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Tributes have been flooding in for Queenie, the famous Lyttelton cat.
Also know as Frederick, Horse, Sausage, Smokey and The Mayor, the iconic feline – thought to have been about 18 – was a favourite of people in the port.
Queenie, who died last Saturday, frequented businesses on London St, including pubs and dog cafes.
Lyttelton Coffee Company owner Stephen Mateer said Queenie wasn’t afraid of dogs.
“We’re kind of a dog cafe, and that cat would come in and basically hold its own. It must have been some sort of tough cat to come in and mix it up with the dogs,” Mateer said.
Civil and Naval former owner Louis Dyer knew Queenie by the name Horse (he was unsure why).
The cat visited the pub regularly over the nine years Dyer owned it.
“He just strolled in. He owned London St as far as he was concerned.”
Queenie would even have the occasional sleepover.
“You’d lock the place up at 1am not even noticing him and come back the next morning at 9am, only to have him casually stroll out the front door like it was a fully intentional manoeuver,” Dyer said.
The Lyttel Kiwi owner Huia-Rei Couch remembers Queenie sleeping in the shop on cold winter days.
Queenie’s owner of 14 years Hana Cassels said the cat chose them.
“One day he just walked in and he just never really left. It was like ... this is my house, I live here now.”
Cassels later learned Queenie had originally been called Frederick and had belonged to a neighbour up the road who had a dog Queenie disliked.
Cassels and her husband Zak have three children, Coco, 16, Lula-Mae, 14, and Manu, 12.
The children renamed the cat Queenie when they were young and the name stuck.
"He used to help discipline our children," Cassels said.
"If one of them was having a noisy tantrum and he thought it was too loud he would go up to them and sort of bat them, a clawless bat."
The family lived a few doors up from the main street, which soon became Queenie’s second home.
He had his own routine, knew who was working on what day – and who would feed him.
Cassels said Queenie had been seen swiping cat biscuits off the shelf at the supermarket, and would regularly sit up at the bar in the pubs.
On the main street of Lyttelton locals had many tales of an overly confident, cheeky and sociable cat that visited bus stops, made cars wait for him to cross the road, and shared lunch with the kids at school.
But Queenie wasn’t always popular at the school, not when he strolled into an empty classroom a few years ago and ate the school goldfish.
The Cassels had a funeral for Queenie last Sunday and buried him up in the Port Hills overlooking Lyttelton.
“He was one in a million,” Cassels said.
