Jim Kershner’s This day in history » On the Web: spokesman.com/topics/local-history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Thomas, the Super Cat of Spokane, “outdid himself” with his third remarkable feat of feline intelligence, according to his owner, a local police sergeant.

The sergeant had lost a “purse” (a wallet) containing $45 in gold coins while working in his yard earlier that day. The sergeant couldn’t find it and went to work. When he came home at midnight, Thomas greeted him at the door and, loudly purring, led him to a patch of dirt and began digging. The sergeant, thinking that the cat had simply buried a rat, went inside.

A few minutes later, Thomas came in his cat door, carrying the black purse between his teeth.

This 14-pound cat, nicknamed Kangaroo because of his “abnormal hind legs,” had previously made the news with two other escapades. In the first, the sergeant claimed that Kangaroo had frightened two burglars (cat burglars?) by “jumping in their faces” when they tried to force their way through a window. In the second, “he smothered a fire in the curtains by rolling in the sparks until he put them out.”

Some cat. In case anyone was skeptical about the money-purse incident, the sergeant “substantiated” it by pointing to the little cat tooth marks in the leather.

Also on this date

1939: Frank Sinatra made his first commercial recordings, “From the Bottom of My Heart” and “Melancholy Mood,” with Harry James and his Orchestra in New York for the Brunswick label.