Peggy Gavan is an author, editor, and licensed New York City tour guide. She is the author of The Cat Men of Gotham: Tales of Feline Friendships in Old New York (Rutgers University Press: 2019), which explores the history of New York City through amazing stories about heroic men who rescued and adored cats in the late 1800s and early 1900s. She also writes a blog called The Hatching Cat: True and Unusual Animal Tales of Old New York, which contains hundreds of stories and has been featured in Newsweek and The New York Times. Peggy lives in Warwick, New York, with her husband and three rescue cats.
Story1900: Major Van Buren, The Hero Dog of London Terrace
Story1913: The Cows That Designed a Millionaire’s $250,000 Driveway
Story1906: Speck, the Momma Cat Who Saved Christmas at 27 Second Avenue
Story1928: The Real Cats of the Winter Garden Theatre
Story1912: The Cat and Guinea Pig That Survived the Equitable Life Fire
StoryBosun and the Missionary Cats of the Seamen's Church Institute
Story1899: Olympia, the Dewey Arch Cat, and Her Christmas Kittens
Story1879: The Goelet Mansion and the Last Farm on Broadway
Story1910: A Cat, a Bulldog, and a Lobster Walk Into a Harlem Restaurant
StoryThe 19th-Century Dog Pit at 155 First Avenue
Story1910: Nellie, the Class Cat of Brooklyn's Public School 128
Story1899: The Amazing Ben-Hur Chariot Race at the Broadway Theatre