‘Our cell cat, Musya’ How a kitten born in a notorious Moscow jail brought comfort to an imprisoned artist — and went free to a good home

In the fall of 2024, the Russian-language imprint Babel Books Berlin published a new story by Zhenya Berkovich, a Russian writer and theater director currently serving six years in prison on charges of “justifying terrorism.” (The charges stem from a production of “Finist the Bright Falcon,” a play you can read and watch here.) Written while Berkovich was in pre-trial detention, the story centers around a cat living alongside other animals inside a women’s prison. And while it may be a work of fiction, cats are hardly a rarity in Russian prisons. In a lengthy interview with the independent journalists’ cooperative Bereg, performance artist Pavel Krisevich spoke of an “entire colony of cats” living in Moscow’s notorious Butyrka remand prison while he was in custody there. One kitten, named Musya, actually inhabited Krisevich’s cell until she was “freed along with her belongings,” the artist said. Meduza tells the story of how Musya the kitten was rescued from prison. 

In June 2021, performance artist Pavel Krisevich took to Moscow’s Red Square, delivered a manifesto condemning Russia as a police state, and then fired two blanks into the air — and one at his head. 

The performance earned Krisevich five years in prison. But before his sentencing, he spent a year and two months in pre-trial detention in Moscow’s notorious Butyrka prison. Though he was behind bars, Krisevich continued to draw and paint, using ashes from burnt matches, coffee grounds, jelly, and even blood to make his own pigments. 

During that time, two figures predominated in Krisevich’s work: skeletons (a nod to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel, House of the Dead) and cats. 

‘Everyone takes turns carrying her’

Musya the prison kitten lived in four different cells before she found herself bunking with Pavel Krisevich. In a letter, the artist described Musya as “striped, like a tiger,” with a white chest and chin, and tufts of fur sticking out of her ears.

The kitten would become a source of inspiration for Krisevich and appeared in many of his paintings. For fellow political prisoner Anna Arkhipova’s birthday, for example, Krisevich sent her a drawing “inspired by our cell cat, Musya, who was born in prison and, in a feline manner, was in denial about her surroundings.” 

Musya had a reputation for biting her cellmates’ feet and she’d even try to pull out their earplugs while they were sleeping. But despite her restless nature, the prisoners cared for her. In one letter, Krisevich wrote, “Musya doesn’t even walk around the cell because everyone takes turns carrying her in their arms.”

In another letter, Krisevich wrote,

Before he was transferred to another prison in December 2022, Krisevich managed to secure Musya’s release, fearing that no one else in Butyrka would take care of such a mischievous cat. 

After leaving the remand prison, Musya spent two weeks living in an apartment with other cats. Then, she was adopted by a new owner.

‘A particular imperviousness to domestication’

Luisa (name changed) was traveling outside of Russia when a friend sent her the news about Musya’s release and asked, “Maybe you’ll take her?” 

“I didn’t expect such a cat to need a home,” Luisa recalls. “Musya had a lot of fans, you could say she was widely popular in narrow circles.” 

After arriving at her new home, Musya “pretended to be timid for a long time.” She couldn’t be left alone and would meow as soon as her new owner left the room. “Overall, she had nothing in common with the portrait [Pavel] described,” Luisa says. But once the cat settled in, Lusia quickly realized that Musya was very much “in her own world.” 

Musya has been living with her new owner for a year now and, according to Luisa, displays a “particular imperviousness to any kind of domestication.” Rules, routines, and schedules all “go out the window” with Musya. Nevertheless, Lusia finds it impossible to get angry with her pet. “[Musya’s] very charismatic when causing mischief, I don’t have the strength to resist it,” she says. 

“When Musya the cat was living in our cell, you could cuddle her at any time, everyone was touched by her silliness,” Krisevich told Bereg. The cat has offered respite to her new owner, as well — according to Luisa, Musya “distracts her from reality.” 

There are still dozens of cats living on the grounds of the Butyrka jail. According to Luisa, they can often be seen crawling under one of the prison’s gates and resting on the grass near its outer wall. “There are so many of them that they live inside and outside the remand prison’s grounds,” she explains. Any one of these cats could end up like Musya, with loving owners and a new home. “You don’t even have to organize a rescue operation,” Luisa adds. “You can just walk over and pick one up.”