It’s no secret — cats hate water. Which is why the arrival of a small calico cat with salt-crusted fur on Governors Island three weeks ago is such a mystery to the staff of the 172-acre park in the middle of New York Harbor.
“We think maybe she was a stowaway on a ferry or another vehicle that came to the island,” says Elizabeth Rapuano, the director of marketing ad communication for the island who’s been blogging about the castaway kitty on govislandblog.com.
“Our security guards found her on their rounds after a weekend storm, and we’ve been trying to locate her owners ever since.”
The Governors Island staff had the 8-pound cat scanned for a microchip, but she had none.
Once the first blog post went up, Rapuano and her team received e-mails from people willing to adopt the cat, and a few from people who thought she might be their lost pet. “After talking with us, or going back to look at her photo, they realized it wasn’t their cat after all,” says Rapuano, who’s intentionally vague about any screening questions she asks possible owners, so as not to tip off pet-parent imposters.
By now, the security guards, boat crew and office staff have all fallen in love with the anonymous puss — as have blog followers. When the staff invited readers to suggest and vote on the kitty’s name, they got more than 3,000 responses, including Salty, Mary Ann and Ginger (think “Gilligan’s Island”), along with Buttermilk (the name of the channel that separates the island from Brooklyn) and the winning name, which was announced Friday:
Molly Brown, for the famously unsinkable Titanic passenger.
With no sign of her original owners, Molly Brown is likely to be the island’s most popular attraction when it opens for the season in two weeks. Though the island isn’t in the habit of hosting animals except when they’re part of exhibits, “and that one time two years ago when a deer swam over from Jersey City,” Rapuano says, the sweet-natured cat “has a happy home here for as long as she wants.”
“She’ll be here to greet visitors,” says Rapuano. “She’s won over the hearts of so many people already, and she’s a joy to have around.”