SAT Practice TEST #3 Readings

Reading Test

Questions 1-10 are based on the following passage.

This passage is adapted from Saki, “The Schartz-Metterklume Method.” Originally published in 1911.

Lady Carlotta stepped out on to the platform of
the small wayside station and took a turn or two up
and down its uninteresting length, to kill time till the
train should be pleased to proceed on its way. Then,
5 in the roadway beyond, she saw a horse struggling
with a more than ample load, and a carter of the sort
that seems to bear a sullen hatred against the animal
that helps him to earn a living. Lady Carlotta
promptly betook her to the roadway, and put rather a
10 different complexion on the struggle. Certain of her
acquaintances were wont to give her plentiful
admonition as to the undesirability of interfering on
behalf of a distressed animal, such interference being
“none of her business.” Only once had she put the
15 doctrine of non-interference into practice, when one
of its most eloquent exponents had been besieged for
nearly three hours in a small and extremely
uncomfortable may-tree by an angry boar-pig, while
Lady Carlotta, on the other side of the fence, had
20 proceeded with the water-colour sketch she was
engaged on, and refused to interfere between the
boar and his prisoner. It is to be feared that she lost
the friendship of the ultimately rescued lady. On this
occasion she merely lost the train, which gave way to
25 the first sign of impatience it had shown throughout
the journey, and steamed off without her. She bore
the desertion with philosophical indifference; her
friends and relations were thoroughly well used to
the fact of her luggage arriving without her.
30 She wired a vague non-committal message to her
destination to say that she was coming on “by
another train.” Before she had time to think what her
next move might be she was confronted by an
imposingly attired lady, who seemed to be taking a
35 prolonged mental inventory of her clothes and looks.
“You must be Miss Hope, the governess I’ve come
to meet,” said the apparition, in a tone that admitted
of very little argument.
“Very well, if I must I must,” said Lady Carlotta to
40 herself with dangerous meekness.
“I am Mrs. Quabarl,” continued the lady; “and
where, pray, is your luggage?”
“It’s gone astray,” said the alleged governess,
falling in with the excellent rule of life that the absent
45 are always to blame; the luggage had, in point of fact,
behaved with perfect correctitude. “I’ve just
telegraphed about it,” she added, with a nearer
approach to truth.
“How provoking,” said Mrs. Quabarl; “these
50 railway companies are so careless. However, my
maid can lend you things for the night,” and she led
the way to her car.
During the drive to the Quabarl mansion
Lady Carlotta was impressively introduced to the
55 nature of the charge that had been thrust upon her;
she learned that Claude and Wilfrid were delicate,
sensitive young people, that Irene had the artistic
temperament highly developed, and that Viola was
something or other else of a mould equally
60 commonplace among children of that class and type
in the twentieth century.
“I wish them not only to be TAUGHT,” said Mrs.
Quabarl, “but INTERESTED in what they learn. In
their history lessons, for instance, you must try to
65 make them feel that they are being introduced to the
life-stories of men and women who really lived, not
merely committing a mass of names and dates to
memory. French, of course, I shall expect you to talk
at meal-times several days in the week.”
70 “I shall talk French four days of the week and
Russian in the remaining three.”
“Russian? My dear Miss Hope, no one in the
house speaks or understands Russian.”
“That will not embarrass me in the least,” said
75 Lady Carlotta coldly.
Mrs. Quabarl, to use a colloquial expression, was
knocked off her perch. She was one of those
imperfectly self-assured individuals who are
magnificent and autocratic as long as they are not
80 seriously opposed. The least show of unexpected
resistance goes a long way towards rendering them
cowed and apologetic. When the new governess
failed to express wondering admiration of the large
newly-purchased and expensive car, and lightly
85 alluded to the superior advantages of one or two
makes which had just been put on the market, the
discomfiture of her patroness became almost abject.
Her feelings were those which might have animated a
general of ancient warfaring days, on beholding his
90 heaviest battle-elephant ignominiously driven off the
field by slingers and javelin throwers.

Questions 11-20 are based on the following passage and supplementary material.
This passage is adapted from Taras Grescoe, Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile. ©2012 by Taras Grescoe.

