Top Cat
by digby
We have some bad news today on the presidential pet front. Socks the cat, probably the most photographed presidential kitty in history, has cancer and isn’t expected to live. “His days are numbered,” says Barry Landau, a friend of Socks’ master, Betty Currie. Landau, a presidential historian and author of The President’s Table, tells our Suzi Parker that the Currie family could have put Socks on feeding tubes, but decided against it. “They fear he is too old,” adds Landau, who is writing a book on presidential inaugurations. And a second source told us that Socks is gravely ill. Recall that Currie, who lives in Southern Maryland and was Bill Clinton‘s personal secretary, took Socks after the Democrats left office. At the time, Hillary Clinton had been elected to the Senate and Bubba was moving to New York to run his foundation. In recent years, Socks has been hanging out at Currie’s Hollywood, Md., home and sometimes making guest appearances. But since we last wrote about Socks, his conditions have worsened and included weight loss and kidney problems. Southern Maryland Newspapers Online did a wonderful story about this last year, quoting Currie’s husband Bob saying what lots of us pet owners say: Socks “lives better than I do.”
The presidential pets are always one of the best thing about a White House. Sometimes the only good thing. The current residents two Scotties always bring a smile to my face no matter how much I may loathe their owners. (And I don’t blame Barney for biting that reporter, either.)
Hard as it is to believe, when Clinton came into office it was with a lot of the same excited celebrity obsession that we have today and everybody was gaga about the cat. It wasn’t long before Dan Burton was investigating the cat’s expenses (seriously) and the honeymoon was over, but in spite of the “taint” he was always a good first cat, a celebrity in his own right. I’m glad he has spent his elder years in peace.
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