11/06/2026
On October 2, 2013, the city of Murmansk unveiled a bronze monument on Kapitanskaya Street.
It shows a plump Siamese cat seated on a bench, holding a small traveler's bundle wrapped in cloth.
The cat's name was Semyon. He had disappeared in Moscow in 1987 and returned to his family's apartment in Murmansk in 1993, thin and exhausted, having crossed more than 2,000 kilometers of Russian terrain on his own. The Sinishin family recognized him immediately. He was unmistakably himself.
The monument was commissioned more than twenty years after he came home. Visitors leave small offerings at the base. The bench beside him is popular for photographs.
Murmansk is the world's largest city above the Arctic Circle, a port city on the Barents Sea, founded in 1916 as the final city built in the Russian Empire. It is cold, northern, and industrial. It also has a bronze cat on a bench on Kapitanskaya Street, holding everything he brought back with him.
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