On April 14, 1912, one of the greatest tragedies in the ocean took place, as the ocean liner Titanic crashed into an iceberg, an accident that took the lives of thousands of people. What many people don’t know is that besides the 2240 people that were on board the Titanic, dozens of pets were also taking the historically cursed journey.,
As happened with the human passengers, few of these animals were saved, such as the case of Jenny, the kitten. Far from what you may think, this cat did not survive thanks to the rescuers, but due to her own instinct, some believe that she even predicted the sinking of the ship, which is why she became a legend.
The Titanic’s resident feline, who joined the ship when it was still in Belfast, did not receive the same first-class treatment as the canine passengers who boarded the liner with their owners. Instead, Jenny was a ship’s cat, meaning she was allowed to roam the decks freely to help keep the rat population under control.
With no one to smuggle her into a lifeboat, the cat never showed up after the ship sank in the Atlantic. A woman who made it out alive named Violet Jessop reported that the cat gave birth to a litter of kittens in early April 1912, before the Titanic departed for New York. Once aboard the ship, Jenny claimed a cozy corner of the galley where she and her newborns were cared for by an Irish stoker named Joseph Mulholland.
The surprising thing was that at one of the stops the ship made before it sank, the cat made the decision to get off with all her kittens and refused to get back on board the Titanic, so Mulholland took it as an omen and also got off, thus managing to save his life.
It is not really known what happened to both of them afterward, but, according to the legend, thanks to that “hunch” Jenny, her kittens, and Joseph Mulholland were saved from drowning.
Story originally published in Spanish in Cultura Colectiva