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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Concerning Cats, by Helen M. Winslow
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Concerning Cats
+       My Own and Some Others
+
+Author: Helen M. Winslow
+
+Posting Date: August 31, 2012 [EBook #9501]
+Release Date: December, 2005
+First Posted: October 6, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONCERNING CATS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dr. Dwight Holden, Ted Garvin, David Garcia
+and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONCERNING CATS
+
+My Own and Some Others
+
+By Helen M. Winslow
+
+Editor of "The Club Woman"
+
+
+
+To the
+
+"PRETTY LADY"
+
+WHO NEVER BETRAYED A SECRET, BROKE A PROMISE, OR
+PROVED AN UNFAITHFUL FRIEND; WHO HAD
+ALL THE VIRTUES AND NONE OF
+THE FAILINGS OF HER SEX
+
+I Dedicate this Volume
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+
+ I.    CONCERNING THE PRETTY LADY.
+ II.   CONCERNING MY OTHER CATS.
+ III.  CONCERNING OTHER PEOPLE'S CATS.
+ IV.   CONCERNING STILL OTHER PEOPLE'S CATS.
+ V.    CONCERNING SOME HISTORIC CATS.
+ VI.   CONCERNING CATS IN ENGLAND.
+ VII.  CONCERNING CAT CLUBS AND CAT SHOWS.
+ VIII. CONCERNING HIGH-BRED CATS IN AMERICA.
+ IX.   CONCERNING CATS IN POETRY.
+ X.    CONCERNING CAT ARTISTS.
+ XI.   CONCERNING CAT HOSPITALS AND REFUGES.
+ XII.  CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF CATS.
+ XIII. CONCERNING VARIETIES OF CATS.
+ XIV.  CONCERNING CAT LANGUAGE.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_Concerning Cats_
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+CONCERNING THE "PRETTY LADY"
+
+
+She was such a Pretty Lady, and gentle withal; so quiet and eminently
+ladylike in her behavior, and yet dignified and haughtily reserved as a
+duchess. Still it is better, under certain circumstances, to be a cat
+than to be a duchess. And no duchess of the realm ever had more faithful
+retainers or half so abject subjects.
+
+Do not tell me that cats never love people; that only places have real
+hold upon their affections. The Pretty Lady was contented wherever I,
+her most humble slave, went with her. She migrated with me from
+boarding-house to sea-shore cottage; then to regular housekeeping; up to
+the mountains for a summer, and back home, a long day's journey on the
+railway; and her attitude was always "Wheresoever thou goest I will go,
+and thy people shall be my people."
+
+I have known, and loved, and studied many cats, but my knowledge of her
+alone would convince me that cats love people--in their dignified,
+reserved way, and when they feel that their love is not wasted; that
+they reason, and that they seldom act from impulse.
+
+I do not remember that I was born with an inordinate fondness for cats;
+or that I cried for them as an infant. I do not know, even, that my
+childhood was marked by an overweening pride in them; this, perhaps, was
+because my cruel parents established a decree, rigid and unbending as
+the laws of the Medes and Persians, that we must never have more than
+one cat at a time. Although this very law may argue that predilection,
+at an early age, for harboring everything feline which came in my way,
+which has since become at once a source of comfort and distraction.
+
+After a succession of feline dynasties, the kings and queens of which
+were handsome, ugly, sleek, forlorn, black, white, deaf, spotted, and
+otherwise marked, I remember fastening my affections securely upon one
+kitten who grew up to be the ugliest, gauntest, and dingiest specimen I
+ever have seen. In the days of his kittenhood I christened him "Tassie"
+after his mother; but as time sped on, and the name hardly comported
+with masculine dignity, this was changed to Tacitus, as more befitting
+his sex. He had a habit of dodging in and out of the front door, which
+was heavy, and which sometimes swung together before he was well out of
+it. As a consequence, a caudal appendage with two broken joints was one
+of his distinguishing features. Besides a broken tail, he had ears which
+bore the marks of many a hard-fought battle, and an expression which for
+general "lone and lorn"-ness would have discouraged even Mrs. Gummidge.
+But I loved him, and judging from the disconsolate and long-continued
+wailing with which he rilled the house whenever I was away, my affection
+was not unrequited.
+
+But my real thraldom did not begin until I took the Pretty Lady's
+mother. We had not been a week in our first house before a handsomely
+striped tabby, with eyes like beautiful emeralds, who had been the pet
+and pride of the next-door neighbor for five years, came over and
+domiciled herself. In due course of time she proudly presented us with
+five kittens. Educated in the belief that one cat was all that was
+compatible with respectability, I had four immediately disposed of,
+keeping the prettiest one, which grew up into the beautiful,
+fascinating, and seductive maltese "Pretty Lady," with white trimmings
+to her coat. The mother of Pretty Lady used to catch two mice at a time,
+and bringing them in together, lay one at my feet and say as plainly as
+cat language can say, "There, you eat that one, and I'll eat this," and
+then seem much surprised and disgusted that I had not devoured mine when
+she had finished her meal.
+
+We were occupying a furnished house for the summer, however, and as we
+were to board through the winter, I took only the kitten back to town,
+thinking the mother would return to her former home, just over the
+fence. But no. For two weeks she refused all food and would not once
+enter the other house. Then I went out for her, and hearing my voice she
+came in and sat down before me, literally scolding me for a quarter of
+an hour. I shall be laughed at, but actual tears stood in her lovely
+green eyes and ran down her aristocratic nose, attesting her grief and
+accusing me, louder than her wailing, of perfidy.
