Post by Dave Homewood on Apr 4, 2024 20:05:28 GMT 12
I am really surprised to read that a cat lived for a year at Scott Base! I am sure that would never be allowed now. From The Press, 14th of November 1959:
ANTARCTIC CAT MISSING
Igy At Large In Christchurch
Igy has disappeared. She spent a year in Antarctica as the only female at Scott Base — in fact the only representative of her species on the entire continent — only to be lost on her return to Christchurch.
Igy is a cat. She was taken to McMurdo Sound inside the flying jacket of an American pilot, but was immediately ordered to be deported. Luckily for Igy, who was faced with a long, humiliating flight back to Christchurch, some of the New Zealanders from nearby Scott Base decided that there was room for her in their comfortable quarters.
Named after the initial letters of the International Geophysical Year, Igy was allotted her own quarters on top of the piano where she kept her collection of pieces of twine, matchboxes and scraps of paper. She grew from a tiny kitten to a middling-sized tabby cat without ever knowing the feline joys of chasing mice.
Igy found her consolation in the fact that she was a universal favourite — and that her traditional enemies, dogs, were securely tethered to a long wire out on the bay ice.
She rarely stepped outside the door and seemed quite contented to sit on the ledge of a double-glass window high in the wall and gaze out over the snow.
Last week the Scott Base team decided that Igy had spent long enough in isolation, so Peter Phillips, the radio operator, brought her back with him to New Zealand when he returned. Igy arrived in Christchurch and spent her first afternoon walking over the unfamiliar grass and smelling the strange new smells. Then she disappeared— and has not been seen since.
ANTARCTIC CAT MISSING
Igy At Large In Christchurch
Igy has disappeared. She spent a year in Antarctica as the only female at Scott Base — in fact the only representative of her species on the entire continent — only to be lost on her return to Christchurch.
Igy is a cat. She was taken to McMurdo Sound inside the flying jacket of an American pilot, but was immediately ordered to be deported. Luckily for Igy, who was faced with a long, humiliating flight back to Christchurch, some of the New Zealanders from nearby Scott Base decided that there was room for her in their comfortable quarters.
Named after the initial letters of the International Geophysical Year, Igy was allotted her own quarters on top of the piano where she kept her collection of pieces of twine, matchboxes and scraps of paper. She grew from a tiny kitten to a middling-sized tabby cat without ever knowing the feline joys of chasing mice.
Igy found her consolation in the fact that she was a universal favourite — and that her traditional enemies, dogs, were securely tethered to a long wire out on the bay ice.
She rarely stepped outside the door and seemed quite contented to sit on the ledge of a double-glass window high in the wall and gaze out over the snow.
Last week the Scott Base team decided that Igy had spent long enough in isolation, so Peter Phillips, the radio operator, brought her back with him to New Zealand when he returned. Igy arrived in Christchurch and spent her first afternoon walking over the unfamiliar grass and smelling the strange new smells. Then she disappeared— and has not been seen since.
