8 ms·

Behind Every Good Whisky Is a Trusty Distillery Cat

106 points by juanplusjuan 12y ago

trhway 12y ago
symbiosis with cats and dogs carried our civilization through thousands of years. Now we're forgetting it and just exterminating cats and dogs - yearly only in US about 6-10M are put to death.
- freehunter 12y ago
  Your comment (intentionally or not) makes it sound like humans are killing cats and dogs simply for the sake of killing them. The problem is overbreeding causing too many animals. We're not forgetting that these animals make great pets, we're not killing them just for fun. There are limited options in how to handle overpopulation.
  - trhway 12y ago
    >The problem is overbreeding causing too many animals. it is we who, pretty arbitrary, decide that it is "too many" - it means that we're killing them pretty willfully ( just a step before "just for fun" and "the sake of killing them") We definitely didn't do anything to accommodate cats and dogs inside the civilization they helped to build. >There are limited options in how to handle overpopulation. 2 myths in one sentence - "limited options" and "overpopulation"
    - waqf 12y ago
      > too many It was http://xkcd.com/1338/ http://xkcd.com/1338/ that made it clear to me that if we didn't want cats and dogs, we wouldn't have them.
    - freehunter 12y ago
      It's not arbitrary, the number of house pets is limited to the number of households that can have pets plus the number of animal shelters we have. Once that number is exceeded, the options are set the animals free or find humane ways to control the population. Depending on where you live, setting them free could be a good option or it could be terrible. If the animals have no survival instinct left, they will be left alone to starve to death or die from sickness. In the city, they may be hit by cars, or they might attack other pets. They might even make other pets sick by biting them. They can easily become a nuisance in populated areas, although rural areas have a larger domain for stray animals. There's no one walking into your house saying "there's too many pets in the world" and shooting Lassie. They only get put down when there is no one left to take care of them. If you think it's arbitrary, why don't you adopt every homeless pet? If you can't do that, then you have to accept that there is such a thing as overpopulation, that we're there, and that there are limited options for how to deal with the problem.
      - trhway 12y ago
        most of your post is basically speculation, except for the unfortunate reality of cars hitting pets. Fact-wise: >There's no one walking into your house saying "there's too many pets in the world" and shooting Lassie. that is actually what happens when your violate your local pets per household limit. As i said, human civilization policies toward cats and dogs is a circus of arbitrary speculations.
        sliverstorm 12y ago
        What are you voting for? Release all the strays into the wild? Mandatory adoption of at least X dogs per household? You haven't taken any position other than "Yes they CAN all be accommodated", which is like a three-year-old refusing to take a bath. local pets per household limit You'll have to take that one up with your local government. My town has no such limit.
        trhway 12y ago
        >What are you voting for? granting them rights according to their mental capacity and sentience - i.e. about the rights of a 2-3 year old toddler (or a person with extremely severe autism - very close approximation of a cat's or dog's mental capacity). For example - how would you handle an overpopulation by a toddlers? Would you set them free into the wild or euthanize? EDIT: to CocaKoala below. >But that's a ridiculous comparison because cats and dogs are not toddlers i didn't say they are toddlers. I said we should treat others at least according to their mental capacity and sentience. And treatment of toddlers or severe autistic people is an example of such treatment. >Granting cats and dogs the rights of toddlers or autistic individuals means you're giving up the right to spay or neuter your pet; nobody would advocate for sterilizing a toddler, exactly. It is definitely time to give up such medieval ways. Why aren't we using pills on cats and dogs? Because we don't want to bother with extra expense and effort. Affording the rights would force us to do it. And it would be for our own good as treating others with consideration and humane compassion would only improve our own civilization. >but many very reasonable people advocate for sterilizing house pets, and for good reasons. if you remember anything about the history of human race, you wouldn't invoke the formula "many very reasonable people advocate for <...>, and for good reasons" TO "dogecoinbase" : Summary of your post's logic - "affording rights [according to mental capacity and sentience] is cruel". Yep, no way to fight that logic. TO: CocaKoala 2nd post. I advocate for granting rights and making decisions on that basis. At the current state of technology i do see that adopting such a basis would lead to the choice of pills over surgical mutilation. To address your Edit - i didn't insist on specific everyday birth control pill taken orally. If we to talk technical details - long term birth control injection would me more close to it.
