Catherine the Great was so fond of her dogs she buried them in a special cemetery.
Although she was constantly busy with affairs of state, Catherine the Great always found time to spend with her pets.
Nowhere was that more true than in the summers when residing at her favorite residence, the Catherine Palace at Tsarskoye Selo (Tsars' Village, now known as the town of Pushkin).
Several odd monuments to her fondness for animals can still be found there -- including a dog cemetery complete with pyramid.
Catherine was especially fond of dogs. During her long reign, she had more than a dozen dogs of different breeds and sizes.
When in Tsarskoye Selo, the empress used to spend many hours walking with her dogs in the picturesque park surrounding the palace.
On these walks she usually stuck to the section of the park adjoining her pyramid -- a strikingly unusual granite summerhouse.
Dating from 1781, it was designed by Briton Charles Cameron to resemble an Egyptian pyramid. It can still be seen today, though little remains of its once magnificent interior. Ancient vases which once adorned it during Catherine's reign are now in the Hermitage.
It was behind the pyramid that three favorite dogs of the empress were buried. This "dog cemetery" came complete with modest marble tomb stones.
On the biggest stone, under which the bitch Zemira was buried, was inscribed an epitaph written by the French ambassador, Count Segure.
"Here lies Zemira, and the sad Graces must cover her tomb with flowers. Like Tom, her ancestor, and like Lady, her mother, she was constant in her inclinations, and it was very easy for her to run. She had only one drawback: sometimes, she was a little angry, but her heart was kind. When one loves somebody, one can be jealous, and Zemira loved very much the lady whom all the world loves not less than Zemira loved. One cannot be quiet when there are whole nations of your rivals. Gods who witnessed her tenderness, ought to have made Zemira immortal, so that she could always be together with her mistress."
Near the resting place of Zemira were two smaller tomb stones -- those of two more of Catherine's favorite dogs. They were Sir Tom Anderson and Duchess.
Like Zemira, both had often accompanied the Empress in her walks in Tsarskoye Selo.
"The dog cemetery" was carefully preserved until the October revolution, but was destroyed by the Soviets.
Catherine did not seem to hold cats in the same esteem as her canine friends.
There was, however, one exception.
On Sugar Hill ("Sakharnaya Gorka") near the lake in the huge park surrounding the Catherine Palace, lived a wild American cat brought there by a traveling Russian.
Among the court only Catherine was unafraid of the wild animal. She often let it sit on her lap or shoulder.
But its life ended badly after Grand Duchess Elisaveta Alexeyevna (the wife of Catherine's grandson, who would later become Tsar Alexander I) hit it with her fan upon taking fright after the cat jumped up on her shoulder.
The animal took its revenge by ambushing Elisaveta Alexeyevna when she, Catherine and their friend Countess Varvara Golovina reappeared at the same spot the next day. But because Varvara Golovina was wearing a hat just like that Elisaveta Alexeyevna had worn the day before, the animal got the wrong woman, biting the hapless Varvara Golovina on the cheek and scratching her upper lip.
The Countess grabbed the unfortunate wild cat by the tail and it was despatched to the Winter Palace in an iron cage, where it died soon after.
Although the dog cemetery has long since disappeared, the nearby pyramid can still be seen, and the park that Catherine and her dogs wandered is open to the public.