Cats with Jobs

Posted by Jennifer Copley May 29, 2008

With the shift from to an information-based economy, some cats are finding other types of gainful employment as seeing-eye or therapy cats, while others have landed more unusual positions.

Tama, a tortoiseshell cat in Japan who has been given the job of stationmaster at the Kishigawa Line’s Kishi Station in order to save on personnel costs. Tama wears a uniform cap and badge hanging from her collar, and observes passengers heading for the train. The daughter of a stray, Tama was hired as stationmaster in 2007, and since her appointment, there has been a 17% increase in the number of passengers.

Tama has since been promoted to the position of super-stationmaster for saving the railway line, which was losing money before her appointment. Tama currently holds the fifth-highest managerial position in the railway company.

Tama isn’t the only working cat, however. In 2007, the Associated Press reported that a Columbian police unit has been using cat-and-rat teams to find and remove landmines. Landmines, a serious problem in Columbia, killed or injured more than a thousand people in 2006, many of them children. Too light to trigger explosions, rats are capable of sniffing out landmines planted by leftist rebels, and can be trained to freeze in order to alert police to the landmine’s presence. But rats are so scared of predators that they have trouble staying still. This is where cats come in. When a kitten and a baby rat are raised together, their interactive play and friendship reduces the rat’s fears of predation, which makes for a calmer, more effective landmine-detecting rat. Cats in the program wear claw shields to prevent them from injuring their rat companions while playing.

Other cat jobs have included prison therapy provider and circus performer.