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Max the cat is now a ‘doctor of litter-ature’ from Vermont State University

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Via: hallux • 4 months ago • 9 comments

By: AP

Max the cat is now a ‘doctor of litter-ature’ from Vermont State University

S E E D E D C O N T E N T

CASTLETON, Vt. (AP) — A Vermont university has bestowed the honorary degree of “doctor of litter-ature” on Max the cat, a beloved member of its community, ahead of students’ graduation on Saturday.

Vermont State University’s Castleton campus is honoring the feline not for his mousing or napping, but for his friendliness.

“Max the Cat has been an affectionate member of the Castleton family for years,” the school said in a Facebook post.

The popular tabby lives in a house with his human family on the street that leads to the main entrance to campus.

“So he decided that he would go up on campus, and he just started hanging out with the college students, and they love him,” owner Ashley Dow said Thursday.

He’s been socializing on campus for about four years, and students get excited when they see him. They pick him up and take selfies with him, and he even likes to go on tours with prospective students that meet at a building across from the family’s house, she said.

“I don’t even know how he knows to go, but he does,” Dow said. “And then he’ll follow them on their tour.”

The students refer to Dow as Max’s mom, and graduates who return to town sometimes ask her how Max is doing.

Max won’t be participating in the graduation, though. His degree will be delivered to Dow later.

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Professor Principal

1 seeder Hallux 4 months ago

Max is now a Marxist.

Professor Expert

1.1 Buzz of the Orient replied to Hallux @1 4 months ago

What's next - the Nobel Prize?

Professor Principal

1.2 devangelical replied to Hallux @1 4 months ago

... and elitist, indoctrinating our young adults into woke culture. you can tell by that smug expression on his face ...

Professor Expert

2 sandy-2021492 4 months ago

Cats are nothing new (or mew?) to the world of academia.

In 1975, Jack Hetherington and F.D.C. Willard published a paper together in Physical Review Letters . The paper is an influential view into atomic behavior and has been cited multiple times, but only one of its authors is human—F.D.C. Willard is a cat, Atlas Obscura writes. His owner, Hetherington, added the feline (not pictured) as a co-author when he realized that although he was the sole author, he used the plural "we" and "our." Instead of retyping his entire paper, he simply tacked on his cat Chester , sneakily calling him "F.D.C. Willard" after his species name, Felix domesticus , his actual name, Chester, and the name of the cat's father, Willard. When the cat was out of the bag, Chester was invited to join the university's physics department full-time.