Nins Retirement

2007-12-06 17:05:58.000 – Brian Clark,  Observer

Nin, hard at work like always

So I guess the proverbial cat is out of the bag. No pun intended.

Those that were able to watch the Good Morning America broadcast on November 19th were the first to find out that our beloved Observatory cat, Nin, will be retiring from his post on the summit in a few weeks. Quite a bit of discussion ensued in our forums. Of course, if you didn’t get to see the Good Morning America broadcast and don’t peruse our forums, then you may not have known until our volunteer from last week, Katherine, briefly mentioned his imminent departure in her comment yesterday.

I figured it would be best at this point to take a moment and fill people in, especially since we have received numerous inquiries on this subject.

The decision to retire Nin from the summit was made a couple months ago after he had a few health problems. He is perfectly fine now that the health issues have been taken care of (he had a mouth full of bad teeth that had to be removed). However, Nin is about 17 years old, so it was decided that the most humane thing to do at this point was to move him to a home in the valley where he could get immediate vet attention if he were to fall ill. If that were to happen on the summit in the dead of winter, there may not be an opportunity to get him down for a couple of days.

It will be very sad to see Nin leave and we will miss him dearly, however I am glad to say that there will be a successor to Nin. The Conway Humane Society has already offered to donate a new cat and they have even suggested one that they think would be suited well to life on the summit. It was a unanimous decision by the summit crew to find a successor to Nin. We all love having a cat around and cats on the summit have been a long standing tradition for the Observatory. It makes it feel a little more like home up here and it would certainly feel very strange not to have a cat roaming about.

When Nin does leave on December 26th, he will be going to live with two long time employees of the Mount Washington State Park in Gorham, NH. Both of them have been here since Nin was first brought up in the early 90’s and I am positive that they will provide a wonderful new home for him.

Brian Clark,  Observer