    - davidcbc 12y ago
      If limited options is a myth then what is the option that you propose? Don't just say "don't kill them" if you don't have a legitimate proposal for what to do with them instead.
    - Cuuugi 12y ago
      So i'm assuming that you are advocating the "setting free" of unadopted domesticated pets. I truly hope for the sake of the animals that my assumption is wrong, or that you are never put in that position of authority. Euthanasia is the lesser of the many evils for those animals.
      - true_religion 12y ago
        He said in another comment that he believes they should be accorded the same rights as toddlers or the mentally disabled. So in that case, euthanizing them just because "we don't have enough homes" isn't going to be an option.
    - dredmorbius 12y ago
      There are very few wild large mammal populations which number in the 100s of thousands, let alone millions. The principle exceptions are all domesticated animals: cattle, sheep, hogs, and the like. After humans, the largest non-domesticated predator mammal population is likely crabeater seals (11-12 million); land predator, the American black bear (850-950 thousand). There are fewer than half the California sea lions statewide (355 thousand) than there are residents of San Francisco (837 thousand). Most major land predators number in the tens of thousands worldwide, or fewer. Among ungulates (divided amongst even and odd toed variants for some reason), water buffalo are the most numerous non-domesticated population at about 172 million, followed by species of duiker (7 & 2 million). American bison number 530,000, reduced from a pre-Columbian population of 60 million, and a low of 750 total individuals in 1890. Of the non-domesticated odd-toed ungulates (generally: horse-like), most numerous are the plains zebra, at 660,000. The next most numerous is the Kiang, 60,000. In the oceans, several dolphin populations number 1-2 millions. Among primates, the most numerous non-human population is Müller's Bornean gibbon, 250-375 thousand. That is: other than humans, most large land mammals have populations equivalent to mid-sized human towns, a few might rival mid-sized to larger cities. And populations of dogs and cats (83.3 million and 95.6 million respectively in the US according to the Humane Society)[1] are entirely due to direct human intervention. ________________________________ Notes: 1. http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/pet_overpopulation/facts/pet_ownership_statistics.html http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/pet_overpopulation/facts...
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - joesmo 12y ago
    I think a partial solution is to limit breeding and selling for profit, aka puppy/kitten mills. There are plenty of cats and dogs out there and we don't need people breeding them for profit in deplorable conditions, making more so that they can end up in shelters where they will be killed. Obviously law can only go so far, but only the really big factory farms would need to be targeted. Removing the profit incentives from such operations would effectively shut them down. Also, it'd help to end discrimination, for lack of a better word, against many dog types like pitbulls, etc. in apartment leases and such. Many animals are given to shelters when their owner moves and is no longer allowed to keep the animal and many are not adopted because of such conditions in the lease. Either an apartment allows dogs or not. Finally, there are a lot of people who would be more than glad to feed stray cats and dogs and many strays are very friendly. Not all cats and dogs are dangerous, so why shouldn't we allow them to roam about? Yes, they can get killed, sick, die from starvation etc., but they might also be taken care of by the locals and live. That's just life.
- true_religion 12y ago
  According to this data[1] pet ownership has been rising steadily in the past 10 years. And according to this article, dogs are more likely to survive in a shelter now than 40 years ago, due to the fact that more of them are spayed/neutered reducing population pressure. [1] http://www.statista.com/statistics/198100/dogs-in-the-united-states-since-2000/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/198100/dogs-in-the-united... [2] http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2012/0210/Behind-the-big-drop-in-euthanasia-for-America-s-dogs-and-cats http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2012/0210/Behind-the-bi...
Cuuugi 12y ago
I'm not a cat guy, but they definitely serve their purpose. Nice story.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
laumars 12y ago
