Mike

Mike was the official cat of the British Museum in London for two decades, and on his death in 1929 he was given something almost no cat receives: a published obituary, written by the celebrated Egyptologist Sir Ernest Wallis Budge. Mike arrived at the museum gates as a kitten around 1909, brought there by another museum cat called Black Jack, and was promptly adopted by the staff. He took up a self-appointed post at the front gates, where he supervised comings and goings, kept the pigeons in check (while, by some accounts, declining to actually harm them), and accepted tributes of food from the museum's keepers and even the local policemen. Budge and the gatekeeper saw to it that Mike was fed choice cuts through the lean years of the First World War. By the time he died, Mike was famous enough that his passing was reported in the press, and Budge's affectionate memorial — describing how Mike disliked dogs, women, and strangers but tolerated a chosen few — preserved his memory for posterity.