The Complete Guide To Mysterious Beings - Galaksija

FOUR
FLYING FELINES
A cat named Thomas was a nationwide sensation in 1959. His picture was published from coast to
coast and he starred on several television shows. He was about the only interesting thing that ever
happened to the little town of Pinesville, West Virginia, and its seven hundred hard-working
inhabitants. Thomas was no ordinary cat. He possessed a pair of ”wings” and whenever he got
angry he would flutter them up and down like a grounded gooney bird.
Unfortunately he could not really fly. But that didn't seem to matter much to the long lines of openmouthed
West Virginians who happily paid ten cents a head to glimpse this wonder.
Young Douglas Shelton, fifteen, had captured the cat early in May 1959, while hunting in the hills.
”My dog treed it,” he explained later. ”I almost took a shot at it with my .22, but then I saw it was a
cat so I shinnied up the tree and caught it.”
He quickly realized that he had a most unusual prize. The animal had two peculiar lumps growing
out of its back. Wings, without a doubt.
”It wasn't wild,” Doug said. ”It acted like it was used to people. And its manners were pretty good
until you pulled those wings. Then it would get mad and start clawing.”
He carried the cat home triumphantly and it adopted his family. Word soon flashed across the hills
that a marvelous winged cat had been found and the stampede started. A reporter from the Beckley,
West Virginia, Post-Herald, Fern Miniacs, was one of the first to examine the animal with an
objective eye. Although Doug had named the cat Thomas, Miniacs discovered it was really a
female. The name stuck anyway.
”It's thirty inches long,” Miniacs reported, ”has a tail like a squirrel, and two perfectly shaped
wings, one on each side. The wings are boneless but evidently have gristles in them. Each wing is
about nine inches long.”
Thomas looked like a Persian cat and had long, beautiful hair. Her feet were slightly oversized and
she was considered somewhat larger overall than the average cat. The wings were furry and soft,
but felt gritty near the body. A local conservation officer inspected the animal and said he thought it
was just shedding its coat, much to the annoyance of the growing cult of ”winged cat” believers in
Pinesville.
An anonymous veterinarian traveled from Baltimore, Maryland, to look Thomas over. ”I thought at
first,” he said sagely, ”that the wings were the result of a freak of nature... an attempt to grow an
extra pair of legs. But now I don't know what they are.”
Stories of Doug Shelton's amazing find reached New York City and Dave Garroway, then the M.C.
of NBC's Today show, invited Thomas and owner to the big town. Though it was obviously beneath
the dignity of a winged cat, Doug's mother insisted that he and Thomas travel to the city by train.
She was afraid to let them fly.
On June 8, 1959, Thomas confronted the NBC cameras like a bored pro while Doug shyly told his
story to millions. Jack Lescoulie was acting M.C. that day, and Doug admitted that he had been
offered as much as four hundred dollars for the animal, but he was not tempted to sell her. Thomas
apparently was not very interested in the furor surrounding her, but fame gave her expensive eating
habits. She preferred fresh meat and mackerel fish over ordinary canned cat foods.
Pinesville now had a real honest-to-goodness celebrity in its midst. People traveled for miles along
the treacherous mountain roads to look at the animal, and the Shelton family realized they had a
good thing going. Doug hauled in the dimes and Mrs. Shelton charged reporters a nominal sum if
they wanted to take pictures of Thomas.
”Folks around here estimated that Douglas took in over two thousand dollars with that cat,” one
resident observed.
Doug, however, claimed that ”about a thousand people” paid ten cents apiece to gape at the feline.
That would have netted him around one hundred dollars; hardly enough to keep the winged wonder