+
+I could not keep her. She would not return to her old home. I finally
+compromised by carrying her in a covered basket a mile and a half and
+bestowing her upon a friend who loves cats nearly as well as I. But
+although she was petted, and praised, and fed on the choicest of
+delicacies, she would not be resigned. After six weeks of mourning, she
+disappeared, and never was heard of more. Whether she sought a new and
+more constant mistress, or whether, in her grief at my shameless
+abandonment of her, she went to some lonely pier and threw herself off
+the dock, will never be known. But her reproachful gaze and tearful
+emerald eyes haunted me all winter. Many a restless night did I have to
+reproach myself for abandoning a creature who so truly loved me; and in
+many a dream did she return to heap shame and ignominy upon my repentant
+head.
+
+This experience determined me to cherish her daughter, whom, rather, I
+cherished as her son, until there were three little new-born kittens,
+which in a moment of ignorance I "disposed of" at once. Naturally, the
+young mother fell exceedingly ill. In the most pathetic way she dragged
+herself after me, moaning and beseeching for help. Finally, I succumbed,
+went to a neighbor's where several superfluous kittens had arrived the
+night before, and begged one. It was a little black fellow, cold and
+half dead; but the Pretty Lady was beside herself with joy when I
+bestowed it upon her. For two days she would not leave the box where I
+established their headquarters, and for months she refused to wean it,
+or to look upon it as less than absolutely perfect. I may say that the
+Pretty Lady lived to be nine years old, and had, during that brief
+period, no less than ninety-three kittens, besides two adopted ones; but
+never did she bestow upon any of her own offspring that wealth of pride
+and affection which was showered upon black Bobbie.
+
+When the first child of her adoption was two weeks old, I was ill one
+morning, and did not appear at breakfast. It had always been her custom
+to wait for my coming down in the morning, evidently considering it a
+not unimportant part of her duty to see me well launched for the day.
+Usually she sat at the head of the stairs and waited patiently until she
+heard me moving about. Sometimes she came in and sat on a chair at the
+head of my bed, or gently touched my face with her nose or paw. Although
+she knew she was at liberty to sleep in my room, she seldom did so,
+except when she had an infant on her hands. At first she invariably kept
+him in a lower drawer of my bureau. When he was large enough, she
+removed him to the foot of the bed, where for a week or two her maternal
+solicitude and sociable habits of nocturnal conversation with her
+progeny interfered seriously with my night's rest. If my friends used to
+notice a wild and haggard appearance of unrest about me at certain
+periods of the year, the reason stands here confessed.
+
+I was ill when black Bobbie was two weeks old. The Pretty Lady waited
+until breakfast was over, and as I did not appear, came up and jumped on
+the bed, where she manifested some curiosity as to my lack of active
+interest in the world's affairs.
+
+"Now, pussy," I said, putting out my hand and stroking her back, "I'm
+sick this morning. When you were sick, I went and got you a kitten.
+Can't you get me one?"
+
+This was all. My sister came in then and spoke to me, and the Pretty
+Lady left us at once; but in less than two minutes she came back with
+her cherished kitten in her mouth. Depositing him in my neck, she stood
+and looked at me, as much as to say:--
+
+"There, you can take him awhile. He cured me and I won't be selfish; I
+will share him with you."
+
+I was ill for three days, and all that time the kitten was kept with me.
+When his mother wanted him, she kept him on the foot of the bed, where
+she nursed, and lapped, and scrubbed him until it seemed as if she must
+wear even his stolid nerves completely out. But whenever she felt like
+going out she brought him up and tucked him away in the hollow of my
+neck, with a little guttural noise that, interpreted, meant:--
+
+"There, now you take care of him awhile. I'm all tired out. Don't wake
+him up."
+
+But when the infant had dropped soundly asleep, she invariably came back
+and demanded him; and not only demanded, but dragged him forth from his
+lair by the nape of the neck, shrieking and protesting, to the foot of
+the bed again, where he was obliged to go through another course of
+scrubbing and vigorous maternal attentions that actually kept his fur
+from growing as fast as the coats of less devotedly cared-for kittens
+grow.
+
+When I was well enough to leave my room, she transferred him to my lower
+bureau drawer, and then to a vantage-point behind an old lounge. But she
+never doubted, apparently, that it was the loan of that kitten that
+rescued me from an untimely grave.
+
+I have lost many an hour of much-needed sleep from my cat's habit of
+coming upstairs at four A.M. and jumping suddenly upon the bed; perhaps
+landing on the pit of my stomach. Waking in that fashion, unsympathetic
+persons would have pardoned me if I had indulged in injudicious
+language, or had even thrown the cat violently from my otherwise
+peaceful couch. But conscience has not to upbraid me with any of these
+things. I flatter myself that I bear even this patiently; I remember to
+have often made sleepy but pleasant remarks to the faithful little
+friend whose affection for me and whose desire to behold my countenance
+was too great to permit her to wait till breakfast time.
+
+If I lay awake for hours afterward, perhaps getting nothing more than
+literal "cat-naps," I consoled myself with remembering how Richelieu,
+and Wellington, and Mohammed, and otherwise great as well as
+discriminating persons, loved cats; I remembered, with some stirrings of
+secret pride, that it is only the artistic nature, the truly aesthetic
+soul that appreciates poetry, and grace, and all refined beauty, who
+truly loves cats; and thus meditating with closed eyes, I courted
+slumber again, throughout the breaking dawn, while the cat purred in
+delight close at hand.
