When he ran for president, Joseph R. Biden Jr. said it was time to bring a pet back to the White House.
First it was announced that Champ and Major, the German Shepherds of the President-Elect and future First Lady Jill Biden, would roam the White House. And now, after more than a decade of absence, a cat will also be one of the president’s pets, said Jane Pauley of CBS Sunday Morning on Twitter on Friday.
In an interview with Fox 5 in Washington, DC, Dr. Biden admitted that she wouldn’t mind having a cat if her husband won the presidency.
“I would like to have a cat,” she said. “I love having animals in the house.”
The breed and name of the cat were not immediately available. Representatives of Mr Biden did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
The Bidens will restore a tradition of the President’s pets when they move into the White House in January, as President Trump chose not to have a pet during his tenure. But the Bidens cat won’t be the first in the White House.
Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of State William H. Seward gave him two cats, Tabby and Dixie, said Andrew Hager, a historian at the Presidential Pet Museum. Lincoln was a big “cat fan,” said Mr. Hager, and the President often fed Tabby off the dining table despite criticism from his wife.
“He once told a friend that Dixie was ‘smarter than his entire cabinet’ and ‘didn’t talk back, which was a bonus,'” Hager said.
Other presidential cats include Tom Kitten, who owned Caroline Kennedy; Shan Shein, the Siamese cat of Susan, the daughter of President Gerald Ford; and Misty Malarky Ying Yang, owned by President Jimmy Carter’s daughter Amy.
Probably one of the most popular cats in the White House was socks in the Clinton White House.
The black and white cat was the protagonist of an unreleased Super Nintendo game, “Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill,” and often garnered news media attention as he was the only pet in the White House until the Clintons had a chocolate lab called Buddy adopted in 1997.
Jennifer Pickens, a White House historian and author of “White House Pets: Fifty Years of Presidents and Their Pets,” said the advent of the Internet had added to Sock’s popularity when a cartoon version of the cat greeted visitors to the White House for kids website.
The last cat in the White House, India (also nicknamed Willie), belonged to President George W. Bush. Her time at the White House has often been overshadowed by the Bush family’s two Scottish terriers, Barney and Miss Beazley, Hager said.
Protesters in Kerala, India, burned a portrait of Mr. Bush in July 2004 to protest the cat’s name, citing it as an insult to their country, Mr. Hager said. (According to the White House Archives, the black shorthair cat was named after former Texas Rangers baseball player Ruben Sierra, who was nicknamed El Indio.)
India died in January 2009, just before President Bush left the White House.
Interest in the president’s pets has increased over the years as the public became interested in more life stories in the White House, Ms. Pickens said.
Pets can help humanize presidents and improve their image, and with the latest addition to the Bidens, they could also represent a president’s hopes for the nation under new leadership.
“Perhaps this is a symbol of Biden’s repeated desire to unite the country,” he said. “I know it’s pretty mundane, but I’m really excited to see how it goes.”
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