Though there are 600 million cars on the planet,
and counting, there are also seven billion people,
which means that for the vast majority of us getting
around involves taking buses, ferryboats, commuter
5 trains, streetcars, and subways. In other words,
traveling to work, school, or the market means being
a straphanger: somebody who, by choice or necessity,
relies on public transport, rather than a privately
owned automobile.
10 Half the population of New York, Toronto, and
London do not own cars. Public transport is how
most of the people of Asia and Africa, the world’s
most populous continents, travel. Every day, subway
systems carry 155 million passengers, thirty-four
15 times the number carried by all the world’s airplanes,
and the global public transport market is now valued
at $428 billion annually. A century and a half after
the invention of the internal combustion engine,
private car ownership is still an anomaly.
20 And yet public transportation, in many minds, is
the opposite of glamour—a squalid last resort for
those with one too many impaired driving charges,
too poor to afford insurance, or too decrepit to get
behind the wheel of a car. In much of North
25 America, they are right: taking transit is a depressing
experience. Anybody who has waited far too long on
a street corner for the privilege of boarding a
lurching, overcrowded bus, or wrestled luggage onto
subways and shuttles to get to a big city airport,
30 knows that transit on this continent tends to be
underfunded, ill-maintained, and ill-planned. Given
the opportunity, who wouldn’t drive? Hopping in a
car almost always gets you to your destination more
quickly.
35 It doesn’t have to be like this. Done right, public
transport can be faster, more comfortable, and
cheaper than the private automobile. In Shanghai,
German-made magnetic levitation trains skim over
elevated tracks at 266 miles an hour, whisking people
40 to the airport at a third of the speed of sound. In
provincial French towns, electric-powered streetcars
run silently on rubber tires, sliding through narrow
streets along a single guide rail set into cobblestones.
From Spain to Sweden, Wi-Fi equipped high-speed
45 trains seamlessly connect with highly ramified metro
networks, allowing commuters to work on laptops as
they prepare for same-day meetings in once distant
capital cities. In Latin America, China, and India,
working people board fast-loading buses that move
50 like subway trains along dedicated busways, leaving
the sedans and SUVs of the rich mired in
dawn-to-dusk traffic jams. And some cities have
transformed their streets into cycle-path freeways,
making giant strides in public health and safety and
55 the sheer livability of their neighborhoods—in the
process turning the workaday bicycle into a viable
form of mass transit.
If you credit the demographers, this transit trend
has legs. The “Millennials,” who reached adulthood
60 around the turn of the century and now outnumber
baby boomers, tend to favor cities over suburbs, and
are far more willing than their parents to ride buses
and subways. Part of the reason is their ease with
iPads, MP3 players, Kindles, and smartphones: you
65 can get some serious texting done when you’re not
driving, and earbuds offer effective insulation from
all but the most extreme commuting annoyances.
Even though there are more teenagers in the country
than ever, only ten million have a driver’s license
70 (versus twelve million a generation ago). Baby
boomers may have been raised in Leave It to Beaver
suburbs, but as they retire, a significant contingent is
favoring older cities and compact towns where they
have the option of walking and riding bikes. Seniors,
75 too, are more likely to use transit, and by 2025, there
will be 64 million Americans over the age of sixtyfive. Already, dwellings in older neighborhoods in
Washington, D.C., Atlanta, and Denver, especially
those near light-rail or subway stations, are
80 commanding enormous price premiums over
suburban homes. The experience of European and
Asian cities shows that if you make buses, subways,
and trains convenient, comfortable, fast, and safe, a
surprisingly large percentage of citizens will opt to
85 ride rather than drive.

Questions 21-30 are based on the following passage.

This passage is adapted from Thor Hanson, Feathers.
©2011 by Thor Hanson. Scientists have long debated how the ancestors of birds evolved the ability to fly. The ground-up theory assumes they were fleet-footed ground dwellers that captured prey by leaping and flapping their upper limbs. The tree-down theory assumes they were tree climbers that leapt and glided among branches.

