warren, who has a giant Maine Coon called King Leo. 'That's nonsense. We don't let dogs or children roam, so why cats? But we are seeing that attitude slowly changing, and more people confining cats to their own property, with regulations in different parts of the country, such as in the ACT, forbidding cats from roaming.'
The fact they kill so many native animals is a major challenge for Stewart in writing her book, she says. They're a species that can ­excite hatred – she's become used to people ­telling her that the only good cat is a dead cat. 'We've had such a long, complicated relationship with cats, but it is important to address that richness and depth and our history ­together,' says Stewart.
'I've not always been a cat lover, but they can really grow on you. I remember, as a child, my mother telling me that her cat was talking to her in 'cat', and cats do give us so much ­companionship, love, healing and comic relief. They deserve their place in history.'