+
+The Pretty Lady was evidently of Angora or coon descent, as her fur was
+always longer and silkier than that of ordinary cats. She was fond of
+all the family. When we boarded in Boston, we kept her in a front room,
+two flights from the ground. Whenever any of us came in the front door,
+she knew it. No human being could have told, sitting in a closed room in
+winter, two flights up, the identity of a person coming up the steps and
+opening the door. But the Pretty Lady, then only six months old, used to
+rouse from her nap in a big chair, or from the top of a folding bed,
+jump down, and be at the hall door ready to greet the incomer, before
+she was halfway up the stairs. The cat never got down for the wrong
+person, and she never neglected to meet any and every member of our
+family who might be entering. The irreverent scoffer may call it
+"instinct," or talk about the "sense of smell." I call it sagacity.
+
+One summer we all went up to the farm in northern Vermont, and decided
+to take her and her son, "Mr. McGinty," with us. We put them both in a
+large market-basket and tied the cover securely. On the train Mr.
+McGinty manifested a desire to get out, and was allowed to do so, a
+stout cord having been secured to his collar first, and the other end
+tied to the car seat. He had a delightful journey, once used to the
+noise and motion of the train. He sat on our laps, curled up on the seat
+and took naps, or looked out of the windows with evident puzzlement at
+the way things had suddenly taken to flying; he even made friends with
+the passengers, and in general amused himself as any other traveller
+would on an all-day's journey by rail, except that he did not risk his
+eyesight by reading newspapers. But the Pretty Lady had not travelled
+for some years, and did not enjoy the trip as well as formerly; on the
+contrary she curled herself into a round tight ball in one corner of the
+basket till the journey's end was reached.
+
+Once at the farm she seemed contented as long as I remained with her.
+There was plenty of milk and cream, and she caught a great many mice.
+She was far too dainty to eat them, but she had an inherent pleasure in
+catching mice, just like her more plebeian sisters; and she enjoyed
+presenting them to Mr. McGinty or me, or some other worthy object of her
+solicitude.
+
+She was at first afraid of "the big outdoors." The wide, wind-blown
+spaces, the broad, sunshiny sky, the silence and the roominess of it
+all, were quite different from her suburban experiences; and the farm
+animals, too, were in her opinion curiously dangerous objects. Big Dan,
+the horse, was truly a horrible creature; the rooster was a new and
+suspicious species of biped, and the bleating calves objects of her
+direst hatred.
+
+The pig in his pen possessed for her the most horrid fascination. Again
+and again would she steal out and place herself where she could see that
+dreadful, strange, pink, fat creature inside his own quarters. She would
+fix her round eyes widely upon him in blended fear and admiration. If
+the pig uttered the characteristic grunt of his race, the Pretty Lady at
+first ran swiftly away; but afterward she used to turn and gaze
+anxiously at us, as if to say:--
+
+"Do you hear that? Isn't this a truly horrible creature?" and in other
+ways evince the same sort of surprise that a professor in the Peabody
+Museum might, were the skeleton of the megatherium suddenly to accost
+him after the manner peculiar to its kind.
+
+It was funnier, even, to see Mr. McGinty on the morning after his
+arrival at the farm, as he sallied forth and made acquaintance with
+other of God's creatures than humans and cats, and the natural enemy of
+his kind, the dog. In his suburban home he had caught rats and captured
+on the sly many an English sparrow. When he first investigated his new
+quarters on the farm, he discovered a beautiful flock of very large
+birds led by one of truly gorgeous plumage.
+
+"Ah!" thought Mr. McGinty, "this is a great and glorious country, where
+I can have such birds as these for the catching. Tame, too. I'll have
+one for breakfast."
+
+So he crouched down, tiger-like, and crept carefully along to a
+convenient distance and was preparing to spring, when the large and
+gorgeous bird looked up from his worm and remarked:--
+
+"Cut-cut-cut, ca-dah-cut!" and, taking his wives, withdrew toward the
+barn.
+
+Mr. McGinty drew back amazed. "This is a queer bird," he seemed to say;
+"saucy, too. However, I'll soon have him," and he crept more carefully
+than before up to springing distance, when again this most gorgeous bird
+drew up and exclaimed, with a note of annoyance:--
+
+"Cut-cut-cut, ca-dah-cut! What ails that old cat, anyway?" And again he
+led his various wives barn-ward.
+
+Mr. McGinty drew up with a surprised air, and apparently made a cursory
+study of the leading anatomical features of this strange bird; but he
+did not like to give up, and soon crouched and prepared for another
+onslaught. This time Mr. Chanticleer allowed the cat to come up close to
+his flock, when he turned and remarked in the most amicable manner,
+"Cut-cut-cut-cut!" which interpreted seemed to mean: "Come now; that's
+all right. You're evidently new here; but you'd better take my advice
+and not fool with me."
+
+Anyhow, with this, down went McGinty's hope of a bird breakfast "to the
+bottom of the sea," and he gave up the hunt. He soon made friends,
+however, with every animal on the place, and so endeared himself to the
+owners that he lived out his days there with a hundred acres and more as
+his own happy hunting-ground.
+
+Not so, the Pretty Lady. I went away on a short visit after a few weeks,
+leaving her behind. From the moment of my disappearance she was uneasy
+and unhappy. On the fifth day she disappeared. When I returned and found
+her not, I am not ashamed to say that I hunted and called her
+everywhere, nor even that I shed a few tears when days rolled into weeks
+and she did not appear, as I realized that she might be starving, or
+have suffered tortures from some larger animal.
