Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Since Hoodoo Cats are the official Strange Company mascots, I bring you this spooky tale from “The Head-Light,” April 9, 1886:

"What am I going to tell you," said Capt. Rockwell of the schooner Fame, "occurred about ten years ago on Lake Michigan. I was then in command of the schooner Gordon, and in the grain trade. One afternoon, just before we were ready to tow out of Chicago, a stranger came aboard with a big black cat in a rude cage and offered her for sale. I was born with a constitutional hatred of cats. On board of a grainer there are plenty of rats and mice, but I'd rather have the vermin running over me in my sleep than to keep a cat aboard, as many vessels do. Outside of my hatred for cats I didn't like the looks of the man. He was a rough-looking fellow, with a cock eye and two or three front teeth hanging out to windward, and if I'd have wanted someone to do a bit of dirty work I'd have picked this chap from among a thousand. I sent him off in a hurry, as you may guess, but as he reached the wharf he turned the cat loose and cried out: 

‘My curses on the ship and crew forever!' 

"The feline might have run into the elevator, but she didn't. She just scrambled right aboard of us, and in a whisk was out of sight down the main hatch. Some of the men looked a bit serious and some treated the matter as a joke, and just before night we were towed out and had a fair wind to lay our course. The hatches were all battened down, of course, and nobody seemed to have given a thought to the cat while getting out of the harbor. It was as fine a June night as you ever saw, with a moon so bright that you could see a vessel a mile away, and a breeze to send us along at about five miles an hour. 

"Well, we had made everything ship shape, and had supper, when the black cat was suddenly seen on the end of the jibboom. She was looking inboard at us, her hair on end and her eyes blazing. I brought up my revolver to have a shot at her, but just as I was about to pull trigger, the cat yeowled out in a dismal manner, and down came the peak of the mainsail, the halyards showing as if they had been cut clean across with a sharp knife. They were new, stout ropes, and nobody could say they had been broken by any sudden strain. We had to reeve new ones, and when this job was finished I went forward to put a bullet through that cat's head. She set up a dismal yeowling, and as I pulled the trigger down came the whole foresail, both throat and peak halyards having parted. I hoped I had killed the black witch, but when the smoke lifted we saw her in the same place, safe and sound. Every man aboard agreed that the halyards had been cut with a knife, and as the men passed them from hand to hand they began to mutter against me for trying to bring about a calamity by seeking the cat's life. 

"By the time we had the foresail up again the cat had disappeared, going no one knew whither, and the weather had suddenly changed until the moon was overcast and the breeze was a third stronger. I never saw that craft steer as she did that night. She'd yaw and swing, and go wild, in spite of all the best sailor aboard could do. By the time we were off Waukegan there was a smart sea on and a nasty look all around. The wind gradually hauled into the northeast, and we had to go in stays and make long boards dead to the east, and then make our gain on the other leg as we ran to the northwest. Every time we went in stays the schooner acted like a balky colt, just barely keeping us out of irons, and the ugly cross sea banged her about until everything groaned. We were about to go in stays for our board to the northwest, and the men were aloft to care for the topsails, when the Gordon slipped into a hollow and rolled port and starboard like a stuck whale trying to get rid of a harpoon. There was a loud squall from the cat, which creature, it appears, was in the mainmast crosstrees, a terrible scream from the sailor, and as the Gordon rolled to starboard he was flung clear of her side by thirty feet and went down like a stone. 

"By this time the crew were so worked up that nobody would turn in, and every man seemed to be momentarily expecting some new disaster. It came before midnight. The wind hauled dead to the north and grew stronger, and when we came about from a run to the northwest the Gordon missed her slays, was taken flat aback, and several calamities followed. Three or four seas boarded us and swept the decks, the foreboom jibed and crushed a sailor's skull, and jib and outer jib whipped loose, and went sailing away with the wind.  We came within an ace of being dismasted, for the men cowered down in abject terror, and the mate and myself had the whole work on our hands. We finally got her head off and ratched away for the Michigan shore, but before daylight we sprang a leak, and we made Grand Haven only by the skin of our teeth, with our cargo damaged more than $3,000. From an hour past midnight to broad daylight that infernal cat kept up a steady walk between the two masts on the triantic stay, and now and then she would utter a yell which brought all our hair on end.

"Taken altogether we suffered a loss of over $4,000 and lost a life, and it was all on account of that cockeyed man and his black cat. No sooner had we got into port than everybody except the mate ran away, and the cat leaped to the dock with a farewell yeowl and took refuge in a pile of lumber. The story of our mishaps got noised around, and the Gordon had to be laid up for the rest of the season for want of men to work her."

You see what happens when you’re not nice to kitty?