Simon (cat)

In March 1948, seventeen- year- old junior sailor George Hickinbottom, a crew member of the British HMS Amethyst patrol ship, found Simon in Hong Kong shipyards. At that time, Simon was about one year old, he was sick and very exhausted. Hickinbottom secretly took the cat aboard the ship. Thanks to his good ability to catch and kill rats, which swarmed the lower decks, Simon very quickly earned the trust of the team. The cat became famous for its tricks: he brought the dead rats to the sailors in bunks and often settled for the night in a captain's cap. The team considered Simon the mascot of the ship.

At the end of 1948, Jan Griffiths, the former captain of the ship, handed the cat over to his successor, Bernard Skinner, who immediately liked the friendly cat. Skinner's first mission aboard the Amethyst was to go up the Yangtze River to Nanjing to replace the HMS Consort patrol ship. Halfway up the river, Chinese Communist batteries opened fire on a patrol ship (historians would later call this an “incident on the Yangtze River” ). One of the first salvos pierced the captain’s cabin through, killing Skinner and seriously injuring Simon.

A seriously wounded cat crawled out onto the deck. The sailors saw him and immediately brought him to the ship’s infirmary. In the infirmary, the doctors who survived the shelling gave him first aid. Simon was covered in burns and shrapnel wounds. The burns were processed, and four shrapnel bullets were removed from the body. Few people thought that he could stretch at least until the morning. However, the cat survived and even returned to his duties, although the new Amethyst captain did not really like Simon. When the ship approached the river bank, hordes of rats rushed aboard. Simon energetically set to work on their destruction. He also visited the ship’s infirmary. At the sight of a cat, even very young sailors understood that a wound was not a reason to lose heart.

Fame came to Simon immediately after the return of the ship from the river. They wrote about him in the news not only in Britain, but also around the world. He was awarded the Maria Dikin Medal (“ Victoria Cross for Animals”), the Blue Cross medal, the Amethyst medal, and even received the unusual title of “Cat - an excellent pupil of maritime service”. Simon received so many letters that the Amethyst officer, who was tasked with responding to these letters, had to be relieved of all other duties. Simon was received with honor at every port where the Amethyst stopped on the way home, but he received a particularly warm welcome in November, when the ship returned to Plymouth . However, like all animals brought into the UK, Simon was quarantined, and he spent some time in an animal shelter in Surrey .

At the shelter, Simon contracted a viral infection. Injuries exacerbated her course, and despite the care of veterinarians and thousands of fans, Simon died on November 28, 1949 . Hundreds of people, including the entire HMS Amethyst team, attended Simon’s funeral in Ilford , east London.

The inscription is carved on its headstone:

In 1950, P. Gallico wrote the story "Jenny" in memory of Simon.

• Unsinkable Sam

• Britain honors the memory of a cat hero
• Famous cats
• Cat of war (Online edition of The Hindu - India's National Newspaper )
• Simon, (a cat) of HMS "Amethyst" , awarded the Dickin Medal
• A photo of Simon
• Wartime hero cat Simon remembered
• The Friends of the Four Ships forum for veterans of HMS “Amethyst”, “Consort”, “London” and “Black Swan”