Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 297, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 December 1910 — CAT IS DRUG FIEND [ARTICLE]

CAT IS DRUG FIEND

Savannah Tabby Sent to New York for Treatment. Animal, Owned by Druggist, Contracts Morphine Habit in Storo and Seeks Bottle Where Opiate Is Kept. New York.—When the Savannah Line steamship City of Montgomery arrived here the other day from Savannah, Ga., she brought a most remarkable passenger to New York in the shape of a valuable Persian cat that has been credited in the dispatches from Savannah as being a confirmed morphine fiend. The Persian cat is the property of a druggist in Savannah named Rollinsky, a man prominent in the southern city, and he sent his pet Persian to New for treatment by specialists in the hope that the cat may be cured of the morphine habit.

Some months ago the cat sniffed at some morphine, powdered, that was being used in a prescription in Mr. Rollinsky’s pharmacy. The animal acted peculiarly after that, and was constantly on the shelf on which the brownish bottle containing the drug stood. Several times Mr. Rollinsky found the morphine bottle open w r ith thb powder scattered about, and each time the cat acted ill, the same manner that a human being acts when under the influence of the opiate. The morphine-stricken feline was taken on board the Savannah liner by Mr. Heaton, the druggist’s assistant, and placed in a room on the City of Montgomery. There were many persons on the pier at Savannah to see the cat leave for New York, for tabby’s fame had spread throughout the southern city, and it was considered very much of a local celebrity. No provision had been made for morphine on board the the steamship, and the cat, frenzied because of the absence of the drug, made its escape from the cabin in which it had been placed and leaped overboard into the Savannah river. There was a thrilling rescue, and the Persian tabby was placed again in the room that had been preserved for it and for Mr. Heaton after much correspondence with the Savannah lino officials, and securely locked up. It was placed under a small allowance of the drug, and this was confirmed upon the arrival of the City of Montgomery, when the cat was taken, in fairly good shape, to a cat hospital in West Fifty-third street. So well known is the cat in Savannah that there was much opposition to its being taken away. Mr. Heaton watched tenderly over the four-footed passenger and superintended the transfer to the cat hospital. While Mr. Heaton would not commit himself without first having consulted the veterinaries, he said he thought the treatment of the cat would be about the same as that given a human being under similar circumstances. By degrees the allowance of morphine will be discontinued and remedies administered that will cause the unnatural craving for the drug to disappear.