In the early days of the republic, several U.S. presidents kept birds as pets. Martha Washington had a pet parrot and George is said to have hated the bird. Perhaps it chewed up his wooden teeth. Thomas Jefferson kept mockingbirds during his presidency. Dolly Madison owned a parrot. During the War of 1812, when the burning of the White House was taking place, she made sure that her parrot was rescued.
One presidential bird never made it to the White House, but had the last word anyway. It is said that before he was inaugurated, Andrew Jackson bought his wife a parrot. The wife died, the parrot lived on and stayed in Tennessee, eventually outliving even the President. There is a story that the bird was taken to Jackson's funeral, where it interrupted the ceremony with a string of profanity.
And, Teddy Roosevelt's son had a Hyacinth Macaw.
But, the twentieth century has seen a flood of dogs and cats taking the place of presidential feathered compatriots. Potential candidates in the year 2000 may want to adopt a cat, suggests an educator who has made an informal study of America's "first pets." "Cat owners will probably find better success at the polls than dog owners, just as President Clinton defeated George Bush and Senator Dole, both of whom are dog owners," said Franklin M. Loew, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University.
Loew's research determined that the first White House cat belonged to Abraham Lincoln. Rutherford B. Hayes had a Siamese cat and President McKinley had an Angora. Woodrow Wilson had a cat and so did John Kennedy. There have been cats in and out of the White House, but dogs have usually been construed as the great American presidential animal. Until five years ago, that is, when cats in the United States exceeded the number of dogs for the first time in history. There are now about 55 or 60 million cats in the United States compared with about 50 or 55 million dogs.
"The reason cats have now gone past dogs has to do with human lifestyles," Loew commented. "Many people now want to be able to decide on a Thursday or Friday to go away for the weekend and a cat is much easier to leave home for a couple of days. More people live in apartments or condominiums, and they don't want a dog that might bark in the middle of the night and disturb their neighbors." Loew believes that cat-owners' lifestyles will predominate in the political agenda. "It will be interesting to see, as the 21st century goes on, whether this trend continues," Loew said.
I think it would be more interesting to see a reverse trend back to parrots in the White House. After all, we all know who really rules the roost-our friends with feathers.
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