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125 years ago in 1898, headlines and story transcribed as originally published in the Youngstown Vindicator:
"Station cat of the Erie Railroad varies its diet of rats and mice. Feast on mocking bird. A traveler secures a drink and loses a very fine songster.
"The office cat at the Erie Station has a penchant for mocking birds and enjoys a hot bird as a traveler who passed through this city can testify. The traveler had been in the south on a trip and was returning to his home in Pittsburgh, having a fine mocking bird in a cage which he had purchased in New Orleans, and expected that its sweet notes would fill his residence with melody.
"Arriving on Train 8, he found that he had a little time to wait before the train left for Pittsburgh, and leaving the bird cage in the waiting room he walked to an all-night restaurant to get a drink, and remained away longer that he had intended when he entered the place.
"In the meantime, the station cat whose only diet has been rats and mice discovered the bird and an instant later had the songster out of the cage and disappeared to the rear of the station and enjoyed a bird feast. The owner returning found the cage empty and raised a howl that the bird had been stolen. A gentleman who had witnessed the disappearance of the songster, piloted him to the rear of the station where he saw the cat picking through the bones. Incensed at the loss of the bird through his own carelessness, he refused to take the cage and left it in the station."
-- Compiled from the Youngstown Vindicator by Traci Manning, MVHS curator of education.