Cats aren't just great for the distillery; nothing makes me more content than having one of my two cats curled up on my lap while I sip a scotch and watch something nerdy on TV.
- numo16 12y ago
  Agreed. Cat on lap + scotch + good book is the key a stress-free evening
- fidotron 12y ago
  Anyone that can genetically modify one to have fur but not leave it everywhere stands to make a killing though.
  - ecdavis 12y ago
    Devon Rexes leave less hair behind than humans, in my experience.
aric 12y ago
Similarly, behind every good ship is a trusty Ship's Cat. (...and often whiskey too.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship's_cat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship's_cat
lvs 12y ago
RIP Peat.
jrapdx3 12y ago
Reminds me of the cat that years ago inhabited Powell's technical bookstore (in Portland OR). The grayish feline was a inconspicuous mascot. Sometimes seen calmly striding among the bookshelves, with little attention to the humans milling about but mostly was ensconced in some private retreat. I used to go there frequently to hunt down computer books, but remember most enjoyably not only the store cat, but even more the collection of CD's that were sold way back when. In the early 90's, with those CD's I was introduced to Linux 1.0, and FreeBSD 2.0, Walnut Creek and other names that endure in my memory. It was a very exciting time. Thanks for giving me that pleasure for a moment once again.
- schoen 12y ago
  I used to get the Powell's e-mail newsletter and I remember that the cat in question was called "Fup". (Unless you're thinking of an even earlier store cat.) Apparently she died in 2007, aged 19. https://www.powells.com/blog/book-news/a-tribute-to-fup-store-cat-by-ron-silberstein/ https://www.powells.com/blog/book-news/a-tribute-to-fup-stor...
- bitwize 12y ago
  When Fup died in 2007, it made the top page of Reddit. I was a bit surprised and delighted to see such a piece of Portlandia get worldwide e-fame, even as I mourned her passing. Only met her once or twice. She was old and not quite so mobile by the time I even saw her.
  - jrapdx3 12y ago
    Thanks. You and schoen are right--I'd forgotten about Fup's "obituary". I hadn't been so regular a visitor to the bookstore since the late 90's. Around that time pace of change was speeding up, everything in the computing field evolving so quickly when a book was published it was already obsolete. "Dead tree" books were much less necessary. I stopped in a few days ago (tech books now located closer to the main bookstore) looking for a reference book on computer security. Alas, selection was meager, the shelf space devoted to computing topics less than a tenth what it once was. The store now overflows with tons of books on birds and botany, cars and many worthy things. Still see a few old digital museum pieces in random corners, but hardly a trace of Fup and her glorious era.
benmarks 12y ago
Had the pleasure of meeting Elijah on a two day work trip to LEX. Airport cabbie drove me to Woodford, dropped me off, and didn't charge to wait while I toured. Elijah was entirely indifferent to my presence. Aside from Charleston, Lexington is one of the friendliest places I've been in the States. Highly recommend the distillery tours as well as the air museum.
sk314 12y ago
whisky + cats = the perfect internet story
likeclockwork 12y ago
This is a fluff piece.
- wiredfool 12y ago
  A pointy fluff piece.
- whoopdedo 12y ago
  It wouldn't be if it were a sphynx cat.
kevind23 12y ago
There's no content in this article whatsoever. They used to need mousers, but now they get max. 2 mice/year. So the distillery has a pet cat to keep tradition alive. That's it?
- hydrogen18 12y ago
  It's NPR, you should demand a refund.
hyp0 12y ago
Why do they get fewer mice now? Because the grain more securely stored? More effective poisons? Fewer mice in the region? Funfact: unlike horses and dogs, cats were only domesticated once, and spread with agriculture (to protect stored grain from mice).
- eru 12y ago
  It's not even clear that man domesticated cat. It seems more likely the other way around.
  - agapos 12y ago
    The most accurate description of cat-human relationships I have ever seen.
  - delecti 12y ago
    Additionally there's evidence that man didn't initially domesticate dogs. Rather, wolves that were more compatible with humans could get closer and benefit from the interaction, leading to more domestication and closer integration, etc., until dogs. Of course since then we've done all manner of absurd things to the species (as adorable as some people find them, inflicting pugs upon wolves was terribly insulting).
suprgeek 12y ago
"Had a look at him. Thought, 'Yep.' Gave him a few strokes, and thought he was a friendly lookin' cat. Held him for a wee while. Decided, 'Right. He's the one.' " That line stayed with me long after I finished reading the piece - Long live the Scots.
joshuaheard 12y ago
Distillery cat is watching you drink.
lazylizard 12y ago
i hear rice warehouses prefer to keep snakes. they eat the mice clean whereas cats often leave carcasses about.

