ARTWORK from a series of Manx cat postcards is featured on a new set of stamps released by Isle of Man Post Office.
The stamp images have been gleaned from period postcards from an era when holidaymaking was the Island's main industry.
The set of six stamps, available as a presentation pack and a first day cover, also comes with a “Did You Know” of facts about Manx cats
For example: Their hunting instincts were demonstrated at a World Mousing Championship at a 1964 Calgary cat show. A Manx cat was the fastest to follow a mouse’s scent through a glass maze.
A Manx cat was also a mouser in the House of Lords in the early 1940s and another, the black ‘Peta’, in Britain’s Home Office in the 1960s.
A gift from the Island in 1964, ‘Peta’ invaded 10 Downing Street and roughed-up the resident Siamese owned by Prime Minister Harold Wilson. There were no repercussions; however, as The Home Office once ruled that she enjoyed ‘diplomatic status.’
‘Manxie’, a pure bred Manx cat, attracted massive media attention in 1933 when he was delivered to Hollywood and “enrolled on the staff of Mr Walt Disney” and roamed the Disney studios.
Manx cats have also been the companions of royalty and the famous. The ship’s cat on the former royal yacht Britannia was a Manxie and two Manx cats were adopted by Koko the gorilla at the Gorilla Foundation.
