BOISE, Idaho — The walls of the Old Idaho Penitentiary no longer holds any prisoners, but they do hold stories, and some of the most interesting stories aren’t about the prisoners at all. This Memorial Day weekend, the Old Pen is sharing the story of Dennis the Cat. Event coordinator Alexandra Polidori said Dennis has always had a special place in the penitentiaries' history.
"Dennis the Cat is a beloved figure here at this site," Polidori said. "Dennis the Cat was a cat who lived here for 16 years. He was found in the prison chicken farm in 1952 and was snuck in by a couple of the residents who were here. So, he was snuck in a little shoebox. He was kept inside their cell and fed scraps from the dining hall."
Eventually the guards found out about the kitten, and they let him stay. He was there until 1968. When Dennis passed away on Memorial Day.
"The legend is, he was born on Memorial Day, and he passed away on Memorial Day," she said. "We don't know if he was born on Memorial Day, but we do know that he did pass away on Memorial Day."
Polidori said Dennis may be beloved now, but back then he was the star of the show.
"Everyone loved him, he was able to walk around the site and have doors open for him he would lay on the guard's desk, he would be on the residents shoulders as they were lining up for the dining hall," Polidori said. "He really took a liking to the lifers, to the ones who were in here for life, and would like to start their chess games."
Throughout his days on the prison grounds, Dennis offered some comfort and companionship to the prisoners.
"He's kind of our first form of like a, quote unquote, therapy animal here in Idaho's prisons," she said. "They didn't call him that, but he wasn't here to work. He was here just to lounge around. When he passed away, which would have been in the barber shop over in the site, they held a memorial service for him."
His headstone is the only one that is actually inside the prison walls. The prisoners also wrote an obituary for him in the prison newspaper. There are no pictures of Dennis, but there is a sketch of him in the obit.
"What we do have is a drawing in the obituary of what he would have looked like although this is in pencil, so we don't know," she said. "But he was described as a scraggly tomcat with a little white puff on his chest. So, kind of a tuxedo little cat."
This is the fourth year of the Old Pen holding a celebration for Dennis, and every year, more people come to learn the story, visit the headstone and even play a few games.
"We do school tour groups every single year throughout the school tour season, and we tell them about Dennis and that really gets the word around, and he is this mascot here at the site that shows the humanity of Idaho's prisons, it shows that these people needed comfort inside of here," she said. "And he was one of those things for them, and so I think it's important that we celebrate Dennis and show his legacy and how he impacted the residents who were here."
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