The Cat from Baghdad now chases mice in Colorado

The cat's out of the Baghdad: Hammer the cat spent the first 9 months of his life in Iraq riding in a supply truck with Army Staff Sgt. Rick Bousfield
(right) and chasing insurgent mice. Now he's living with Rick and family in Colorado Springs, Colo.

SAVING PRIVATE HAMMER
Fort Carson soldier adopts feline friend from Iraq base
By ANDREA BROWN THE GAZETTE

Pfc. Hammer dodged bullets in Iraq, and lived to meow about it. The Iraqi tabby cat now enjoys civilian life halfway across the globe in a Colorado Springs subdivision.

Saving Private Hammer became a mission for Fort Carson Staff Sgt. Rick
Bousfield, whose 3rd Brigade Combat Team adopted the cat born last fall at a base in Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad. Bousfield, a 19-year Army veteran, wouldn't leave a member of his team behind. It took months of planning and help from animal welfare groups to bring home the combat cat.

"He has been through mortar attacks," Bousfield said. "He'd jump and get
scared liked the rest of us. He is kind of like one of our own."

During artillery attacks, soldiers tucked Hammer inside their body armor for safekeeping. Hammer's main duty was mouse patrol. "He kept the mice out of the mess hall," Bousfield said. He also chased away the blues. "He was a stress therapist," he said. "The guys would come back in tired and stressed. Hammer would come back and bug the heck out of you. He wiped away some worries." A shipment of 300 cans of tuna came in handy because cat food wasn't on the supply list. Flea collars were easy to come by, though - the soldiers wore them around their ankles.

The cat was named after the unit, Team Hammer. Like his comrades, he had to earn rank. He was "promoted" to private first class after nabbing five mice. "He should have been major," Bousfield said. "He caught a rat as big as he was."

Hammer had the run of the base. When a soldier was wounded, Hammer went to the hospital to cheer him up, much to the delight of some injured Iraqi children.

In January, Bousfield learned the unit would ship home in March. He sent e-mail pleas about the cat to agencies such as Alley Cat Allies, a Washington, D.C., national feral cat resource.

"We had to say yes to an American soldier in Iraq," said Becky Robinson,
Alley Cat Allies director. "We had to do it for the animal's sake and the
men's sake. They were over there, fighting, doing their job - and rescuing a kitten."

The group enlisted Military Mascots, which helps deployed service members who befriend pets on foreign soils. "The logistics were quite involved with one cat," Robinson said. Alley Cat Allies raised the $2,500 needed for Hammer's shots, sterilization, paperwork and plane fare.

Hammer left Iraq with his unit in March, but from Kuwait he took a separate course. He flew cargo-class to San Francisco, and from there he traveled first class with an Alley Cat Allies volunteer to Denver. He purred when he heard Bousfield's voice at the airport.

"Only my husband would go to this extreme for a cat," said Bousfield's wife, Sheri. She wasn't surprised, though. She met him through a personal ad five years ago, impressed by a line that he "liked critters."

The family has five cats, former strays who hail from as far away as Florida and Pennsylvania, a dog, hamsters, two geckos, and two teens, Tiffany, 15, and Jeffrey, 13.