When Postnord announced a competition to find cats to grace their new stamps, Julia Weber did as over 18,000 other cat owners and sent in a photo along with a short description of her feline friend. The jury could not resist the adventurous Hera, who was one of the five selected.
“As soon as I heard about the competition, I thought about entering Hera. Friends agreed that I should got for it, so I sent a photo and told them about how Hera makes everyone, young and old, feel happy, and how brave she is.
“Nothing is impossible for her. She jumps up on my rucksack and watches everything as we walk about town. She even comes to dog cafés when we are in Malmö. The thing that makes her unique is how much joy she brings. People smile and point, and sometimes they ask me if she’s the cat on the stamps.”
A girl with a fiery temper
Yet fame has not changed Hera. Julia Weber describes her as the same chatty, determined, 18-month-old Siberian cat that she ever was. An individual who dares to try even if things go amiss, who has a firey temper, knows when she does not like something, and who has a firm grasp on what is important to her. Which is mostly keeping an eye on Julia and coming along when she goes outside.
“I live on Mårtenstorget, a square in the centre of Lund, and Hera is an indoor cat, but she likes going out with me. If she isn’t sitting on my rucksack, then she walks on a lead and we go for leisurely strolls in Stadsparken or the Botanical Garden.”
Research on pollinators
Hera did not join in this summer’s fieldwork out in the grasslands of Skåne. Julia Weber’s research involves how to help bees and other pollinators find food as arable farming expands at the expense of pastureland.
To boost protein content, farmers often sow flowering plants such as clover and lucerne into their grasslands, which are harvested three times per season. By leaving strips of fields unmowed, Julia Weber has been investigating whether clover and lucerne can act as alternative food sources for pollinators when the flowers in the pastures are not enough.
“If so, this would mean grasslands could provide bees and butterflies with food in critical situations and help stabilise populations. In which case, we might want to think about growing grasslands next to pastures more or less permanently,” says Julia Weber.
"Hera is the cutest"
Less than a month ago, Postnord issued the cat stamps. One book of stamps shows the Siberian Hera together with Bengt, a British shorthair from Västerås, Cornelis, a Devon Rex from Stockholm, Fifi, a Ragdoll from Kiruna and Valiant, a house cat from Kalmar.
“I think this competition shows how important cats are as pets and I think they have chosen so well, each one is special in their own way. But I can’t help thinking that Hera is the cutest of all of them,” says Julia Weber.