+
+There are many remarkable stories of cats who find their way home across
+almost impossible roads and enormous distances. There is a saying,
+believed by many people, "You can't lose a cat," which can be proved by
+hundreds of remarkable returns. But the Pretty Lady had absolutely no
+sense of locality. She had always lived indoors and had never been
+allowed to roam the neighborhood. It was five weeks before we found
+trace of her, and then only by accident. My sister was passing a field
+of grain, and caught a glimpse of a small creature which she at first
+thought to be a woodchuck. She turned and looked at it, and called
+"Pussy, pussy," when with a heart-breaking little cry of utter delight
+and surprise, our beloved cat came toward her. From the first, the wide
+expanse of the country had confused her; she had evidently "lost her
+bearings" and was probably all the time within fifteen minutes' walk of
+the farm-house.
+
+When found, she was only a shadow of herself, and for the first and only
+time in her life we could count her ribs. She was wild with delight, and
+clung to my sister's arms as though fearing to lose her; and in all the
+fuss that was made over her return, no human being could have showed
+more affection, or more satisfaction at finding her old friends again.
+
+That she really was lost, and had no sense of locality to guide her
+home, was proven by her conduct after she returned to her Boston home. I
+had preceded my sister, and was at the theatre on the evening when she
+arrived with the Pretty Lady. The latter was carried into the kitchen,
+taken from her basket, and fed. Then, instead of going around the house
+and settling herself in her old home, she went into the front hall which
+she had left four months before, and seated herself on the spot where
+she always watched and waited when I was out. When I came home at
+eleven, I saw through the screen door her "that was lost and is found."
+She had been waiting to welcome me for three mortal hours.
+
+I wish those people who believe cats have no affection for people could
+have seen her then. She would not leave me for an instant, and
+manifested her love in every possible way; and when I retired for the
+night, she curled up on my pillow and purred herself contentedly to
+sleep, only rising when I did. After breakfast that first morning after
+her return, she asked to be let out of the back door, and made me
+understand that I must go with her. I did so, and she explored every
+part of the back yard, entreating me in the same way she called her
+kittens to keep close by her. She investigated our own premises
+thoroughly and then crept carefully under the fences on either side into
+the neighbor's precincts where she had formerly visited in friendly
+fashion; then she came timidly back, all the time keeping watch that she
+did not lose me. Having finished her tour of inspection, she went in and
+led me on an investigating trip all through the house, smelling of every
+corner and base-board, and insisting that every closet door should be
+opened, so that she might smell each closet through in the same way.
+When this was done, she settled herself in one of her old nooks for a
+nap and allowed me to leave.
+
+But never again did she go out of sight of the house. For more than a
+year she would not go even into a neighbor's yard, and when she finally
+decided that it might be safe to crawl under the fences on to other
+territory, she invariably turned about to sit facing the house, as
+though living up to a firm determination never to lose sight of it
+again. This practice she kept up until at the close of her last mortal
+sickness, when she crawled into a dark place under a neighboring barn
+and said good-by to earthly fears and worries forever.
+
+_Requiescat in pace_, my Pretty Lady. I wish all your sex had your
+gentle dignity, and grace, and beauty, to say nothing of your
+faithfulness and affection. Like Mother Michel's "Monmouth," it may be
+said of you:--
+
+  "She was merely a cat,
+  But her Sublime Virtues place her on a level with
+  The Most Celebrated Mortals,
+  and
+  In Ancient Egypt
+  Altars would have been Erected to her
+  Memory."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+CONCERNING MY OTHER CATS
+
+
+"Oh, what a lovely cat!" is a frequent expression from visitors or
+passers-by at our house. And from the Pretty Lady down through her
+various sons and daughters to the present family protector and head,
+"Thomas Erastus," and the Angora, "Lady Betty," there have been some
+beautiful creatures.
+
+Mr. McGinty was a solid-color maltese, with fur like a seal for
+closeness and softness, and with the disposition of an angel. He used to
+be seized with sudden spasms of affection and run from one to another of
+the family, rubbing his soft cheeks against ours, and kissing us
+repeatedly. This he did by taking gentle little affectionate nips with
+his teeth. I used to give him a certain caress, which he took as an
+expression of affection. After leaving him at the farm I did not see him
+again for two years. Then on a short visit, I asked for Mr. McGinty and
+was told that he was in a shed chamber. I found him asleep in a box of
+grain and took him out; he looked at me through sleepy eyes, turned
+himself over and stretched up for the old caress. As nobody ever gave
+him that but me, I take this as conclusive proof that he not only knew
+me, but remembered my one peculiarity.
+
+Then there was old Pomp, called "old" to distinguish him from the young
+Pomp of to-day, or "Pompanita." He died of pneumonia at the age of three
+years; but he was the handsomest black cat--and the blackest--I have
+ever seen. He had half a dozen white hairs under his chin; but his
+blackness was literally like the raven's wing. Many handsome black cats
+show brown in the strong sunlight, or when their fur is parted. But old
+Pomp's fur was jet black clear through, and in the sunshine looked as if
+he had been made up of the richest black silk velvet, his eyes,
+meanwhile, being large and of the purest amber. He weighed some fifteen
+pounds, and that somebody envied us the possession of him was evident,
+as he was stolen two or three times during the last summer of his life.
+But he came home every time; only when Death finally stole him, we had
+no redress.
+
+"Bobinette," the black kitten referred to in the previous chapter, also
+had remarkably beautiful eyes. We used to keep him in ribbons to match,
+and he knew color, too, perfectly well. For instance, if we offered him
+a blue or a red ribbon, he would not be quiet long enough to have it
+tied on; but show him a yellow one, and he would prance across the room,
+and not only stand still to have it put on, but purr and evince the
+greatest pride in it.
