Abraham Lincoln, a republican President and America’s sixteenth, is voted the best every president and he is ranked the second most popular president after JFK. Let’s just say he was the greatest president of the United States, ever.

And he loved cats!

How about that? It just goes to prove that people who love cats are great people 🙂

And my God, was he great. His Gettysburg Address is inspiring. He was so eloquent. What a great writer he was. He was a thinker. And a strong character. It is as if his face had been carved from a granite wall.

Lincoln with tabby cat; possible his son’s (provided this photo is genuine)

Here is the Gettysburg Address (courtesy Wikipedia):

We are told that played with his cats for hours. He must have taken so much pleasure from their company. We, the cat loving public, can understand that. I wonder how many great decisions he had while petting a purring cat? As I write this, my cat companion, is on my lap making it more difficult to type and causing me to develop a stiff neck – who cares, I love it and him?

Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, said that his hobby was his cats. He was the first President to bring cats into the White House. He fed his son’s tabby cat with a gold fork at White House dinners.

The National Park Service recite this story about Lincoln’s love of cats:

As the civil war was coming to an end, the President was in a telegraph hut. He noticed three kittens. He enquired about them as was told that their mother was dead. He requested that they be cared for properly and a new home found for them.

He was a very compassionate man. I feel that he was a humble man with a very strong connection with “ordinary” people and animals. He loved animals.

Lincoln had strength with compassion; the greatest combination of characteristics. It is the opposite of ignorance with arrogance which causes so much suffering in the world.