Today in 1950, the Coshocton, Ohio Tribune carried a news story with one heck of a headline: “Kitten Scales Matterhorn: Veteran Mountain Climbers Are Astonished”!
It is a pretty astonishing thing for a 10 month old cat to somehow show up at the top of a mountain that’s over 14,000 feet high.
And even more astonishing that nobody totally knew how it happened.
Luigi Orombelli was one of the human climbers on the peak that day.
He wrote in 2016 that his group of climbers had been hearing a high pitched noise that they couldn’t quite place.
It sounded like meowing, but how could that be the case so high up?
They figured it must be another group of climbers.
But then, Orombelli said, he and other mountaineers looked over at a thin ledge and saw two cat ears.
A small black and white kitten was coming over to them, making it clear through its meowing that it was very cold and very hungry.
According to some of the newspaper accounts, the cat had been following some of the human climbing parties, for some reason, as they went up the mountain.
These previous groups had figured the cat couldn’t reach the peak and wouldn’t even try.
But of course it did, and so Orombelli’s group decided to help the little guy out.
They gave the some biscuits and some condensed milk, and when it was time to head back down the mountain, one of the climbers put the kitty in a backpack and brought it down.
We know almost nothing about what happened to the cat after it came back down from the peak of the Matterhorn.
But we do know that in tribute to its climb, it was nicknamed Matt.
My guess is, now that this story is out there, people on the internet will insist on renaming the mountain the Catterhorn.
Today in 1968, a group called the New Yardbirds played their first concert at a school for the Gladsaxe Teen Club near Copenhagen, Denmark.
There’s now a plaque on the site to mark the site where Led Zeppelin made its live debut.
The cat that climbed the Matterhorn (Weird Universe)
Commemorating the debut of Led Zeppelin in 1968
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Photo by Antoine via Flickr/Creative Commons
