When the beer supply is threatened by hungry rats tainting grain supplies in your brewery, who you gonna call?
For Chicago’s Empirical Brewery, the answer was Venkman, Raymond Egon and Gozer, the new feline protectors.
Since starting work, the cats—named after the famed 1985 movie, Ghostbusters—have eradicated the rodent problem at Empirical Brewery, DNAinfo reports.
Bill Hurley, the owner of Empirical Brewery, explains that these cats are the only reason they store grain at their facility. Because the scent of predators keeps prey away, just the presence of the cats keeps the rats away. Now, the rats that choose to ignore this scent—whether out of desperation or stupidity—are left to be hunted. And so it is another chapter in the circle of life.
Hurley got these Ghostbuster cats from the Tree House Humane Society, which has also placed almost 400 cats in factories, barns, loading docks, behind restaurants and in backyards around Chicago. The cats are feral, which makes them more than qualified for this line of work.
DNAinfo also gives a glimpse back at one of history’s more famous feline brewery guardians, such as Towser the Mouser whose 28,899 lifetime mouse kills at Scotland’s Glenturret distillery earned him a place in Guinness World Records.
Distillery cats are so popular today that they have their own Instagram page, which if you’re in the mood to look at some fun cats or to get a behind-the-scenes look at some cool breweries, I recommend.
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