Pooli
Pooli was a ship’s cat who served in the USS Fremont, an attack transport and later a command ship in the Pacific during the Second World War. Pooli was as American as they come, born on the Fourth of July in 1944 at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Pooli was short for Princess Papule, and under her nickname, she was pampered by the ship’s crew after being brought aboard Fremont by crewman James Lynch. Pooli was on board long enough to witness some of the fiercest fighting in the Pacific War, including the invasions of Saipan, Palau, Leyte, and Iwo Jima.
When ships cross the equator, members of the crew who have never before ventured across that line are initiated as shellbacks. Pooli became a shellback in her turn. She also had her own battle station (apparently self-assigned), as do all members of a warship’s crew. When the alarm to man battle stations sounded, an unnerving clamor for any who hear it, Pooli established herself in the ship’s mailroom deftly concealed within a canvas mail sack, where she would remain until normal ship’s routine returned.
Pooli was issued her own uniform, and to adorn it she was awarded three campaign service ribbons and four battle stars for her services during World War II. After the war, she lived out her days in quiet retirement although she modeled her uniform, which still fit, in a photograph for the July 4 1959 edition of the Los Angeles Times. She was reported to be fit but nearly deaf at the age of fifteen.