At field sites around the world, Ken Dial saw a
pattern in how young pheasants, quail, tinamous,
and other ground birds ran along behind their
parents. “They jumped up like popcorn,” he said,
5 describing how they would flap their half-formed
wings and take short hops into the air. So when a
group of graduate students challenged him
to come up with new data on the age-old
ground-up-tree-down debate, he designed a project
10 to see what clues might lie in how baby game birds
learned to fly.
Ken settled on the Chukar Partridge as a
model species, but he might not have made his
discovery without a key piece of advice from the local
15 rancher in Montana who was supplying him with
birds. When the cowboy stopped by to see how
things were going, Ken showed him his nice, tidy
laboratory setup and explained how the birds’ first
hops and flights would be measured. The rancher
20 was incredulous. “He took one look and said, in
pretty colorful language, ‘What are those birds doing
on the ground? They hate to be on the ground! Give
them something to climb on!’ ” At first it seemed
unnatural—ground birds don’t like the ground? But
25 as he thought about it Ken realized that all the
species he’d watched in the wild preferred to rest on
ledges, low branches, or other elevated perches where
they were safe from predators. They really only used
the ground for feeding and traveling. So he brought
30 in some hay bales for the Chukars to perch on and
then left his son in charge of feeding and data
collection while he went away on a short work trip.
Barely a teenager at the time, young Terry Dial
was visibly upset when his father got back. “I asked
35 him how it went,” Ken recalled, “and he said,
‘Terrible! The birds are cheating!’ ” Instead of flying
up to their perches, the baby Chukars were using
their legs. Time and again Terry had watched them
run right up the side of a hay bale, flapping all the
40 while. Ken dashed out to see for himself, and that
was the “aha” moment. “The birds were using their
wings and legs cooperatively,” he told me, and that
single observation opened up a world of possibilities.
Working together with Terry (who has since gone
45 on to study animal locomotion), Ken came up with a
series of ingenious experiments, filming the birds as
they raced up textured ramps tilted at increasing
angles. As the incline increased, the partridges began
to flap, but they angled their wings differently from
50 birds in flight. They aimed their flapping down and
backward, using the force not for lift but to keep
their feet firmly pressed against the ramp. “It’s like
the spoiler on the back of a race car,” he explained,
which is a very apt analogy. In Formula One racing,
55 spoilers are the big aerodynamic fins that push the
cars downward as they speed along, increasing
traction and handling. The birds were doing the very
same thing with their wings to help them scramble
up otherwise impossible slopes.
60 Ken called the technique WAIR, for wing-assisted
incline running, and went on to document it in a
wide range of species. It not only allowed young
birds to climb vertical surfaces within the first few
weeks of life but also gave adults an energy-efficient
65 alternative to flying. In the Chukar experiments,
adults regularly used WAIR to ascend ramps steeper
than 90 degrees, essentially running up the wall and
onto the ceiling.
In an evolutionary context, WAIR takes on
70 surprising explanatory powers. With one fell swoop,
the Dials came up with a viable origin for the
flapping flight stroke of birds (something gliding
animals don’t do and thus a shortcoming of the
tree-down theory) and an aerodynamic function for
75 half-formed wings (one of the main drawbacks to the
ground-up hypothesis).

Questions 31-41 are based on the following passages.

Passage 1 is adapted from Talleyrand et al., Report on Public Instruction. Originally published in 1791. Passage 2 is adapted from Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Originally published in 1792. Talleyrand was a French diplomat; the Report was a plan for national education. Wollstonecraft, a British novelist and political writer, wrote Vindication in response to Talleyrand.

Passage 1

That half the human race is excluded by the other
half from any participation in government; that they
are native by birth but foreign by law in the very land
where they were born; and that they are
5 property-owners yet have no direct influence or
representation: are all political phenomena
apparently impossible to explain on abstract
principle. But on another level of ideas, the question
changes and may be easily resolved. The purpose of
10 all these institutions must be the happiness of the
greatest number. Everything that leads us farther
from this purpose is in error; everything that brings
us closer is truth. If the exclusion from public
employments decreed against women leads to a
15 greater sum of mutual happiness for the two sexes,
then this becomes a law that all Societies have been
compelled to acknowledge and sanction.
Any other ambition would be a reversal of our
primary destinies; and it will never be in women’s
20 interest to change the assignment they have received.
It seems to us incontestable that our common
happiness, above all that of women, requires that
they never aspire to the exercise of political rights
and functions. Here we must seek their interests in
25 the wishes of nature. Is it not apparent, that their
delicate constitutions, their peaceful inclinations, and
the many duties of motherhood, set them apart from
strenuous habits and onerous duties, and summon
them to gentle occupations and the cares of the
30 home? And is it not evident that the great conserving
principle of Societies, which makes the division of
powers a source of harmony, has been expressed and
revealed by nature itself, when it divided the
functions of the two sexes in so obviously distinct a
35 manner? This is sufficient; we need not invoke
principles that are inapplicable to the question. Let us
not make rivals of life’s companions. You must, you
truly must allow the persistence of a union that no
interest, no rivalry, can possibly undo. Understand
40 that the good of all demands this of you.

