The Russian Aircraft Corporation MiG is a city within a city. 60 hectares of land and more than 130 buildings in the area of the former Khodynka field.
What “MiG” means in the scientific and industrial history of Russia, and of the whole world, is well known. But today the enterprise is actually in the process of liquidation (although it is supposed to be called differently – restructuring). The owner of MiG, the United Aircraft Corporation, decided to sell the production complex near the Dynamo metro station. Now housing will be built in its place and a park will be created.
However, when closing the plant, the authorities did not remember those who were settled here with an important assignment. Groups of cats – professional rat-catchers – lived in each workshop for decades. There were more than two hundred of them at the plant.
Throughout the company’s history, these “employees” have been outsourced. Nevertheless, they always remained part of the team (we have collected numerous testimonies of MiG veterans). However, after the decision to close the industrial site, many dozens of animals were literally thrown to their deaths.
Koshkin House
The predecessor of the MiG was the Duks enterprise, founded in 1893 by engineer Julius Meller, a native of the Estland province. First, bicycles were assembled at the plant, then motorized tires, then cars, and finally, in 1909, the first aircraft was designed.
— Cats appeared there shortly after the creation of Dux. In 1910, the plant, one of the first aviation enterprises in Russia, moved to a site on the Khodynka field. The cats moved with him. Thus, the tradition [to keep cats at the enterprise] has been maintained for more than 100 years,” says Galina Charmadova, head of the MiG Central Museum. – There is a lot of manual labor in aviation production, including winding wires. And in those days there were also a lot of wooden parts. It is clear that rodents began to damage the wiring in aircraft, and protection from them was needed. At the same time, the production is ultra-precise, and no chemicals, including against rodents, can be used here: they can affect technological processes. Even the paths in winter were strewn with marble chips. Cats were a natural defense: we never had rats or mice.
Charmadova emphasizes that the plant has always been a special world.
– In this universe, dynasties worked, in each workshop there was a winter garden. The ficus donated by Indira Gandhi grew up to five meters in such a garden. It had its own powerful corporate culture. Everyone remembered that during the war twenty Il-2 attack aircraft were made here per day. The whole huge team lived for the sake of the seemingly miraculous creation of winged machines. All employees were masters, virtuosos of their craft. They were accustomed to animals, for the most part they adored them.
It would be wrong to say that cats performed a purely utilitarian function with us. They were simply loved, they humanized everyone. And that was the function of labor psychology.
Due to the peculiarities of the species, cats live in a certain place with their own territory and borders, where strangers are not allowed. In addition, the MiG units themselves competed to see who had the most interesting cats. Cats of certain breeds lived in different workshops: Siamese, British, Russian Blue and Siberian. Black as panthers, smoky Scottish, fawn-red color. Purely “Migov” breeds were also bred: black with emerald eyes, red – with honey, striped – with a special arrangement of the wool pattern.
The harmonious coexistence of cats and people at the plant continued until 2020. By that time, however, MiG had been in crisis for many years. In 2017, the management of the United Aircraft Corporation decided to gradually close the industrial site. The coronavirus pandemic has only accelerated this process.
Winter is Coming
As the territory was being prepared for sale, workers began to be laid off in waves. Of the 20,000 people, only a few hundred remained. Last summer, the management of the plant demanded that the workers not feed the animals. The calculation was that the cats themselves would go somewhere.
“Here a complete misunderstanding of their nature was manifested,” explains Galina Charmadova.
“Unlike mice and rats, cats are non-migratory animals. They don’t go anywhere, they die on the doorstep. Which is exactly what started to happen.
A famous photograph of the war years is a village burned to the ground. Along the former street there are skeletons of stoves, on which cats sit forlornly. If there were no animals, photography would not have become famous. Why did they return?
The cat is territorial. The house she lives in is her home. Therefore, in the photo, defenseless animals on dilapidated stoves grow up to be a symbol of orphanhood.
On 60 hectares of the defense enterprise, with the departure of people, the battle for survival began.
While the plant was running, all the cats were healthy. But their lives changed overnight. Left without care in unheated workshops, the animals began to get sick and die en masse.
