Johnson's cat

 the rest is history podcast discusses Dr Johnson's final years. A bit depressing.

But one of the aspects was about his cat:

from Wikipedia:

Hodge the cat: 

when I observed he was a fine cat, saying, "Why yes, Sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this;" and then as if perceiving Hodge to be out of countenance, adding, "but he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed."

Johnson would buy oysters for him to eat, because as the video notes, oysters were cheap and only eaten by poor people, so maybe Johnson's cook didn't want to buy them. 

.....Today Hodge is remembered by a bronze statue, unveiled in 1997 by Sir Roger Cook, the then-Lord Mayor of London, outside the house in Gough Square he shared with Johnson and Barber, Johnson's black manservant and heir.

The statue shows Hodge sitting next to a pair of empty oyster shells atop a copy of Johnson's famous dictionary, with the inscription "a very fine cat indeed".

It has become customary for visitors that walk past the statue to place coins in the oyster shells as tokens of good luck. To mark special occasions and anniversaries a pink piece of counsel's ribbon may be seen tied to one of the oyster shells or around Hodge's neck.

the wikipedia article notes several poems or essays etc written about Johnson and his cats. 

But Hodge is not the only cat memorialized in a statue in London:

------------------------------

 I posted a long post about Dropsy, and included a description of Johnson's final days dying of Dropsy on my medical blog. Too sad.