The Cat and the Rat mummified

n the 1860’s, long after the site had been updated to a 17th century Gothic cathedral, the wardens decided to have the organ pipes cleaned (perhaps they smelled something.) Wedged inside the tubes they found the bodies of a cat and a rat, evidently trapped in the narrow space in mid chase. One can only imagine the horror of the scene.

In a gesture of humanity, the wardens decided to exhibit them in a glass case in the crypt near the tombs of bishops and statues of kings. Local people who came to see them nicknamed the duo Tom and Jerry, the names caught on and the story spread. In his novel, Finnegan’s Wake (1939), James Joyce wrote that one of his characters was “as stuck as that cat to that mouse in that tube of that Christchurch organ.”