by Linda Kay

Original Air Date: December 10, 1993

Directed by: Jeff Scheftel

Synopsis: A look at the planning and creation of the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State.

Reality Cat: In one segment, newspaper reporter Hu Blonc (not certain of the spelling of his name?) describes a time he was covering construction on the dam and a pipe needed to be cleared of debris. A cable had to be fed through the passage to pull a workman through on a cart. So a little white cat named Evelyn was recruited to save the day. Newsreel footage shows men placing a string around Evelyn’s neck.

The footage then shows Evelyn being released into the pipe with the string unspooling behind her. Once done the string could be used to pull a rope through and, in turn, the cable.

Evelyn emerges from a pile of dirt on the other side, although she seems hesitant to come all the way out. Blonc goes on to explain that the cat was scared by all the newsreel lights and didn’t want to come out. He made the suggestion that his friend Charlie try barking like a dog to get Evelyn to move. Eventually Evelyn comes out of the pipe and is gathered up by a worker.

The wet and dirty cat is given some milk as a reward, although she doesn’t look that interested in drinking at the moment.

Behind the Scenes:

We could not locate the original newsreel footage of this incident but we did uncover some more information. The story of the “dam cat” was reported in numerous newspapers throughout the U.S. and beyond, but as is often the case there was more to the tale than you might expect.

Reports about the industrious feline started appearing in newspapers in February 1944, two years after the dam officially began operating. The Greeley Daily Tribune gave this brief report on the 18th:

Cat Pays for Meal By Stringing Cable On Reclamation Job

    Grand Coulee, Wash., Feb. 18 — An alley cat repaid the engineers at Grand Coulee dam for its daily meal of lunch pail scraps, the Bureau of Reclamation reported today, by solving the problem of how to string a cable thru 500 feet of 25-inch, winding drain pipe.
    The engineers tied 500 feet of string to the cat’s tail and sent it thru the pipe, gently encouraged by a blast of air. The string was used to pull a rope thru the drain and the cable followed the rope.

The simple story must have sparked further interest, as the following month the story resurfaced across the country, this time accompanied by a photograph of a white cat sitting in the pipe. Follow up stories accompanied the photo and were similar to this example published in the Spokane Chronicle on March 8, 1944:

Cat Makes History

    Although the Grand Coulee dam power plant has available more than a million horsepower of energy — second largest block of power in the world — Bureau of Reclamation workmen recently found it necessary to resort to the use of “catpower” in construction work on the project. The incident occurred the middle of February, and a news account was published in the Chronicle at that time. To string 500 feet of cable through a 24-inch winding drain pipe, the men tied a string to a cat’s tail and “energized” the animal’s movement through the long pipe with the aid of a blast of compressed air. The string was then tied to a rope and a rope to the cable to complete the operation.

The Chronicle followed up once again on this story in late March, announcing to the world at large that the “dam cat wasn’t hurt.” Apparently concern had been voiced after the original story was released, and so this follow up from the Spokane Chronicle appeared as a blurb in other newspapers. The clarification, intended to ease the minds of concerned cat lovers, read in part:

    The story got around, along with pictures of the cat. The incident was even recreated for benefit of newsreels.
    Norman E. Finch, superintendent of the Spokane Humane society, said he received a clipping of the picture from a Bostonian, along with a list of questions. Finch said he learned from Frank A. Banks, Reclamation Bureau chief at Grand Coulee, that the cat was not injured or abused, and the air blast merely created a noise to keep the cat moving.

It makes sense that the images shown in the newsreel footage were a staged recreation of the incident. Clearly cameras were not on hand when the workers sent the cat through the pipe originally. It was this recreation that reporter Hu Blonc was describing in his interview for Modern Marvels. It’s curious the string was placed around the cat’s neck for the newsreel recreation when all previous reports said the string was tied to the cat’s tail (no wonder viewers were concerned for the cat’s safety!) But what is more surprising is the fact that Evelyn, the white cat in the famous photograph and newsreel footage, was NOT the cat used in the original procedure!

The story about the Grand Coulee cat began circulating again in May 1944, this time giving the cat’s name as Thomas. But the truth of the whole matter didn’t come out until a Spokane Chronicle reporter visiting the dam had an unexpected surprise:

Feline Stand-In

    Spokane, Oct. 24 — (AP) — The cat which “tailed” a line through the Grand Coulee Dam pipe for Bureau of Reclamation engineers appeared in the press today by proxy, Northwest Editor Elvetta Phillips of The Chronicle said today.
    Miss Phillips said she was shown the cat during a visit to the dam and observed that the gray alley tabby had shown up as a pretty white feline in its pictures.
    “Oh, this one was too wild then,” she said a guard told her. “We used the white cat for a stand-in.”

Final Mewsings: So Evelyn was, in a way, a part-time cat actress playing the role of Thomas!

Many thanks to Jon R. Kennedy for letting us know about the historical cat in this episode.

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