He was sure he had heard a cat somewhere nearby in the otherwise silent village. Nikolai was doubtful: cats are not known for obeying orders. They traced the cat to the basement of a bombed-out house, and she proved to be a thin, nervous, wretched-looking thing; but a bit of sausage worked wonders, and before long Piotr, murmuring reassurances, had tied the telephone line onto her like a harness. ‘Pop her into the pipe at this end,’ he told Nikolai, ‘and I’ll go to the next manhole and tempt her with sausage.’ It took a lot of sausage, but it worked. Soon the line was laid, and the Germans none the wiser.
Senior Lieutenant Zaitsev, the battery commander, listened impassively to their report. After testing the line, he ordered them to enrol the cat in the Soviet Army, and issue her rations. ‘What is her name?’ he asked, now with a hint of a smile.
‘I don’t know’ Piotr admitted. ‘She’s a stray.’
‘Well, you recruited and trained her’ said the Lieutenant. ‘You’d better name her too.’
Perhaps thinking of Britain’s recent raids in support of the USSR’s northwest front,* Piotr said ‘Let’s call her Miss, in honour of the English.’ Everyone seemed happy with this, including Miss, who declared herself ready to draw her first rations.
Based on an account entitled ‘Guerilla Cat’ written by Ovadi Savich (1896-1967), and collected in “Russians Tell the Story: Sketches of the War on the Soviet-German Front from ‘Soviet War News’” (1944), edited by Nikander Strelsky (1893-1946) and his wife Katherine.
* On July 30th, 1941, the aircraft carriers HMS Victorious and HMS Furious began attacks on the port of Kirkenes in Norway’s far north, and the nearby Finnish port of Liinakhamari in Petsamo. Operation EF, as it was dubbed, was not a success, but it showed London’s awareness of their new ally, who had asked them to do what they could to prevent the important Russian port of Murmansk from falling into enemy hands.