Faith

She walked into the church of St Augustine and St Faith on Watling Street, near St Paul's, in 1936, was thrown out three times, and was eventually taken in and named by the rector, Father Henry Ross. She sat in the congregation during services. In 1940 she had a kitten, black and white, whom the parish called Panda. On 6 September 1940 she began carrying the kitten down to the basement, into a recess between two stacks of sheet music. Ross carried them both back up three times; each time she took the kitten down again and stayed with it. He gave up and left them there. Three nights later, on 9 September, the church took a direct hit in the raid on the City. The upper floors burned and collapsed. Ross was away and came back to the site to find firemen holding him off, and went in anyway; he dug through the rubble and found her in the recess, covered in soot, with the kitten alive underneath her. The Dickin Medal could not be given to her — it was for animals in military or civil defence service, and she was a parish cat — so the PDSA had a special silver medal struck for her instead, presented in 1945. Her photograph and citation hung in the rebuilt church. She died in 1948, and Ross took her funeral.

Loved by · Father Henry Ross, Panda

Honours

• 1940Moved her kitten to the basement three days before the church was destroyed, and would not be moved back
• 1940Both found alive in the rubble after the raid of 9 September
• 1945Special silver medal struck for her by the PDSA, the Dickin Medal being reserved for animals in service
• · Her photograph and citation hung in the rebuilt church

Their kind

No breed at all — the ordinary cat of the world's ports and farmyards, which is exactly why ships carried them.

A life in seasons