Monument to cats on Small Garden Street

Vladimir Petrovichev brought to life the idea of historian Sergei Lebedev and created a couple of sculptures of a cat and a cat on Malaya Sadovaya. The cat Elisha is located on the 2nd floor of the house No. 8 on this street, and Vasilisa is opposite Elisha on the house No. 3. The figures were installed on the money of entrepreneur Ilya Botko, the cat appeared on January 25, 2000, the cat was installed 2 months later – April 1. Elisha and Vasilisa are monuments to smoky cats, which were brought to our city immediately after the blockade was lifted during the Patriotic War. In 1943, in order to survive, Leningraders had to eat all the cats. Therefore, hordes of rats and mice literally flooded Leningrad. Even if they had enough food, exhausted people died just on the street. The frozen corpses on the pavement in those days no longer surprised anyone. People were so weakened that insolent flocks of rats began to attack living people. The city was in danger of an epidemic. Therefore, it was decided to bring cats from other regions of the country. No one knows how to handle rats better than these animals.

The meow division arrived in two freight cars from the Yaroslavl region. Cats at that time in Leningrad were worth their weight in gold and cost like a loaf of bread. Those who managed to get the "fighter" were considered lucky. Towards the end of the war, in order to finally rid the city of the rodent army, the Siberians sent another 5,000 rat-catchers to our city. For 14 years, a bronze cat and cat have been watching people passing by closely. During this time, a belief has developed: if you throw a coin to a cat or a cat, and it does not roll to the ground, then luck will not leave in the near future. Local hooligans regularly clean the place of installation of sculptures from the accumulated coins there.