Ask Phoebe: Cat statue - two tales

The cat on the column at the Winter-gardens intrigues. Picture / Dean Purcell

I am interested in the statue of a cat sitting on a ball reaching for the sky that stands in the courtyard of the winter gardens in the Auckland Domain. I could find nothing in my research about it. I'd like to know who sculptured it and why is it there.

Cathy Owens, Manurewa.

It's an interesting wee story. Or stories, actually, as there are two versions. No one knows for sure the origin of the statue. But Mark Bowater, manager of local and sports parks for Auckland Council, helped me out when Ask Phoebe ran a piece on this in 2011.

The first story says the cat column was built in 1927 as part of the new courtyard area designed to link the tropical glasshouse, built in 1921, with the older temperate (cooler) glasshouse that had been built for the great exhibition of 1914.

The original plans for the courtyard area were drawn up by architects Gummer and Ford, and there was to have been a bear at the top of the pillar instead of a cat.

However, one of the decision-makers (it may have been William Gummer himself) was an anti-socialist and thought that, as a bear symbolised Russia and therefore socialism, he would change the statue to a cat.

A story in the Auckland Star of February 4, 1976, provides the second version. Sybil Dibble told the paper the statue was the King of the Cats.

"With his upstretched paw he is appealing to the King of the Birds to stop the incessant war between cats and birds."

King Cat was put there by the late Auckland sculptor Richard Gross, said Mrs Dibble. Gross was also responsible for the athlete on the Domain gates and the lions on the Mission Bay fountain, she said.

"He was a very whimsical person with a very fertile imagination. He was a man with magnificent ideals and he saw no reason for cats and birds to fight."

I am a cyclist as well as a car driver. Could you shed any light on when there will be continuous bike lanes on both sides of the road, the whole length of Tamaki Drive and Quay St? Mike Randall, Auckland.

Quay St will have bi-directional lanes on the seaward side from the Viaduct to the Strand. Auckland Transport aims to have it constructed in 2017. Tamaki Drive will also have bi-directional lanes on the seaward side of the road and these should be completed by 2018.

Cycle facilities on Quay St and Tamaki Drive are a component of the eastern corridor to and from the city and will link with the Nelson St cycleway, Wynyard Wharf and the Glen Innes to Tamaki Drive cycleway.