The employees of the MiG museum were desperately looking for volunteers, writing to shelters, but no one was ready to accept such a large number of cats, especially those suffering from leukemia and immunodeficiency. Difficulties were added by the fact that the plant management did not want to let outsiders into the closed territory of the defense enterprise.
Charmadova says: “I even prayed to Spiridon Trimifuntsky, the patron saint of animals. And I consider the future as a miracle: on the one hand, we got through to the volunteers, and on the other hand, the leadership completely unexpectedly changed its position, went towards us.”
On the evening of December 16, on the eve of the longest night of the year, and therefore the worst night for freezing cats, an announcement appeared on Facebook * about the search for volunteers: “Moscow says goodbye to aircraft construction, buying from Rostec the territory of the former MiG plant. For residential construction. For an amount of at least 35 billion rubles. And aside from these billions, the local cats and cats who remained there, who had lived their short feline life in this place <…> They, as best they could, served, caught rats, delighted and decorated the production life. Humanize the environment. Do not suspect anything bad for yourself. Just suddenly they were left alone, people began to leave, almost left … And neither the current owners, nor the future ones just noticed them, for billions of dollars. They quit.
Kotlovki – boxes that close when an animal enters them. Photo: Katya Ustyugova
The very next morning, the first group of three people with bowlers (transparent boxes that close when an animal enters them) arrived at the plant. These were not people who professionally, by occupation, are engaged in helping animals. But it was they who were able to unite dozens of activists around themselves, who subsequently rescued more than a hundred cats from the enterprise.
– At the entrance of the “MiG” we were met by the head of the factory garage Herman. In his arms sat a snotty cat, whose name was Freddie. German for some reason stubbornly called him Chernomordin – apparently because of the color, – says journalist Irina Beiden, one of the participants in the first expedition to the MiG. – Herman actually became the “motor” of our movement, and quite naturally: he just went to the pet store to buy products for his domestic cats and told the employees about the situation at the plant. Soon, catchers who already had experience in rescuing animals from other enterprises began to join the rescue.
The head of the garage escorted the first volunteers to the office building.
“Before the plant was closed, the cats there were in constant contact with people and were tame. We took six at once, took everyone to their homes,” says Beiden.
Subsequently, Irina will formulate, perhaps, the central idea of the rescue expedition: “The MiG cats are a small staunch army, whose strength is almost running out. But often salvation comes when you no longer expect anything.”
The beginning
Volunteers united around Svetlana Ryabova, Candidate of Historical Sciences, urban historian. She studied and taught in Canada, taught English at the Higher School of Economics. And it was she who had to not only gather people around chats on social networks, but also become the official representative of the aircats.
“Sveta is a heroic girl,” says Irina Beiden. – She recorded all those rescued on the MiG in veterinary clinics as herself. At the initial stage, these were her personal obligations to clinics for seven hundred thousand rubles a month.
– In the 20th of December, in the first days when we announced the start of the rescue operation, a lot of people joined us. There were only 12 autovolunteers who delivered cats to veterinary clinics. And the number of subscribers in social networks, including donating money, reached 1,300,” says Svetlana Ryabova. – We invested in the promotion of information about cats in social networks and our personal money: 5,000 rubles a week.
Thanks to Galina Charmadova, the administration allowed the volunteers to continue capturing in January, February and March.
The backbone of the team formed quickly. Ekaterina Ustyugova, an IT employee at Leroy Merlin, who previously worked at Mail.ru, took on a significant part of the organizational work.
I am from an aviation family. My deceased grandfather is a military pilot,” she says. – Dad was also a military pilot in the past and flew just on MiGs. Now he flies Boeing. By chance, I saw a post on Instagram* about the misfortune with the cats of the MiG plant and immediately thought of it. Although I also love animals, everything coincided. I have been in the project since December 21. She started as a volunteer, learned by external signs to separate cats with snot and tears from healthy ones. On December 23, I took the cats to the clinic and met my Mandarina there.
Ekaterina made a separate website for the project. Later, she began to maintain a page on Instagram *. Since she professionally edits videos, things have progressed a lot: Ustyugova’s stories have resonated with users, people have begun to take cats more actively.
