Our story starts in 1901 at the southern tip of Manhattan, a place you know today as The Battery. But back then, a grand stone building called the U.S. Barge Office dominated the waterfront, roughly where the Staten Island Ferry terminal now stands. It was a bustling, chaotic gateway to America, an early entry point for immigrants and the workplace of a policeman named Richard “Dick” Ganley.
Ganley wasn't really a cat person. He was a veteran cop who had seen it all. In fact, he’d lived with his family on Bedloe’s Island (what we now call Liberty Island) and had a front-row seat to the erection of the Statue of Liberty herself in 1886. But in 1901, his life took a feline turn.
One day, Ganley found a tiny, starving kitten under a bench in Battery Park. The officer took pity on the scruffy creature, which he later called “the finest, smartest, and the ugliest cat in creation.” After a few days of care, the kitten, now named Richard II, bounced back and became fiercely devoted to his rescuer.
And Richard II was no ordinary office cat. He took his rat-catching duties very, very seriously. He didn’t just hunt on the piers; he hunted in the water. According to a mesmerized Ganley, if a rat tried to escape by swimming away from the shore, Richard II would dive into the harbor without hesitation. He’d paddle out toward Governors Island or the Statue of Liberty in hot pursuit, a furry torpedo zeroed in on his prey.
Ganley proudly told a New York Times reporter that his namesake cat could swim better than any duck and always came back with his prize, whether he caught it by land or by sea. Richard II was so proud of his work, he’d march right up to Ganley and present each mouse or rat he caught, as if to prove he was earning his keep.
“Sometimes when there’s nothin’ doing at the office or in the park, he’ll take an hour or so off and go for a stroll up the river,” Ganley boasted. “You can gamble that he’ll bring back one or two big ones and you’ll never lose.” The cop was so confident in his cat’s unique talents that he swore he’d enter him in the next cat show, declaring, “I wouldn’t swap him for any Maltese or angora in existence, and Pierpont Morgan hasn’t got enough money to buy him.”
Just when you thought this waterfront saga couldn't get any weirder, it did. That same year, Ganley acquired another cat from a sailor who had just arrived from Cuba. This new feline, promptly named Richard III, was a formidable-looking creature. Ganley described him as having “the shape of er tiger, ther eye of a lion, an’ ther spots of ther leopard.” He was sure this cat could out-fight any other in New York.
But Richard III had a bizarre secret. He was a vegetarian. Yes, really. The ferocious-looking cat from the tropics turned his nose up at meat and instead happily munched on cabbage leaves, watercress, turnips, and carrots. Imagine a tough dock cat choosing a salad over a steak.
Ganley, ever the showman, now had plans for two prize-winners. He expected to win a ribbon for Richard II as “the ugliest cat” and another for Richard III as “ther meanest cat.”
Today, the old Barge Office is gone, replaced by the modern Staten Island Ferry’s Whitehall Terminal and the adjacent Battery Maritime Building, where ferries depart for Governors Island. But the ghosts of its history remain.
So next time you’re at The Battery, waiting for a ferry and watching the boats glide across the harbor, take a moment. Picture a proud policeman beaming as his scruffy, ugly-but-adored cat launches into the waves after a swimming rat. It’s a purr-fectly strange and wonderful piece of New York City history, hidden in plain sight at the very edge of the island.
