Another snippet which interested me (as an ailurophile) this week is from the May 2009 issue of Subterranea*:

A Practical Use for Cats

An unsubstantiated item of Derbyshire folklore claims the application of a cat to useful purposes, in connection with the development of lead mining at Bole Hill, near Wirksworth. Here shafts had been sunk, and lead ore raised, to considerable depths, until the water-table was reached necessitating expensive pumping if mining was to follow the ore deeper.

From 1772 a drainage tunnel (the Meerbrook sough) was driven under the hill from the valley of the river Derwent, intended to connect with a shaft then of the order of 200 metres deep. The tunnel was not in one straight line, as it made diversions from time to time to follow veins of galena as they were encountered. After 26 years or so, when the tunnel was getting close to the shaft, the question arose how to effect the meeting of the two with least wasted labour.

The solution, local legend has it, was provided by a cat, taken along the very wet tunnel into the heart of the hill. Boring was commenced at the bottom of the shaft at a predetermined time. The cat in the tunnel turned to look in the direction of the sound, thus indicating the exact alignment needed for the final length of the drainage tunnel. This was repeated several metres further along the same tunnel, allowing the determination of the shaft’s location by triangulation.

* Subterranea is the magazine of Subterranea Britannica, the “society devoted to the study of man-made and man-used underground structures and the archaeology of the Cold War”.