106 points by juanplusjuan 12y ago

symbiosis with cats and dogs carried our civilization through thousands of years. Now we're forgetting it and just exterminating cats and dogs - yearly only in US about 6-10M are put to death.

freehunter 12y ago
Your comment (intentionally or not) makes it sound like humans are killing cats and dogs simply for the sake of killing them. The problem is overbreeding causing too many animals. We're not forgetting that these animals make great pets, we're not killing them just for fun. There are limited options in how to handle overpopulation.
- trhway 12y ago
  >The problem is overbreeding causing too many animals. it is we who, pretty arbitrary, decide that it is "too many" - it means that we're killing them pretty willfully ( just a step before "just for fun" and "the sake of killing them") We definitely didn't do anything to accommodate cats and dogs inside the civilization they helped to build. >There are limited options in how to handle overpopulation. 2 myths in one sentence - "limited options" and "overpopulation"
  - waqf 12y ago
    > too many It was http://xkcd.com/1338/ http://xkcd.com/1338/ that made it clear to me that if we didn't want cats and dogs, we wouldn't have them.
  - freehunter 12y ago
    It's not arbitrary, the number of house pets is limited to the number of households that can have pets plus the number of animal shelters we have. Once that number is exceeded, the options are set the animals free or find humane ways to control the population. Depending on where you live, setting them free could be a good option or it could be terrible. If the animals have no survival instinct left, they will be left alone to starve to death or die from sickness. In the city, they may be hit by cars, or they might attack other pets. They might even make other pets sick by biting them. They can easily become a nuisance in populated areas, although rural areas have a larger domain for stray animals. There's no one walking into your house saying "there's too many pets in the world" and shooting Lassie. They only get put down when there is no one left to take care of them. If you think it's arbitrary, why don't you adopt every homeless pet? If you can't do that, then you have to accept that there is such a thing as overpopulation, that we're there, and that there are limited options for how to deal with the problem.
    - trhway 12y ago
      most of your post is basically speculation, except for the unfortunate reality of cars hitting pets. Fact-wise: >There's no one walking into your house saying "there's too many pets in the world" and shooting Lassie. that is actually what happens when your violate your local pets per household limit. As i said, human civilization policies toward cats and dogs is a circus of arbitrary speculations.
      - sliverstorm 12y ago
        What are you voting for? Release all the strays into the wild? Mandatory adoption of at least X dogs per household? You haven't taken any position other than "Yes they CAN all be accommodated", which is like a three-year-old refusing to take a bath. local pets per household limit You'll have to take that one up with your local government. My town has no such limit.
        trhway 12y ago
        >What are you voting for? granting them rights according to their mental capacity and sentience - i.e. about the rights of a 2-3 year old toddler (or a person with extremely severe autism - very close approximation of a cat's or dog's mental capacity). For example - how would you handle an overpopulation by a toddlers? Would you set them free into the wild or euthanize? EDIT: to CocaKoala below. >But that's a ridiculous comparison because cats and dogs are not toddlers i didn't say they are toddlers. I said we should treat others at least according to their mental capacity and sentience. And treatment of toddlers or severe autistic people is an example of such treatment. >Granting cats and dogs the rights of toddlers or autistic individuals means you're giving up the right to spay or neuter your pet; nobody would advocate for sterilizing a toddler, exactly. It is definitely time to give up such medieval ways. Why aren't we using pills on cats and dogs? Because we don't want to bother with extra expense and effort. Affording the rights would force us to do it. And it would be for our own good as treating others with consideration and humane compassion would only improve our own civilization. >but many very reasonable people advocate for sterilizing house pets, and for good reasons. if you remember anything about the history of human race, you wouldn't invoke the formula "many very reasonable people advocate for <...>, and for good reasons" TO "dogecoinbase" : Summary of your post's logic - "affording rights [according to mental capacity and sentience] is cruel". Yep, no way to fight that logic. TO: CocaKoala 2nd post. I advocate for granting rights and making decisions on that basis. At the current state of technology i do see that adopting such a basis would lead to the choice of pills over surgical mutilation. To address your Edit - i didn't insist on specific everyday birth control pill taken orally. If we to talk technical details - long term birth control injection would me more close to it.