+
+Bobinette had another very pretty trick of playing with the
+tape-measure. He used to bring it to us and have it wound several times
+around his body; then he would "chase himself" until he got it off, when
+he would bring it back and ask plainly to have it wound round him again.
+After a little we noticed he was wearing the tape-measure out, and so we
+tried to substitute it with an old ribbon or piece of cotton tape. But
+Bobinette would have none of them. On the contrary, he repeatedly
+climbed on to the table and to the work-basket, and hunted patiently for
+his tape-measure, and even if it were hidden in a pocket, he kept up the
+search until he unearthed it; and he would invariably end by dragging
+forth that particular tape-measure and bringing it to us. I need not say
+that his intelligence was rewarded.
+
+Speaking of colors, a friend has a cat that is devoted to blue. When she
+puts on a particularly pretty blue gown, the cat hastens to get into her
+lap, put her face down to the material, purr, and manifest the greatest
+delight; but let the same lady put on a black dress, and the cat will
+not come near her.
+
+"Pompanita," the second Pomp in our dynasty, is a fat and billowy black
+fellow, now five years old and weighing nineteen pounds. He was the last
+of the Pretty Lady's ninety-three children. Only a few of this vast
+progeny, however, grew to cat-hood, as she was never allowed to keep
+more than one each season. The Pretty Lady, in fact, came to regard this
+as the only proper method. On one occasion I had been away all day. When
+I got home at night the housekeeper said, "Pussy has had five kittens,
+but she won't go near them." When the Pretty Lady heard my voice, she
+came and led the way to the back room where the kittens were in the
+lower drawer of an unused bureau, and uttered one or two funny little
+noises, intimating that matters were not altogether as they should be,
+according to established rules of propriety. I understood, abstracted
+four of the five kittens, and disappeared. When I came back she had
+settled herself contentedly with the remaining kitten, and from that
+time on was a model mother.
+
+Pompanita the Good has all the virtues of a good cat, and absolutely no
+vices. He loves us all and loves all other cats as well. As for
+fighting, he emulates the example of that veteran who boasts that during
+the war he might always be found where the shot and shell were the
+thickest,--under the ammunition wagon. Like most cats he has a decided
+streak of vanity. My sister cut a wide, fancy collar, or ruff, of white
+paper one day, and put it on Pompanita. At first he felt much abashed
+and found it almost impossible to walk with it. But a few words of
+praise and encouragement changed all that.
+
+"Oh, what a pretty Pomp he is now!" exclaimed one and another, until he
+sat up coyly and cocked his head one side as if to say:--
+
+"Oh, now, do you really think I look pretty?" and after a few more
+assurances he got down and strutted as proudly as any peacock; much to
+the discomfiture of the kitten, who wanted to play with him. And now he
+will cross the yard any time to have one of those collars on.
+
+But Thomas Erastus is the prince of our cats to-day. He weighs seventeen
+pounds, and is a soft, grayish-maltese with white paws and breast. One
+Saturday night ten years ago, as we were partaking of our regular Boston
+baked beans, I heard a faint mew. Looking down I saw beside me the
+thinnest kitten I ever beheld. The Irish girl who presided over our
+fortunes at the time used to place the palms of her hands together and
+say of Thomas's appearance, "Why, mum, the two sides of 'im were just
+like that." I picked him up, and he crawled pathetically into my neck
+and cuddled down.
+
+"There," said a friend who was sitting opposite, "he's fixed himself
+now. You'll keep him."
+
+"No, I shall not," I said, "but I will feed him a few days and give him
+to my cousin." Inside half an hour, however, Thomas Erastus had assumed
+the paternal air toward us that soon made us fear to lose him. Living
+without Thomas now would be like a young girl's going out without a
+chaperone. After that first half-hour, when he had been fed, he chased
+every foreign cat off the premises, and assumed the part of a watch-dog.
+To this day he will sit on the front porch or the window-sill and growl
+if he sees a tramp or suspicious character approaching. He always goes
+into the kitchen when the market-man calls, and orders his meat; and at
+exactly five o'clock in the afternoon, when the meat is cut up and
+distributed, leads the feline portion of the family into the kitchen.
+
+Thomas knows the time of day. For six months he waked up one housekeeper
+at exactly seven o'clock in the morning, never varying two minutes. He
+did this by seating himself on her chest and gazing steadfastly in her
+face. Usually this waked her, but if she did not yield promptly to that
+treatment he would poke her cheeks with the most velvety of paws until
+she awoke. He has a habit now of going upstairs and sitting opposite the
+closed door of the young man who has to rise hours before the rest of us
+do, and waiting until the door is opened for him. How he knows at what
+particular moment each member of the family will wake up and come forth
+is a mystery, but he does.
+
+How do cats tell the hour of day, anyway? The old Chinese theory that
+they are living clocks is, in a way, borne out by their own conduct. Not
+only have my cats shown repeatedly that they know the hour of rising of
+every member of the family, but they gather with as much regularity as
+the ebbing of the tides, or the setting of the sun, at exactly five
+o'clock in the afternoon for their supper. They are given a hearty
+breakfast as soon as the kitchen fire is started in the morning. This
+theoretically lasts them until five. I say theoretically, because if
+they wake from their invariable naps at one, and smell lunch, they
+individually wheedle some one into feeding them. But this is only
+individually. Collectively they are fed at five.