– We decided with her that we would not have compassionate texts. We need to talk about the real situation in Moscow: renovation is underway, many houses are being demolished, animals are dying without their usual habitat,” explains Svetlana Ryabova. — I administer all sites, and Irina Beiden and Maria Ponomarenko write excellent texts. Not compassionate, but real portraits without silence. And so it goes for every animal.
Volunteers
The backbone of the rescue team is small: literally four people carry out administrative work. They invest in the project not only their time, but also money. Maria Ponomarenko, the head of the HR department of a large corporation, helps them a lot in this, helping to promote posts about aircats in social networks.
From the very beginning, catchers joined the project, including those who had previously rescued animals from the territory of the research institute for long-range radio communications (this Soviet defense institute with a huge underground infrastructure is now being demolished), Alexandra Kolyutskaya, Daniil Bigava, Mikhail Plotnikov. They already had a decent experience, but it’s psychologically difficult to go trapping among dead animals.
Now in the project there are people who take animals to them temporarily, for socialization. It can last up to three months.
– Svetlana Dunaevskaya from the Urban Animal Protection Fund and the Feed project agreed with veterinarians on big discounts. Her fund began to pay for sterilization. But today it costs 2,500 rubles to sterilize a pregnant cat, and 2,000 for a normal one,” says Svetlana Ryabova. And he begins to list those who help save the aircats. – Tanya Chetysheva is a real Joan of Arc, who raised the audience in the chat: after all, only when I got to these 60 hectares did I understand the scale and why we need at least 50 people. Dmitry Panteleev from a construction company brings wood pellets for toilets: this is a by-product of furniture production. And then there is the volunteer Vera, an engineer at the Sukhoi aircraft factory. She has four feral cats in foster care. A professional photographer Katya Denisova just registered in the veterinary clinic. Natasha Filippova, an actress from the Mayakovsky Theater, constantly donates money and helps with her hands. Volunteers of the Ecoassembly project also came to the rescue.
Financial curators
When the money ran out, Ryabova began sending out offers to subscribers on social networks to take care of specific cats – to pay a certain amount per month.
“After the ban on promoting projects for Russian citizens on Facebook* and Instagram* in connection with a special operation in Ukraine, we found ourselves in a difficult situation,” Svetlana admits.
Thanks to the response of subscribers, volunteers were able to take animals to specific clinics immediately after capture, examine them, sterilize them, vaccinate them, and
take tests for especially dangerous infections (it was necessary to understand the compatibility of animals in overexposure). Overexposure is also almost always paid, especially for leukemic cats.
“As a result, financial curators took over the maintenance of more than two-thirds of the number of individuals,” says Irina Beiden.
One of the custodians of the project, Dmitry G., helps with money when there are completely stalemate situations. An employee of government agencies, he does not want to name his position.
– I saw a repost on Facebook * at the very beginning, wrote to me in the night: “A hundred thousand is enough?” I said, “Not funny!” And he transferred the money and saved us.
Today, the project has 65 animals at home overexposure. The maximum number of curators at a time was 70 people. Today there are 32.
Diseases and Medicine
Last winter, MiG cats were first seen in unheated rooms. They were not ready for such a turn: there were a lot of dead animals in the shops, literally frozen to the pipes. Almost everyone was sick, the usual diagnosis is anemia and leukemia (more than 35%). Very few people were healthy.
Svetlana Ryabova, who respects evidence-based medicine, began interviewing veterinarians. Volunteers made texts about feline infections from them. It was possible, for example, to make a live broadcast with the infectious disease veterinarian Vladislav Skorokhodov.
— Since we have many cats with leukemia and coronavirus gastroenteritis, we wanted to kill two birds with this ether: firstly, to talk about evidence-based medicine — that you don’t need to be afraid of all feline infections (the same coronavirus gastroenteritis is not a human coronavirus , people cannot get infected with it, and leukemia is not a sentence, there is a drug that helps to reduce the titer of the disease), and secondly, to encourage people to take such animals to themselves. After this lecture, four cats with leukemia were taken away from us.
