Meet Venkman, Raymond, Egon and Gozer — Empirical Brewery’s “Ghostbusters” - named feral cat colony which ws adopted in December through the Tree House Humane Society’s Cats at Work program.
“If a brewer says they don’t have rats, they’re lying,” said Bill Hurley, owner of Empirical, located at 1801 W. Foster Ave in Ravenswood.
Rodents are attracted to the extremely high-quality grain that breweries stock. To the rats, it’s like a “giant block of cheese,” Hurley said. If you can imagine that.
Empirical hired an exterminator to pay regular visits to the brewery, but found it to be completely ineffective to keep the rats away
“Enter Tree House, which has moved 264 feral cats within Chicago and 130 in the suburbs,” says Jenny Schlueter, manager of Cats at Work.
She has placed cats in factories, barns, a hotel loading dock, behind restaurants and in backyards across the city and put these cats who might otherwise be euthanized to work.
“Rats can smell their predators,” Schlueter explained. “Quite honestly, house cats will also keep rodents away.”
“Smart rats move along,” Jenny said, and the “ones that don’t get it” wind up being hunted. While some folks become squeamish at the thought of cats hunting rats, Schlueter said she finds it more humane than poison or traps. It’s the circle of life.
Though cats might at first glance appear to be an unusual solution to a brewery’s pest control problems, tabbies have been on rodent patrol at distilleries for centuries.
Among the best-known whiskered whisky guardians:
Towser the Mouser once prowled Scotland’s Glenturret distillery (in operation since 1775). His estimated 28,899 lifetime mouse kills earned him a place in Guinness World Records. Check it out!
Staff at the Jameson distillery are rumored to have paid their cats in milk and so loved a mouser named Smitty that they had him stuffed and mounted in the distillery’s rafters.
In this day and sge, distillery cats have their own Instagram page, where you’re likely to find photos of Carlos and Jeffey, who have rid New York’s Kings County Distillery the mouse invasion after Hurricane Sandy.
Brooklyn Brewery (R.I.P. Monster), Louisville’s Apocalypse Brew Works and Chicago’s own Pipeworks are among the craft breweries who have followed their distillery counterparts’ lead. Apocalypse acquired its cats, Hiro and Saki, through a program in Kentucky that’s similar to Cats at Work.
At Empirical, the brewery’s Ghostbusters have made an immediate difference.
Since adopting their group of three males and one female (that would be Gozer, a black-haired beauty), the brewers haven’t seen a single rodent anywhere in the distillery.
“Just their presence keeps us safe,” said Hurley. “They’re the only reason we can store grain. We also didn’t want to live with rodents.”
Though photos and video of the cats’ acclimation period show they were initially quite shy of their new caretakers, a great affectionate bond has developed between the feral felines and the brewers. They have become more like pets.
The guys bought an array of toys for the cats, only to discover, they’d rather play with boxes. Eventually the brewers placed large cardboard mats at the foot of the cats’ towering home and in return they are treated to daily wrestling matches.
“People assume they’re going to be aggressive or attack them. That couldn’t be further from the truth,” she said.
“They’re not wild animals. They are domesticated cats, but they’ve been ‘unsocialized,'” Schlueter said. “Their socialization is always changing. They can become quite friendly.”
A warehouse like Empirical’s is perfect for feral cats — kind of like a real indoor home but not so confining that it makes the cats feel locked in, Schlueter said.
Noting that Tree House has struggled to convince men that cuddling up to kittens can still come across as macho, Schlueter is pleased with the way Empirical has embraced the colony.
“We’re so grateful to them,” she said. “They’re good role models for guys.”