Corporal Pride Of Barracks

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31082, 10 June 1966, Page 2

Corporal Pride Of Barracks

Private Vivian Henderson has a grey Persian cat known as Corporal Man Mau to oversee her work in the Addington Barracks.

The corporal recently won a first, two thirds and a highly commended at the Felia National Cat Show.

Corporal Mau Mau has been a personality and mascot -around the barracks since the day he followed one of the cooks through the gate when he was a small kitten.

The corporal inspected the headquarters, found them “tolerable,” and decided to stay.

Like most cats, he looks after “number one"—spends a lot of time sunning himself on the army utility vehicles and follows the setting sun into the officers’ quarters. Steak, fillet or rump, is the only item on Army rations which he finds worth bothering about. “He would rather live on his stored fat than eat mutton or cooked meat,” said a member of the kitchen staff. “He’s the best advert tisement for army tucker that we have,” said another. Corporal Mau Mau is not a killer. “We showed him a mouse once, and he ran away,” said one of the corporal’s men in the kitchen. Army staff at Addington are tremendously proud of the corporal’s success. “But we are not thinking of a promotion,” joked Captain F. W. MacDonald. His consolation will be a new khaki jacket with two stripes which Miss J. Harrison, a member of the kitchen staff, who brushed him up for the show, has promised. In spite of his lack of rank, the corporal has always held his own. He led a photographer, a reporter, and a veritable “army” of superior officers on a merry dance around the barracks yesterday morning. Someone recalled the time when Brigadier T. C. Campbell had to stop his car at the gateway to let the corporal stroll across the road.