This story was found on the Internet and its author, unfortunately, is not known.
“My grandmother always said that my mother, and I, her daughter, survived the severe blockade and hunger only thanks to our cat Vaska. If it were not for this red-headed bully, my daughter and I would have died of hunger like many others.
Every day Vaska went hunting and dragged mice or even a big fat rat. My grandmother gutted mice and cooked stew from them. And the rat made a good goulash.
At the same time, the cat always sat nearby and waited for food, and at night all three lay under one blanket and he warmed them with his warmth.
He felt the bombing much earlier than the air raid was announced, began to spin and meow plaintively, grandmother managed to collect things, water, mother, cat and run out of the house. When they fled to the shelter, as a family member, they dragged him with them and watched him not to be taken away and eaten.
The hunger was terrible. Vaska was hungry as everyone else and skinny. All winter until spring, my grandmother collected crumbs for the birds, and from spring they went hunting with the cat. Grandmother poured crumbs and sat with Vaska in ambush, his jump was always surprisingly accurate and fast. Vaska was starving with us and he didn't have enough strength to keep the bird. He grabbed a bird, and grandmother ran out of the bushes and helped him. So from spring to autumn, they also ate birds.
When the blockade was lifted and more food appeared, and even after the war, my grandmother always gave the best piece to the cat. She stroked him affectionately, saying - you are our breadwinner.
Vaska died in 1949, his grandmother buried him in the cemetery, and, so that the grave would not be trampled, put a cross and wrote Vasily Bugrov. Then my mother put my grandmother next to the cat, and then I buried my mother there too. So all three lie behind the same fence, as they once did in the war under one blanket."
Monuments to Leningrad cats
On Malaya Sadovaya Street, which is located in the historical center of St. Petersburg, there are two small, inconspicuous, at first glance, monuments: the cat Elisha and the cat Vasilisa. Visitors to the city, walking along Malaya Sadovaya, will not even notice them, admiring the architecture of the Eliseevsky store, a fountain with a granite ball and the composition “street photographer with a bulldog”, but observant travelers can easily find them.
The cat Vasilisa is located on the cornice of the second floor of house No. 3 on Malaya Sadovaya. Small and graceful, her front paw slightly bent and her tail raised, she coquettishly looks up. Opposite her, at the corner of house number 8, the cat Elisha sits importantly, watching the people walking below. Elisha appeared here on January 25, and Vasilisa on April 1, 2000. The author of the idea is the historian Sergei Lebedev, who is already known to Petersburgers for the boring monuments to the Lamplighter and the Bunny. The sculptor Vladimir Petrovichev was commissioned to cast the cats from bronze.
Petersburgers have several versions of the "settlement" of cats on Malaya Sadovaya. Some believe that Elisha and Vasilisa are the next characters to decorate St. Petersburg. More thoughtful townspeople see cats as a symbol of gratitude to these animals as human companions from time immemorial.
However, the most plausible and dramatic version is closely related to the history of the city. During the blockade of Leningrad, not a single cat remained in the besieged city, which led to an invasion of rats that ate the last food supplies. Cats were instructed to fight pests, which were brought from Yaroslavl specifically for this purpose. The Meowing Division has done its job.
Nowadays, enterprising Petersburgers have added "charm" to monuments. According to urban belief, if you toss a coin and it lands next to a cat or a cat, you will catch your luck "by the tail."
