Along with an enormous entourage and a message of peace, the Pope brought with him to the United States a lifelong love of cats. Benedict’s kindness toward the strays of Rome is already the stuff of Vatican legend. His house in Germany, its garden guarded by a cat statue, was filled with cats when Benedict lived there full time before he was posted to the Vatican in 1982. And Benedict is, without a doubt, the first pope to have had an authorised biography of him written by a cat—Chico, a ginger tabby who lives across the road from Benedict’s old house in Germany. “I think it shows a sensitive side, and I believe it shows that God lives in a person,” Jan Fredericks, chairwoman of Catholic Concern for Animals, said. “I think all leaders should have compassion for animals.” The pope’s fondness for felines has been often remarked upon since his elevation in 2005. One prominent Catholic blogger based in California, who writes under the pen name Gerald Augustinus, claims to have a 2-year-old Siamese named Benedictus, or Benny for short.And the recently published Joseph and Chico: The Life of Pope Benedict XVI as Told by a Cat (Ignatius Press, 2008) is a children’s book written by Chico with the “aid” of an Italian journalist, Jeanne Perego. The book, which has been translated into 10 languages and has sold 12,000 copies in the United States, tells of young Joseph Ratzinger’s childhood love for all furry animals and of the adult cardinal’s deep bond with the narrator, who lives in the Bavarian village of Pentling.“When I’d see that the shades were up next door, I knew he was home,” Chico writes. “Then I’d race over and rub up against his legs. What wonderful times we’ve spent together!”Chico’s owner, Rupert Hofbauer, confirmed the substance of the book and said that Chico, now 10, misses his old friend, who has not been back to visit since becoming pope. “Sometimes Chico goes over there on his own,” Hofbauer said in a telephone interview on Friday, “and he sits on the door sill or walks through the garden.” Perego said that the pope’s brother, who lives near Pentling, continues to hang the current year’s cat calendar on the wall of the pope’s house and turn its pages every month in a sort of homage to his absent brother.Though Benedict is the first pope to be written about by a cat, he falls squarely within a long Vatican tradition. According to The Papacy: An Encyclopedia, by Philippe Levillain, Pope Paul II, in the 15th century, had his cats treated by his personal physician. Leo XII, in the 1820s, raised his grayish-red cat, Micetto, in the pleat of his cassock. And according to The Times of London, Paul VI, pope from 1963 to 1978, is said to have once dressed his cat in cardinal’s robes.
