In the funny, but still (I assume) historically accurate material about "The history of Ships Cats", the author states that "many navies had standing order for minimum acceptable number of cats per vessel" (for purpose of combating rodents and to improve morale of the crew).
Does anyone know example of such order? Also, somehow related - who would be responsible for taking care of those felines - would it be just a kitchen hand doing something in spare time or was it a prestigious position held by an officer?
Just to narrow this a little, lets focus on time from mid 19 to the mid 20 century and the broadly understood Western navies.