Passage 2
Contending for the rights of woman, my main
argument is built on this simple principle, that if she
be not prepared by education to become the
companion of man, she will stop the progress of
45 knowledge and virtue; for truth must be common to
all, or it will be inefficacious with respect to its
influence on general practice. And how can woman
be expected to co-operate unless she know why she
ought to be virtuous? unless freedom strengthen her
50 reason till she comprehend her duty, and see in what
manner it is connected with her real good? If
children are to be educated to understand the true
principle of patriotism, their mother must be a
patriot; and the love of mankind, from which an
55 orderly train of virtues spring, can only be produced
by considering the moral and civil interest of
mankind; but the education and situation of woman,
at present, shuts her out from such investigations….
Consider, sir, dispassionately, these
60 observations—for a glimpse of this truth seemed to
open before you when you observed, “that to see one
half of the human race excluded by the other from all
participation of government, was a political
phenomenon that, according to abstract principles, it
65 was impossible to explain.” If so, on what does your
constitution rest? If the abstract rights of man will
bear discussion and explanation, those of woman, by
a parity of reasoning, will not shrink from the same
test: though a different opinion prevails in this
70 country, built on the very arguments which you use
to justify the oppression of woman—prescription.
Consider—I address you as a legislator—
whether, when men contend for their freedom, and
to be allowed to judge for themselves respecting their
75 own happiness, it be not inconsistent and unjust to
subjugate women, even though you firmly believe
that you are acting in the manner best calculated to
promote their happiness? Who made man the
exclusive judge, if woman partake with him the gift
80 of reason?
In this style, argue tyrants of every
denomination, from the weak king to the weak
father of a family; they are all eager to crush reason;
yet always assert that they usurp its throne only to be
85 useful. Do you not act a similar part, when you force
all women, by denying them civil and political rights,
to remain immured in their families groping in
the dark?

Questions 42-52 are based on the following passage and supplementary material.

This passage is adapted from Richard J. Sharpe and Lisa Heyden, “Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder is Possibly Caused by a Dietary Pyrethrum Deficiency.” ©2009 by Elsevier Ltd. Colony collapse disorder is characterized by the disappearance of adult worker bees from hives.

Honey bees are hosts to the pathogenic large
ectoparasitic mite Varroa destructor (Varroa mites).
These mites feed on bee hemolymph (blood) and can
kill bees directly or by increasing their susceptibility
5 to secondary infection with fungi, bacteria or viruses.
Little is known about the natural defenses that keep
the mite infections under control.
Pyrethrums are a group of flowering plants which
include Chrysanthemum coccineum, Chrysanthemum
10 cinerariifolium, Chrysanthemum marschalli, and
related species. These plants produce potent
insecticides with anti-mite activity. The naturally
occurring insecticides are known as pyrethrums.
A synonym for the naturally occurring pyrethrums is
15 pyrethrin and synthetic analogues of pyrethrums are
known as pyrethroids. In fact, the human mite
infestation known as scabies (Sarcoptes scabiei) is
treated with a topical pyrethrum cream.
We suspect that the bees of commercial bee
20 colonies which are fed mono-crops are nutritionally
deficient. In particular, we postulate that the problem
is a diet deficient in anti-mite toxins: pyrethrums,
and possibly other nutrients which are inherent in
such plants. Without, at least, intermittent feeding on
25 the pyrethrum producing plants, bee colonies are
susceptible to mite infestations which can become
fatal either directly or due to a secondary infection of
immunocompromised or nutritionally deficient bees.
This secondary infection can be viral, bacterial or
30 fungal and may be due to one or more pathogens.
In addition, immunocompromised or nutritionally
deficient bees may be further weakened when
commercially produced insecticides are introduced
into their hives by bee keepers in an effort to fight
35 mite infestation. We further postulate that the proper
dosage necessary to prevent mite infestation may be
better left to the bees, who may seek out or avoid
pyrethrum containing plants depending on the
amount necessary to defend against mites and the
40 amount already consumed by the bees, which in
higher doses could be potentially toxic to them.
This hypothesis can best be tested by a trial
wherein a small number of commercial honey bee
colonies are offered a number of pyrethrum
45 producing plants, as well as a typical bee food source
such as clover, while controls are offered only the
clover. Mites could then be introduced to each hive
with note made as to the choice of the bees, and the
effects of the mite parasites on the experimental
50 colonies versus control colonies.
It might be beneficial to test wild-type honey bee
colonies in this manner as well, in case there could be
some genetic difference between them that affects the
bees’ preferences for pyrethrum producing flowers.