+
+They are the most methodical creatures in the world. They go to bed
+regularly at night when the family does. They are waiting in the kitchen
+for breakfast when the fire is started in the morning. Then they go out
+of doors and play, or hunt, or ruminate until ten o'clock, when they
+come in, seek their favorite resting-places, and sleep until four.
+Evidently, from four to five is a play hour, and the one who wakes first
+is expected to stir up the others. But at exactly five, no matter where
+they may have strayed to, every one of the three, five, or seven (as the
+number may happen to be) will be sitting in his own particular place in
+the kitchen, waiting with patient eagerness for supper. For each has a
+particular place for eating, just as bigger folk have their places at
+the dining table. Thomas Erastus sits in a corner; the space under the
+table is reserved especially for Jane. Pompanita is at his mistress's
+feet, and Lady Betty, the Angora, bounds to her shoulder when their meat
+appears. Their table manners are quite irreproachable also. It is
+considered quite unpardonable to snatch at another's piece of meat, and
+a breach of the best cat-etiquette to show impatience while another is
+being fed.
+
+I do not pretend to say that this is entirely natural. They are taught
+these things as kittens, and since cats are as great sticklers for
+propriety and gentle manners as any human beings can be, they never
+forget it. Doubtless, this is easier because they are always well fed,
+but Thomas Erastus or Jane would have to be on the verge of starvation,
+I am sure, before they would "grab" from one of the other cats. And as
+for the Pretty Lady, it was always necessary to see that she was
+properly served. She would not eat from a dish with other cats, or,
+except in extreme cases, from one they had left. Indeed, she was
+remarkable in this respect. I have seen her sit on the edge of a table
+where chickens were being dressed and wait patiently for a tidbit; I
+have seen her left alone in the room, while on that table was a piece of
+raw steak, but no temptation was ever great enough to make her touch any
+of these forbidden things. She actually seemed to have a conscience.
+
+Only one thing on the dining table would she touch. When she was two or
+three months old, she somehow got hold of the table-napkins done up in
+their rings. These were always to her the most delightful playthings in
+the world. As a kitten, she would play with them by the hour, if not
+taken away, and go to sleep cuddled affectionately around them. She got
+over this as she grew older; but when her first kitten was two or three
+months old, remembering the jolly times she used to have, she would
+sneak into the dining room and get the rolled napkins, carry them in her
+mouth to her infant, and endeavor with patient anxiety to show him how
+to play with them. Throughout nine years of motherhood she went through
+the same performance with every kitten she had. They never knew what to
+do with the napkins, or cared to know, and would have none of them. But
+she never got discouraged. She would climb up on the sideboard, or into
+the china closet, and even try to get into drawers where the napkins
+were laid away in their rings. If she could get hold of one, she would
+carry it with literal groans and evident travail of spirit to her
+kitten, and by further groans and admonitions seem to say:--
+
+"Child, see this beautiful plaything I have brought you. This is a part
+of your education; it is just as necessary for you to know how to play
+with this as to poke your paw under the closet door properly. Wake up,
+now, and play with it."
+
+Sometimes, when the table was laid over night, we used to hear her
+anguished groans in the stillness of the night. In the morning every
+napkin belonging to the family would be found in a different part of the
+house, and perhaps a ring would be missing. These periods, however, only
+lasted as long, in each new kitten's training, as the few weeks that she
+had amused herself with them at their age. Then she would drop the
+subject, and napkins had no further interest than the man in the moon
+until another kitten arrived at the age when she considered them a
+necessary part of his education.
+
+Professor Shaler in his interesting book on the intelligence of animals
+gives the cat only the merest mention, intimating that he considers them
+below par in this respect, and showing little real knowledge of them. I
+wish he might have known the Pretty Lady.
+
+Once our Lady Betty had four little Angora kittens. She was probably the
+most aristocratic cat in the country, for she kept a wet nurse. Poor
+Jane, of commoner strain, had two small kittens the day after the Angora
+family appeared. Jane's plebeian infants promptly disappeared, but she
+took just as promptly to the more aristocratic family and fulfilled the
+duties of nurse and maid. Both cats and four kittens occupied the same
+bureau drawer, and when either cat wanted the fresh air she left the
+other in charge; and there was a tacit understanding between them that
+the fluffy, fat babies must never be left alone one instant. Four small
+and lively kittens in the house are indeed things of beauty, and a joy
+as long as they last. Four fluffy little Angora balls they were Chin,
+Chilla, Buffie, and Orange Pekoe, names that explain their color. And
+Jane, wet nurse and waiting-maid, had to keep as busy as the old woman
+that lived in a shoe. Jane it was who must look after the infants when
+Lady Betty wished to leave the house. Jane it was who must scrub the
+furry quartet until their silky fur stood up in bunches the wrong way
+all over their chubby little sides; Jane must sleep with them nights,
+and be ready to furnish sustenance at any moment of day or night; and
+above all, Jane must watch them anxiously and incessantly in waking
+hours, uttering those little protesting murmurs of admonition which
+mother cats deem so necessary toward the proper training of kittens.
+And, poor Jane! As lady's maid she must bathe Lady Betty's brow every
+now and then, as the more finely strung Angora succumbed to the nervous
+strain of kitten-rearing, and she turned affectionately to Jane for
+comfort. A prettier sight, or a more profitable study of the love of
+animals for each other was never seen than Lady Betty, her infants, and
+her nurse-maid. And yet, there are people who pronounce cats stupid.
+
+One evening I returned from the theatre late and roused up the four
+fluffy kittens, who, seeing the gas turned on, started in for a frolic.
+The lady mother did not approve of midnight carousals on the part of
+infants, and protested with mild wails against their joyful caperings.
