A Vermont university has bestowed the honorary degree of “doctor of litter-ature” on Max the cat, a beloved member of its community, ahead of students’ graduation on Saturday.

Vermont State University’s Castleton campus is honouring the feline not for his mousing or napping, but for his friendliness.

“Max the Cat has been an affectionate member of the Castleton family for years,” the school said in a Facebook post.

The popular tabby lives in a house with his human family on the street that leads to the main entrance to campus.

“So he decided that he would go up on campus, and he just started hanging out with the college students, and they love him,” owner Ashley Dow said on Thursday.

He’s been socialising on campus for about four years, and students get excited when they see him.

They pick him up and take selfies with him, and he even likes to go on tours with prospective students that meet at a building across from the family’s house, she said.

“I don’t even know how he knows to go, but he does,” Ms Dow said.

“And then he’ll follow them on their tour.”

The students refer to Ms Dow as Max’s mum, and graduates who return to town sometimes ask her how Max is doing.

Max won’t be participating in the graduation, though.

His degree will be delivered to Dow later.

He is not the first cat to receive human credentials. 

In 2020, an eight-year-old therapy dog named Moose received an honorary doctorate in veterinary medicine at Virginia Tech University after he helped thousands of students. 

In 2016, a 19-year-old thoroughbred horse called Dr Teddy received a honorary doctorate form University of California Davis for being a Master Equine Educator. 

The 41^st running of the Vermont Corporate Cup and State Agency Race had 1,952 participants, including both runners and walkers, and continues to be one of the largest races in Vermont. After seeing more than 4,000 participants in the 2019 event, races were canceled in 2020 and 2021 because of the COVID-19 outbreak, explained race director Leslie Davis. Participation in 2023 was very similar to this year with 1,853 runners and walkers. 

“We’re hoping to build the participation back up,” Davis said, noting that the increased incidence of remote working in both state and corporate offices likely has diminished both the energy and opportunities for recruiting teams among co-workers. 

Davis also pointed out that individuals can sign up and run in the event without being on a team. The event, which began in 1980 as a state employee event with 23 participants, has been an annual project of the Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports since the 1990s. For 2024, Union Mutual was the presenting sponsor.

The fastest individual walker, and by a considerable margin, was Andrea Vogl, 48, a Burlington resident who finished in 34:09. Second overall, and also from Burlington, was Steve Dargy, 30, who finished the walk in 37:38.

Although many of the people in the walking event simply walk, race walking competitively involves a very specific technique, and the race organizers station judges along the course to be certain competitive walkers are using the proper form, which is to say, not jogging. The Corporate Cup website provides a video showing the proper technique.

Teams

Most of the participants, both runners and walkers, participated as three-person teams in one of several divisions: Corporate, State, Nonprofit, or Open. The overall winning team was in the Open division, male with a time of 52:58. The Dealer.com team 1 included Brent Towne (17:24), Silas Talbot (17:45), and Chris Coffey (17:49), all representing Cox Automotive. All three of them finished in the top 10 of the male runners.The complete results, and those of earlier years of the event, can be found at iResultsLIVE!