Who can turn out a homeless cat? Apparently not the former residents of Old Barrows, who, in the winter of 1976, housed a pair of stray cats in the basement of their dorm. The cats, however, caused quite a furor when their by-products offended even seasoned maintenance crews.

                           --The News Team

January 30, 1976

Carl G. Breuning, superintendent of Building and Grounds, is fuming about the stink in the bowels of Old Barrows.

According to Breuning, the strong odor of cat feces prevented maintenance men from checking the boiler in the basement of Old Barrows last week.

“Oh God it was just terrible… when you hit the bottom of the stairs you couldn’t stand it,” Breuning said after a personal visit to the scene of the stench.

In a tersely worded memo to Richard K. Dahl, assistant dean of students, Breuning stated, “After the experience of entering the basement of Old Barrows, the mechanical force of this department refuses to service any equipment within this building until such time as it is cleaned.”…

In a letter to Lynne Talley, acting co-house president of Old Barrows, Dahl stated, “If the odor is due to the presence of one or more cats in the dorm, please see that they are removed immediately.”

According to Talley, the Old Barrows cleanup crew got out its “super duper pooper scooper and gathered a pile of feces the size and weight of a good size cat.”

Talley indicated that the feces was the product of a couple of weeks’ work by two cats, for whom Old Barrows is currently trying to find homes[…]

Talley added that they were “neat enough to do it every ten inches,” though they did mess up a volleyball net.

[He] vehemently denied that the feces were designed as a smoke screen to hide marijuana plants: “We’re not that kind of crew.”

The cats refused to comment.