+Finally, Orange Pekoe got into the closet and Lady Betty pursued him.
+But suddenly a strange odor was detected. Sitting on her haunches she
+smelled all over the bottom of the skirt which had just been hung up,
+stopping every few seconds to utter a little worried note of warning to
+the kittens. The infants, however, displayed a quite human disregard of
+parental authority and gambolled on unconcernedly under the skirt;
+reminding one of the old New England primer style of tales, showing how
+disobedient children flaunt themselves in the face of danger, despite
+the judicious advice of their elders. Lady Betty could do nothing with
+them, and grew more nervous and worried every minute in consequence.
+Suddenly she bethought herself of that never-failing source of strength
+and comfort, Jane. She went into the next room, and, although I had not
+heard a sound, returned in a moment with the maltese. Jane was ushered
+into the closet, and soon scented out the skirt. Then she too sat on her
+haunches and gave a long, careful sniff, turned round and uttered one
+"purr-t-t," and took the Angora off with her. Jane had discovered that
+there was no element of danger in the closet, and had imparted her
+knowledge to the finely strung Angora in an instant. And so, taking her
+back to bed, she "bathed her brow" with gentle lappings until Lady Betty
+sank off to quiet sleep, soothed and comforted.
+
+It is not easy to study a cat. They are like sensitive plants, and shut
+themselves instinctively away from the human being who does not care for
+them. They know when a man or a woman loves them, almost before they
+come into the human presence; and it is almost useless for the
+unsympathetic person to try to study a cat. But the thousands who do
+love cats know that they are the most individual animals in the world.
+Dogs are much alike in their love for mankind, their obedience,
+faithfulness, and, in different degrees, their sagacity. But there is as
+much individuality in cats as in people.
+
+Dogs and horses are our slaves; cats never. This does not prove them
+without affection, as some people seem to think; on the contrary, it
+proves their peculiar and characteristic dignity and self-respect.
+Women, poets, and especially artists, like cats; delicate natures only
+can realize their sensitive nervous systems.
+
+The Pretty Lady's mother talked almost incessantly when she was in the
+house. One of her habits was to get on the window-seat outside and
+demand to be let in. If she was not waited upon immediately, she would,
+when the door was finally opened, stop when halfway in and scold
+vigorously. The tones of her voice and the expression of her face were
+so exactly like those of a scolding, vixenish woman that she caused many
+a hearty laugh by her tirades.
+
+Thomas Erastus, however, seldom utters a sound, and at the rare
+intervals when he condescends to purr, he can only be heard by holding
+one's ear close to his great, soft sides. But he has the most remarkable
+ways. He will open every door in the house from the inside; he will even
+open blinds, getting his paw under the fastening and working patiently
+at it, with his body on the blind itself, until the hook flies back and
+it finally opens. One housekeeper trained him to eat his meat close up
+in one corner of the kitchen. This custom he kept up after she went
+away, until new and uncommonly frisky kittens annoyed him so that his
+place was transferred to the top of an old table. When he got hungry in
+those days, however, he used to go and crowd close up in his corner and
+look so pathetically famished that food was generally forthcoming at
+once. Thomas was formerly very much devoted to the lady who lived next
+door, and was as much at home in her house as in ours. Her family rose
+an hour or two earlier than ours in the morning, and their breakfast
+hour came first. I should attribute Thomas's devotion to Mrs. T. to this
+fact, since he invariably presented himself at her dining-room window
+and wheedled her into feeding him, were it not that his affection seemed
+just as strong throughout the day. It was interesting to see him go over
+and rattle her screen doors, front, back, or side, knowing perfectly
+well that he would bring some one to open and let him in.
+
+Thomas has a really paternal air toward the rest of the family. One
+spring night, as usual on retiring, I went to the back door to call in
+the cats. Thomas Erastus was in my sister's room, but none of the others
+were to be seen; nor did they come at once, evidently having strayed in
+their play beyond the sound of my voice. Thomas, upstairs, heard my
+continued call and tried for some time to get out. M. had shut her door,
+thinking to keep in the one already safe. But the more I called, the
+more persistently determined he became to get out. At last M. opened her
+window and let him on to the sloping roof of the "L," from which he
+could descend through a gnarled old apple tree. Meanwhile I left the
+back door and went on with my preparations for the night. About ten
+minutes later I went and called the cats again. It was a moonlight night
+and I saw six delinquent cats coming in a flock across the open field
+behind the house,--all marshalled by Mr. Thomas. He evidently hunted
+them up and called them in himself; then he sat on the back porch and
+waited until the last kit was safely in, before he stalked gravely in
+with an air which said as plainly as words:--
+
+"There, it takes _me_ to do anything with this family."
+
+None of my cats would think of responding to the call of "Kitty, Kitty,"
+or "Puss, Puss." They are early taught their names and answer to them.
+Neither would one answer to the name of another, except in occasional
+instances where jealousy prompts them to do so. We have to be most
+careful when we go out of an evening, not to let Thomas Erastus get out
+at the same time. In case he does, he will follow us either to the
+railroad station or to the electric cars and wait in some near-by nook
+until we come back. I have known him to sit out from seven until
+midnight of a cold, snowy winter evening, awaiting our return from the
+theatre. When we alight from the cars he is nowhere to be seen. But
+before we have gone many steps, lo! Thomas Erastus is behind or beside
+us, proudly escorting his mistresses home, but looking neither at them,
+nor to the right or left. Not until he reaches the porch does he allow
+himself to be petted. But on our way to the cars his attitude is
+different. He is as frisky as a kitten. In vain do we try to "shoo" him
+back, or catch him. He prances along, just out of reach, but
+tantalizingly close; when we get aboard our car, we know he is safe in
+some corner gazing sadly after us, and that no danger can drive him home
+until we reappear.