  - davidcbc 12y ago
    If limited options is a myth then what is the option that you propose? Don't just say "don't kill them" if you don't have a legitimate proposal for what to do with them instead.
  - Cuuugi 12y ago
    So i'm assuming that you are advocating the "setting free" of unadopted domesticated pets. I truly hope for the sake of the animals that my assumption is wrong, or that you are never put in that position of authority. Euthanasia is the lesser of the many evils for those animals.
    - true_religion 12y ago
      He said in another comment that he believes they should be accorded the same rights as toddlers or the mentally disabled. So in that case, euthanizing them just because "we don't have enough homes" isn't going to be an option.
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    There are very few wild large mammal populations which number in the 100s of thousands, let alone millions. The principle exceptions are all domesticated animals: cattle, sheep, hogs, and the like. After humans, the largest non-domesticated predator mammal population is likely crabeater seals (11-12 million); land predator, the American black bear (850-950 thousand). There are fewer than half the California sea lions statewide (355 thousand) than there are residents of San Francisco (837 thousand). Most major land predators number in the tens of thousands worldwide, or fewer. Among ungulates (divided amongst even and odd toed variants for some reason), water buffalo are the most numerous non-domesticated population at about 172 million, followed by species of duiker (7 & 2 million). American bison number 530,000, reduced from a pre-Columbian population of 60 million, and a low of 750 total individuals in 1890. Of the non-domesticated odd-toed ungulates (generally: horse-like), most numerous are the plains zebra, at 660,000. The next most numerous is the Kiang, 60,000. In the oceans, several dolphin populations number 1-2 millions. Among primates, the most numerous non-human population is Müller's Bornean gibbon, 250-375 thousand. That is: other than humans, most large land mammals have populations equivalent to mid-sized human towns, a few might rival mid-sized to larger cities. And populations of dogs and cats (83.3 million and 95.6 million respectively in the US according to the Humane Society)[1] are entirely due to direct human intervention. ________________________________ Notes: 1. http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/pet_overpopulation/facts/pet_ownership_statistics.html http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/pet_overpopulation/facts...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- joesmo 12y ago
  I think a partial solution is to limit breeding and selling for profit, aka puppy/kitten mills. There are plenty of cats and dogs out there and we don't need people breeding them for profit in deplorable conditions, making more so that they can end up in shelters where they will be killed. Obviously law can only go so far, but only the really big factory farms would need to be targeted. Removing the profit incentives from such operations would effectively shut them down. Also, it'd help to end discrimination, for lack of a better word, against many dog types like pitbulls, etc. in apartment leases and such. Many animals are given to shelters when their owner moves and is no longer allowed to keep the animal and many are not adopted because of such conditions in the lease. Either an apartment allows dogs or not. Finally, there are a lot of people who would be more than glad to feed stray cats and dogs and many strays are very friendly. Not all cats and dogs are dangerous, so why shouldn't we allow them to roam about? Yes, they can get killed, sick, die from starvation etc., but they might also be taken care of by the locals and live. That's just life.
true_religion 12y ago
According to this data[1] pet ownership has been rising steadily in the past 10 years. And according to this article, dogs are more likely to survive in a shelter now than 40 years ago, due to the fact that more of them are spayed/neutered reducing population pressure. [1] http://www.statista.com/statistics/198100/dogs-in-the-united-states-since-2000/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/198100/dogs-in-the-united... [2] http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2012/0210/Behind-the-big-drop-in-euthanasia-for-America-s-dogs-and-cats http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2012/0210/Behind-the-bi...