Pathogen Occurrence in Honey Bee Colonies With and Without Colony Collapse Disorder

Writing and Language Test

Questions 1-11 are based on the following passage.

Shed Some Light on the Workplace

Studies have shown that employees are happier, 1 healthier, and more productive when they work in an environment 2 in which temperatures are carefully controlled. New buildings may be designed with these studies in mind, but many older buildings were not, resulting in spaces that often depend primarily on artificial lighting. While employers may balk at the expense of reconfiguring such buildings to increase the amount of natural light, the investment has been shown to be well worth it in the long run—for both employees and employers.

For one thing, lack of exposure to natural light has a significant impact on employees’ health. A study conducted in 2013 by Northwestern University in Chicago showed that inadequate natural light could result in eye strain, headaches, and fatigue, as well as interference with the body’s circadian rhythms. 3 Circadian rhythms, which are controlled by the 4 bodies biological clocks, influence body temperature, hormone release, cycles of sleep and wakefulness, and other bodily functions. Disruptions of circadian rhythms have been linked to sleep disorders, diabetes, depression, and bipolar disorder. Like any other health problems, these ailments can increase employee absenteeism, which, in turn, 5 is costly for employers. Employees who feel less than 100 percent and are sleep deprived are also less prone to work at their maximal productivity.

One company in California 6 gained a huge boost in its employees’ morale when it moved from an artificially lit distribution facility to one with natural illumination.

7 Artificial light sources are also costly aside from lowering worker productivity. They typically constitute anywhere from 25 to 50 percent of a building’s energy use. When a plant in Seattle, Washington, was redesigned for more natural light, the company was able to enjoy annual electricity cost reductions of $500,000 8 each year.

Among the possibilities to reconfigure a building’s lighting is the installation of full-pane windows to allow the greatest degree of sunlight to reach office interiors.
9 Thus, businesses can install light tubes, 10 these are pipes placed in workplace roofs to capture and funnel sunlight down into a building’s interior. Glass walls and dividers can also be used to replace solid walls as a means 11 through distributing natural light more freely.
Considering the enormous costs of artificial lighting, both in terms of money and productivity, investment in such improvements should be a natural choice for businesses.

Questions 12-22 are based on the following passage.

Transforming the American West Through Food and Hospitality

Just as travelers taking road trips today may need to take a break for food at a rest area along the highway, settlers traversing the American West by train in the mid-1800s often found 12 themselves in need of refreshment. However, food available on rail lines was generally of terrible quality. 13 Despite having worked for railroad companies, Fred Harvey, an English-born 14 entrepreneur. He decided to open his own restaurant business to serve rail customers. Beginning in the 1870s, he opened dozens of restaurants in rail stations and dining cars. These Harvey Houses, which constituted the first restaurant chain in the United States, 15 was unique for its high standards of service and quality. The menu was modeled after those of fine restaurants, so the food was leagues beyond the 16 sinister fare travelers were accustomed to receiving in transit.

His restaurants were immediately successful, but Harvey was not content to follow conventional business practices. 17 Although women did not traditionally work in restaurants in the nineteenth century, Harvey decided to try employing women as waitstaff. In 1883, he placed an advertisement seeking educated, well-mannered, articulate young women between the ages of 18 and 30. 18 Response to the advertisement was overwhelming, even tremendous, and Harvey soon replaced the male servers at his restaurants with women.
Those who were hired as “Harvey Girls” joined an elite group of workers, who were expected to complete a 30-day training program and follow a strict code of rules for conduct and curfews. In the workplace, the women donned identical black-and-white uniforms and carried out their duties with precision. Not only were such regulations meant to ensure the efficiency of the business and the safety of the workers, 19 but also helped to raise people’s generally low opinion of the restaurant industry.

In return for the servers’ work, the position paid quite well for the time: $17.50 a month, plus tips, meals, room and board, laundry service, and travel expenses.20
For as long as Harvey Houses served rail travelers through the mid-twentieth century, working there was a steady and lucrative position for women. Living independently and demonstrating an intense work 21 ethic; the Harvey Girls became known as a transformative force in the American 22 West. Advancing the roles of women in the restaurant industry and the American workforce as a whole, the Harvey Girls raised the standards for restaurants and blazed a trail in the fast-changing landscape of the western territories.

Questions 23-33 are based on the following passage and supplementary material.

How Do You Like Those Apples?

