Foreign News: The Cat in the Library

L’Epoque, a usually staid Paris daily, hazarded a political revelation. A cat, it charged, was carried on the budget of the Bibliotheque Nationale, France’s vast and ponderous national library. The cat, maintained by the library to discourage rats from gnawing the bindings, was said by L’Epoque to have died recently after giving birth to kittens and had been circumspectly replaced by a male.

TIME’S Paris Correspondent Sherry Mangan telephoned the library, was connected: 1) with the chef of the library canteen, who admitted a change of cats but was not sure of the new cat’s sex; 2) with the lady manager of the canteen, who refused to become embroiled in politics; 3) with a bull-voiced man who, apparently jealous of the library’s dignity, denied that it maintained a cat of any sex. But L’Epoque stuck to its guns, insisted that the cat was a regular government fonctionnaire and that its upkeep allowance was 30 francs (60¢) a year.