Tabby and Dixie

Tabby and Dixie were the two cats of President Abraham Lincoln, and they hold the distinction of being the first cats known to have lived in the White House. Lincoln was a devoted cat lover in an age when the animals were kept mostly as working mousers rather than cherished companions, and his affection for them was well known to those around him.

The stories that survive capture that devotion warmly. Lincoln is said to have played with the cats for hours as a release from the crushing pressures of the Civil War, and on one famous occasion he fed Tabby with a gold fork at a formal White House dinner. When his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, gently protested that this was hardly proper conduct at the President's table, Lincoln reportedly replied that if a gold fork was good enough for a former President's guests, it was good enough for Tabby.

Perhaps the most quoted line came when Lincoln was asked whether her husband had a hobby. Mary Lincoln is said to have answered simply, "cats." The President himself, asked once about Dixie's cleverness, is reported to have joked that "Dixie is smarter than my whole cabinet" — a line that has endeared these two ordinary cats to history lovers ever since.