Kazan Cat

The Kazan Cat is a small sculptural composition on the pedestrian Bauman Street, one of the city’s most recognizable and frequently photographed public art objects. A metal cat, curled up beneath a tent-roofed gazebo in the middle of the street, alludes to an old legend about Kazan’s mouse-catching cats and has long been regarded by residents as one of the unofficial symbols of the city, alongside the heraldic Zilant dragon.

The idea for the monument was first voiced in the spring of 2005 at a Kazan academic conference devoted to the city’s medieval and early modern history: historian Salavat Faizov, who had studied the image of the Kazan cat in Russian lubok (popular print) art, proposed fixing this friendly character as a city emblem understandable to everyone — unlike the heraldic dragon, which lacks a “biography.” The idea was supported by the authorities and by entrepreneur-sponsors, who paid for its production (about one million rubles). The casting was carried out at an art-casting foundry in Zhukovsky, near Moscow, and in 2009 the sculpture was installed at the intersection of Bauman and Musa Jalil streets, next to the old Kazan Hotel building.

The composition’s author is Kazan sculptor Igor Bashmakov, later honored with the title of People’s Artist of Tatarstan. The metal figure, about three meters tall, depicts a languid, well-fed cat lounging on something like a couch inside a gazebo with a pointed roof, topped by a small mouse figure. The sculpture was tinted to resemble old silver — a metal, the author intended, long prized by the city’s residents — while the gazebo’s columns and dome were decorated with colored glass and mirror fragments. At the base of the monument is engraved a line from an old lubok caption, describing the cat as “Kazan-born,” with “Astrakhan wit” and “Siberian cunning,” in comparison with its relatives from other lands.

The monument’s storyline draws on a real historical episode. In the autumn of 1745, carrying out the supreme decree of the then-reigning Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, three dozen cats of a special mouse-hunting breed were sent from Kazan to the imperial capital: rodents had overrun the still-unfinished chambers of the Winter Palace, and the Kazan predators received court upkeep in return for their successful service. From that time on, in Kazan folklore and in the lubok pictures of the 18th–19th centuries, the collective cat came to be called Alabrys, and today’s Hermitage cat guard is considered the direct heir to this tradition.

Since its unveiling, the sculpture has become one of the most popular spots on Bauman Street: a local belief holds that rubbing the cat’s belly brings good luck. In 2011 the monument’s history formed the basis of a research paper by Kazan schoolchildren, recognized at an all-Russian conference, and federal publications have counted the sculpture among the recognizable symbols of Tatarstan.

Today the Kazan Cat remains one of the favorite photo spots on the city’s main pedestrian street — a compact, whimsical monument that links the semi-legendary history of the Kazan breed of mouse-catchers with contemporary urban space, and continues to draw tourists no less than the neighboring architectural landmarks of Bauman Street.