Kiddo
In the early part of the 20th-century experimentation with airships led to Navies, merchant interests, and explorers, using lighter than air vessels to use the skies as ships had used the seas for centuries. Airships were looked at as an alternative to plowing through often hostile seas to travel great distances with speed and comfort.
America was an airship built in 1906 for its owner, a journalist named Walter Wellman, to use as the means of traveling to the North Pole. After repeated attempts to accomplish that purpose failed, Wellman decided to use America to cross the Atlantic, departing from Atlantic City New Jersey and reaching land somewhere on the European continent.
Kiddo was a stray gray tabby cat who with his brother was known to while away the time in the vicinity of the airship’s hangar. Brought aboard America by a crew member, Kiddo was adopted by the airship crew and although he was not part of the failed Polar flights, he was aboard for the Atlantic crossing. Kiddo was a reluctant flyer at first, noted in the airship’s log as “…like a squirrel in a cage…” as he raced around the vessel voicing his displeasure.
When a series of failures forced the crew to abandon ship, the crew resorted to a longboat being towed for the purpose far below on the surface. They were picked up by the British steamer Trent, which ship’s radio transmission announcing the crew of the Airship was safe mentioned Kiddo’s presence among the rescued.
Kiddo did not take to the skies again; whether by his own choice or by arbitrary decision of his owner is unknown. He instead resided with Edith Wellman, Walter’s daughter, for the remainder of his days. Nor does Kiddo hold the distinction of the first cat to be airborne, which honor goes to the unknown cat who accompanied Vincenzo Lunardi aloft in a balloon nearly 130 years before Kiddo’s aborted flight to Europe.