Cuuugi 12y ago

I'm not a cat guy, but they definitely serve their purpose. Nice story.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

laumars 12y ago

Cats aren't just great for the distillery; nothing makes me more content than having one of my two cats curled up on my lap while I sip a scotch and watch something nerdy on TV.

numo16 12y ago
Agreed. Cat on lap + scotch + good book is the key a stress-free evening
fidotron 12y ago
Anyone that can genetically modify one to have fur but not leave it everywhere stands to make a killing though.
- ecdavis 12y ago
  Devon Rexes leave less hair behind than humans, in my experience.

aric 12y ago

Similarly, behind every good ship is a trusty Ship's Cat. (...and often whiskey too.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship's_cat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship's_cat

lvs 12y ago

RIP Peat.

jrapdx3 12y ago

Reminds me of the cat that years ago inhabited Powell's technical bookstore (in Portland OR). The grayish feline was a inconspicuous mascot. Sometimes seen calmly striding among the bookshelves, with little attention to the humans milling about but mostly was ensconced in some private retreat. I used to go there frequently to hunt down computer books, but remember most enjoyably not only the store cat, but even more the collection of CD's that were sold way back when. In the early 90's, with those CD's I was introduced to Linux 1.0, and FreeBSD 2.0, Walnut Creek and other names that endure in my memory. It was a very exciting time. Thanks for giving me that pleasure for a moment once again.

schoen 12y ago
I used to get the Powell's e-mail newsletter and I remember that the cat in question was called "Fup". (Unless you're thinking of an even earlier store cat.) Apparently she died in 2007, aged 19. https://www.powells.com/blog/book-news/a-tribute-to-fup-store-cat-by-ron-silberstein/ https://www.powells.com/blog/book-news/a-tribute-to-fup-stor...
bitwize 12y ago
When Fup died in 2007, it made the top page of Reddit. I was a bit surprised and delighted to see such a piece of Portlandia get worldwide e-fame, even as I mourned her passing. Only met her once or twice. She was old and not quite so mobile by the time I even saw her.
- jrapdx3 12y ago
  Thanks. You and schoen are right--I'd forgotten about Fup's "obituary". I hadn't been so regular a visitor to the bookstore since the late 90's. Around that time pace of change was speeding up, everything in the computing field evolving so quickly when a book was published it was already obsolete. "Dead tree" books were much less necessary. I stopped in a few days ago (tech books now located closer to the main bookstore) looking for a reference book on computer security. Alas, selection was meager, the shelf space devoted to computing topics less than a tenth what it once was. The store now overflows with tons of books on birds and botany, cars and many worthy things. Still see a few old digital museum pieces in random corners, but hardly a trace of Fup and her glorious era.

benmarks 12y ago

Had the pleasure of meeting Elijah on a two day work trip to LEX. Airport cabbie drove me to Woodford, dropped me off, and didn't charge to wait while I toured. Elijah was entirely indifferent to my presence. Aside from Charleston, Lexington is one of the friendliest places I've been in the States. Highly recommend the distillery tours as well as the air museum.

sk314 12y ago

whisky + cats = the perfect internet story

likeclockwork 12y ago

This is a fluff piece.

wiredfool 12y ago
A pointy fluff piece.
whoopdedo 12y ago
It wouldn't be if it were a sphynx cat.

kevind23 12y ago

There's no content in this article whatsoever. They used to need mousers, but now they get max. 2 mice/year. So the distillery has a pet cat to keep tradition alive. That's it?

hydrogen18 12y ago
It's NPR, you should demand a refund.

hyp0 12y ago

Why do they get fewer mice now? Because the grain more securely stored? More effective poisons? Fewer mice in the region? Funfact: unlike horses and dogs, cats were only domesticated once, and spread with agriculture (to protect stored grain from mice).

eru 12y ago
It's not even clear that man domesticated cat. It seems more likely the other way around.
- agapos 12y ago
  The most accurate description of cat-human relationships I have ever seen.
- delecti 12y ago
  Additionally there's evidence that man didn't initially domesticate dogs. Rather, wolves that were more compatible with humans could get closer and benefit from the interaction, leading to more domestication and closer integration, etc., until dogs. Of course since then we've done all manner of absurd things to the species (as adorable as some people find them, inflicting pugs upon wolves was terribly insulting).

suprgeek 12y ago

"Had a look at him. Thought, 'Yep.' Gave him a few strokes, and thought he was a friendly lookin' cat. Held him for a wee while. Decided, 'Right. He's the one.' " That line stayed with me long after I finished reading the piece - Long live the Scots.

joshuaheard 12y ago

Distillery cat is watching you drink.

lazylizard 12y ago

i hear rice warehouses prefer to keep snakes. they eat the mice clean whereas cats often leave carcasses about.