Distilleries use a lot of grain, and grain attracts rodents. So it only makes sense that distilleries would keep cats around for pest control. Glenturret Distillery in Crieff, Perthshire, Scotland, employed a cat named Towser from soon after her birth in 1963 to her death in 1987. Towser was a female longhaired tortoiseshell cat who took her duties seriously. Not only would she catch and kill every mouse she saw, but she brought those mice to her boss in the still house as proof. Towser was highly treasured at the distillery, and was given milk with a few drops of whisky in it every night.
Towser's prodigious kill rate inspired employees at Glenturret to contact Guinness World Records, who sent a team of auditors to investigate. They recorded Towser's kills over a period of several days and used that data to extrapolate her lifetime kill rate. She was awarded the Guinness World Record as the most productive mouser ever. Towser's longevity (possibly due to the whisky) added to her kill count, and by the time she died just three weeks short of her 24th birthday, she had killed an estimated 28,899 mice!
Towser was commemorated with a memorial at the distillery's visitors center, topped with a likeness of the cat. She lives on in the label of Glenturret's Fairlie's light Highland Liqueur, where her paw prints appear. -Thanks WTM!
(Image credit: Paul Ashwin)