Marketed as SmartFresh, the chemical 1-MCP (1-methylcyclopropene) has been used by fruit growers since 2002 in the United States and elsewhere to preserve the crispness and lengthen the storage life of apples and other fruit, which often must travel long distances before being eaten by consumers. 23 1-MCP lengthens storage life by three to four times when applied to apples. This extended life allows producers to sell their apples in the off-season, months after the apples have been harvested.
And at a cost of about one cent per pound of apples, 1-MCP is a highly cost-effective treatment. However, 1-MCP is not a panacea for fruit producers or sellers: there are problems and limitations associated with its use.

[1] 1-MCP works by limiting a fruit’s production of ethylene, 24 it is a chemical that causes fruit to ripen and eventually rot. [2] While 1-MCP keeps apples 25 tight and crisp for months, it also limits 26 their scent production. [3] This may not be much of a problem with certain kinds of apples that are not naturally very fragrant, such as Granny Smith, but for apples that are prized for their fruity fragrance, such as McIntosh, this can be a problem with consumers, 27 that will reject apples lacking the expected aroma. [4] But some fruits do not respond as well to 1-MCP as others 28 did, and some even respond adversely. [5] Furthermore, some fruits, particularly those that naturally produce a large amount of ethylene, do not respond as well to 1-MCP treatment. [6] Take Bartlett 29 pears, for instance, unless they are treated with exactly the right amount of 1-MCP at exactly the right time, they will remain hard and green until they rot, and consumers who experience this will be unlikely to purchase them again. 30

Finally, researchers have found that 1-MCP actually increases susceptibility to some pathologies in certain apple varieties. For example, Empire apples are prone to a condition that causes the flesh of the apple to turn brown.
Traditionally, apple producers have dealt with this problem by leaving the apples in the open air for three weeks before storing them in a controlled atmosphere with tightly regulated temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide levels. As the graph shows, the flesh of untreated Empire apples that are first stored in the open air undergoes 31 roughly five percent less browning than the flesh of untreated Empire apples that are immediately put into storage in a controlled environment. However, when Empire apples are treated with 1-MCP, 32 their flesh turns brown when the apples are first stored in the open air, though not under other conditions. Although researchers continue to search for the right combination of factors that will keep fruits fresh and attractive, 33 the problem may be that consumers are overly concerned with superficial qualities rather than the actual freshness of the fruit.

Questions 34-44 are based on the following passage.

More than One Way to Dress a Cat

From Michelangelo’s David to Vincent van Gogh’s series of self-portraits to Grant Wood’s iconic image of a farming couple in American 34 Gothic. These works by human artists have favored representations of members of their own species to those of other species. Indeed, when we think about animals depicted in well-known works of art, the image of dogs playing poker—popularized in a series of paintings by American artist C. M. 35 Coolidge, may be the first and only one that comes to mind. Yet some of the earliest known works of art, including paintings and drawings tens of thousands of years old found on cave walls in Spain and France, 36 portrays animals. Nor has artistic homage to our fellow creatures entirely died out in the millennia since, 37 despite the many years that have passed between then and now.

[1] The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, one of Russia’s greatest art museums, has long had a productive partnership with a much loved animal: the cat. [2] For centuries, cats have guarded this famous museum, ridding it of mice, rats, and other rodents that could damage the art, not to mention 38 scared off visitors. [3] Peter the Great introduced the first cat to the Hermitage in the early eighteenth century. [4] Later Catherine the Great declared the cats to be official guardians of the galleries. [5] Continuing the tradition, Peter’s daughter Elizaveta introduced the best and strongest cats in Russia to the Hermitage. [6] Today, the museum holds a yearly festival honoring these faithful
workers. 39

These cats are so cherished by the museum that officials recently 40 decreed original paintings to be made of six of them. In each, a cat is depicted upright in a humanlike pose and clothed in imperial-era Russian attire. The person chosen for this 41 task, digital artist, Eldar Zakirov painted the cats in the style traditionally used by portrait artists, in so doing 42 presenting the cats as noble individuals worthy of respect. One portrait, The Hermitage Court Chamber Herald Cat, includes an aristocratic tilt of feline ears as well as a stately sweep of tail emerging from the stiff scarlet and gold of royal court dress. The wise, thoughtful green eyes of the subject of The Hermitage Court Outrunner Cat mimic those of a trusted royal advisor. 43 Some may find it peculiar to observe cats portrayed in formal court poses, but these felines, by 44 mastering the art of killing mice and rats, are benefactors of the museum as important as any human.

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