Willow Biden joins long and varied line of White House pets

Caroline Kennedy briefly had a cat, Tom Kitten (aka Tom Terrific) but he made her allergy-prone dad sneeze and was sent off to live with a staffer. The media was invited to take photos of Tom Kitten upon his arrival in 1961. He lasted only a few weeks at the White House.

William McKinley had two Angora kittens named Valeriano Weyler and Enrique DeLome, along with roosters and a parrot he named Washington Post, Hager said.

There have been oh so many dogs. The Obama’s Bo, a male Portuguese water dog, joined the family at the White House in April 2009. Sunny, a female of the same breed, came along in August 2013.

Among President John Tyler’s pets were a pair of “gentle giant” Irish wolfhounds. He gave them to his second wife, Julia, as a gift. Theodore Roosevelt, an avid animal lover, had a pack of dogs, snakes, guinea pigs and, by one account, a one-legged rooster.

Kennedy was gifted the mixed-breed Pushinka by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

Franklin Roosevelt had several pets but his favorite was a dog named Fala, named for a family ancestor. (Fala’s full name: Murray the Outlaw of Falahill.) He was often seen at the 32nd president’s side, until Roosevelt’s death in 1945. Given to the Roosevelts by a cousin, the Scottish terrier outlived him by seven years and was buried nearby.