Some previous tales about cats and other animals, and also some of the history of the Dublin Underground Railway (with acknowledgments to Miles Kington), appeared on this thread BS: The Naming of Cats which was dedicated to the asylum seeker from Llanstock known as Loki. In the meantime Liz the Squeak has provided a home to Max and Amber, who have by now hopefully made peace with Shadow; so to Amber and Max - a belated welcome to the Mudcat community.
In spite of the thread title this first story involves five cats, but maths never was a strong point!
Sister Serena's Celebrated Singing Siamese Cats
Dublin has always had its share of "characters" or eccentrics, from blind Zozimus to Shane McGowan in our own day, and in the drab days of the 1930's there was Sister Serena who gave the town something to talk about. It was a moot point as to whether she had actually ever been in an Order, and given that she lived in a dilapidated old house in the former red light district there was naturally gossip that she had belonged to a different kind of sisterhood altogether. Be that as it may she dressed herself in a sort of nun's habit and wandered the streets singing mainly sentimental and pious ballads. Although she appeared to be quite elderly she had a powerful voice which could be clearly heard across the Liffey.
After a while people began to notice that she was always being followed by a small posse of stray cats. It appeared that her home had become a sort of refuge for abandoned and semi-feral cats, some of whom now took to accompanying her on her travels around the town. The fishmongers on the quays were happy to offer her their scraps to feed her growing family.
One day she appeared in O'Connell Street with five new feline followers; a family of elegant Siamese kittens who had apparently been ejected from their home in Mountjoy Square owing to doubts about their paternity. They struggled to keep up with her as she roamed the streets until some kind soul donated a battered old perambulator. In the following months it became one of the spectacles of Dublin to see this ageing nun pushing a pram containing a handful of yowling kittens. Some observers noticed that the sounds produced by the Siamese quintet were almost musical, and after a while it was evident that the cats were indeed accompanying her singing after a fashion. Sister Serena's rendition of The Harp that once through Tara's halls soon became famous for the added effects provided by the more or less harmonious mewling.
All went well until one day Sister Serena took a trip on the Dublin Underground Railway. An officious conductor examined her ticket and demanded payment for the cats at the standard livestock rate of one halfpenny per head. Serena exploded in ire (using some extremely unsisterly language), and contended that the cats were in fact musical instruments, and as such entitled to free carriage as per the Regulations of the Railway. The row attracted the attention of the passengers in the next-door writers and artists carriage, and the conductor was obliged to beat a retreat in the face of determined opposition from the cultural élite.
Nevertheless when Mr. Lawrence H. Corner, the Managing Director of the Railway, heard of the incident next day he decided to pursue the matter. He had visions of his beloved Railway being overwhelmed by cows and horses on the way to market driven by smart aleck young countrymen all claiming that their animals could sing. He promptly served a writ on Sister Serena for fraudulent misuse of the Railway's facilities, and claiming damages of £100 in addition to unpaid fares of twopence-halfpenny.
The ensuing court case attracted a full house. The young barrister who had taken on Serena's case on a pro bono basis won great applause for his learned arguments in favour of regarding the voice as a musical instrument. However it was generally felt that his extension of this plea to include the voices of animals lacked sufficient foundation, so that the jury had no choice but to find against Sister Serena. They indicated their feelings however by awarding damages of one farthing to the Railway, and furthermore contributed the cost of the damages and the fine out of their own pockets.
This explains why the Regulations of the Railway, as amended in 1935, contain the curious sub-clause: "Under no circumstances may livestock (as defined in Section 5 vii) be treated as a musical instrument."