Concert in the name of cats
Svetlana Ryabova found many friends among professional musicians from the Gnesinka and the Bolshoi Theatre, they helped a lot. First, a familiar violist joined the team, and other musicians followed him: Sergei Ananich (cello), the Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra, the Ippolitov-Ivanov Quartet, Sergei Tishchenko (viola, Pratum Integrum), Olga Zhmaeva (Bolshoi Theatre).
– A pianist Oleg, a friend of Svetlana’s musical circle, lives in Seattle, in the USA. Works there at the International Ballet Academy. There were a lot of wild cats at the plant that never communicated with people.
Oleg organized their transportation to America. They flew to Seattle for two days. Now they are undergoing rehabilitation in a special center, then they will be looking for families,
” says Irina Beiden.
Ironically, Seattle is home to the grand Boeing factory. It is not known whether the MiG pets were sad when they left their native workshops, but they have good conditions in the homeland of the American aviation industry.
In March, volunteers decided to arrange a charity concert to help the cats. Many familiar professional musicians agreed to play for free – from the Gnesinka, the Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra. Ippolitov-Ivanov. Galina Charmadova found money to pay for the stage at the House of Architects, agreed with the artist Vasya Lozhkin about posters and souvenirs for the auction. The concert was conducted by Svetlana Ryabova, cellist Sergey Ananich acted as concertmaster. The program consisted of baroque music, romanticism, modern minimalism.
Announcements were given to the media up to “Afisha”. The tickets were in high demand. The hall was full. 400,000 rubles were collected to help the aircats, with this money the rescue expedition existed for a month.
Now 87 cats remain in the care of volunteers. Members of the rescue expedition continue to treat them and give them to good hands.
P.S. From the author
While the plant was running, cats were included in the system of relations with employees. However, when the enterprise was closed, its management no longer considered cats “for their own”.
Animals were not given to many MiG workers: electricians who remained at the enterprise until the last, explained that these cats were rat catchers and should serve in the workshops to the end: “Otherwise, the rats will gnaw through all the cables.” Then they promised to shoot the animals after the final closure of the MiG. So to speak, “to solve the problem.” It got to the point that a drunken electrician beat up a miniature defender of the “aircats” 18 years old. Traumatologists ascertained that she had bruises on her shoulder and side closer to the lower back – bruises without fractures. The catches have stopped.
But so far, a lot has been done. In the memory of experienced volunteers, such a number of cats were evacuated from one object for the first time. There were about 60 permanent participants in the project at the peak of activity.
Such initiatives work to unite civil society. Here people of different beliefs came together. One of the volunteers, still a young man, went to fight in the Donbass. Many participants categorically do not share his aspirations. Russia is at a crossroads. What it will be at the end of this period, no one knows. But the MiG cats proved that civil confrontation is not a sentence and the future belongs to everyone.
In conversations with the participants in this amazing enterprise, as a person of the old school, at first I was jarred by the word “project”. The project implies calculation, indifferent rationality, division of responsibility and subordination. Finished – ran away.
If good is done out of self-interest, it is not good. “Make me happy, and in the same moment I will make you happy!” – this is the true formula that the volunteer reads in the eyes of the pet.
Charity in its former form was built on emotions and empathy.
But life has changed everything. A new generation has come, which is building selfless help using modern management technologies. Animals freeze and die on the street, and volunteers draw a conditional board and magnets press task cards with marks about the passage of stages to it.
Apparently, this is the only way to solve difficult problems with many variables. This is a very energetic story. According to Ekaterina Ustyugova, she burned out in the end, she had to take a break. Volunteers constantly fight for the trust of readers, convince them of their adequacy and decency.
And the rescue expedition to Khodynka, organized according to all the rules, did not exclude human sympathy. Satisfaction, pride, love are all legitimate companions of charity. People get better, self-respect appears.
To date, 168 animals have been captured as a result of all these efforts. Of these, 11 have died, about 70 have already found a new home, the rest are waiting for their fate.
Volunteers have created a wide variety of charitable and educational content on all project resources. And the geography of sending cats is the widest: Ukhta, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Evpatoria, Seattle.
They still need help. Only half of the work, albeit the most necessary, has been done. Volunteers will be glad to any participation. But even today, sincere gratitude to them is brought by the rescued themselves – the last cats of Russian aviation.
