The cat and the rat – not for the squeamish

Yesterday, I wrote about Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin, and specifically the monuments in the main cathedral. I cannot write about the dead at Christ Church without writing about perhaps the most famous entombment at all – the cat and the rat. The crypt displays the mummified remains of a cat and rat.   Please do not click below if you think you will find photos of such disturbing.

The story (posted above the display in the crypt) is that the cat and the rat were found, mummified, inside an organ pipe by workmen in the 1850s. The theory is, of course, that the cat and rat were engaged in a stereotypical chase when they became unfortunately and fatally stuck.

James Joyce referred to them in Finnegan’s Wake, stating that someone was “as stuck as that cat to that mouse in that tube of that Christchurch organ.”