+
+Both Thomas and Pompanita take a deep interest in all household affairs,
+although in this respect they do not begin to show the curiosity of the
+Pretty Lady. Never a piece of furniture was changed in he house that she
+did not immediately notice, the first time she came into the room
+afterward; and she invariably jumped up on the article and thoroughly
+investigated affairs before settling down again. Every parcel that came
+in must be examined, and afterward she must lie on the paper or inside
+the box that it came in, always doing this with great solemnity and
+gazing earnestly out of her large, intelligent dark eyes. Toward the
+close of her life she was greatly troubled at any unusual stir in the
+household. She liked to have company, but nothing disturbed her more
+than to have a man working in the cellar, putting in coal, cutting wood,
+or doing such work. She used then to follow us uneasily about and look
+earnestly up into our faces, as if to say:--
+
+"Girls, this is not right. Everything is all upset here and 'a' the
+world's gang agley.' Why don't you fix it?"
+
+She was the politest creature, too. That was the reason of her name. In
+her youth she was christened "Pansy"; then "Cleopatra," "Susan," "Lady
+Jane Grey" and the "Duchess." But her manners were so punctiliously
+perfect, and she was such a "pretty lady" always and everywhere;
+moreover she had such a habit of sitting with her hands folded politely
+across her gentle, lace-vandyked bosom that the only sobriquet that ever
+clung was the one that expressed herself the most perfectly. She was in
+every sense a "Pretty Lady." For years she ate with us at the table. Her
+chair was placed next to mine, and no matter where she was or how
+soundly she had been sleeping, when the dinner bell rang she was the
+first to get to her seat. Then she sat patiently until I fixed a dainty
+meal in a saucer and placed it in the chair beside her, when she ate it
+in the same well-bred way she did everything.
+
+Thomas Erastus hurt his foot one day. Rather he got it hurt during a
+matutinal combat at which he was forced, being the head of the family,
+to be present, although he is far above the midnight carousals of his
+kind. Thomas Erastus sometimes loves to consider himself an invalid.
+When his doting mistress was not looking, he managed to step off on that
+foot quite lively, especially if his mortal enemy, a disreputable black
+tramp, skulked across the yard. But let Thomas Erastus see a feminine
+eye gazing anxiously at him through an open window, and he immediately
+hobbled on three legs; then he would stop and sit down and assume so
+pathetic an expression of patient suffering that the mistress's heart
+would melt, and Thomas Erastus would find himself being borne into the
+house and placed on the softest sofa. Once she caught him down cellar.
+There is a window to which he has easy access, and where he can go in
+and out a hundred times a day. Evidently he had planned to do so at that
+moment. But seeing his fond mistress, he sat down on the cellar floor,
+and with his most fetching expression gazed wistfully back and forth
+from her to the window. And of course she picked him up carefully and
+put him on the window ledge. Thomas Erastus has all the innocent guile
+of a successful politician. He could manage things slicker than the
+political bosses, an' he would.
+
+One summer Thomas Erastus moved--an event of considerable importance in
+his placid existence. He had to travel a short distance on the
+steam-cars; and worse, he needs must endure the indignity of travelling
+that distance in a covered basket. But his dignity would not suffer him
+to do more than send forth one or two mournful wails of protest. After
+being kept in his new house for a couple of days, he was allowed to go
+out and become familiar with his surroundings--not without fear and
+trepidation on the part of his doting mistress that he might make a bold
+strike for his former home. But Thomas Erastus felt he had a mission to
+perform for his race. He would disprove that mistaken theory that a cat,
+no matter how kindly he is treated, cares more for places than for
+people. Consequently he would not dream of going back to his old haunts.
+
+No; he sat down in the front yard and took a long look at his
+surroundings, the neighboring lots, a field of grass, a waving
+corn-field. He had already convinced himself that the new house was
+home, because in it were all the old familiar things, and he had been
+allowed to investigate every bit of it and to realize what had happened.
+So after looking well about him he made a series of tours of
+investigation. First, he took a bee-line for the farthest end of the
+nearest vacant lot; then he chose the corn-field; then the beautiful
+broad grounds of the neighbor below; then across the street; but between
+each of these little journeys he took a bee-line back to his
+starting-point, sat down in front of the new house, and "got his
+bearings," just as evidently as though he could have said out loud,
+"This is my home and I mustn't lose it." In this way he convinced
+himself that where he lives is the centre of the universe, and that the
+world revolves around him. And he has since been as happy as a
+cricket,--yea, happier, for death and destruction await the unfortunate
+cricket where Thomas Erastus thrives.
+
+But don't say a cat can't or won't be moved. It's your own fault if he
+won't.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+CONCERNING OTHER PEOPLE'S CATS
+
+
+Every observing reader of Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford's stories knows
+that she is fond of cats and understands them. Her heroines usually
+have, among other feminine belongings and accessories, one or more cats.
+"Four great Persian cats haunted her every footstep," she says of Honor,
+in the "Composite Wife." "A sleepy, snowy creature like some
+half-animated ostrich plume; a satanic thing with fiery eyes that to Mr.
+Chipperley's perception were informed with the very bottomless flames;
+another like a golden fleece, caressing, half human; and a little
+mouse-colored imp whose bounds and springs and feathery tail-lashings
+not only did infinite damage among the Venetian and Dresden
+knick-knackerie, but among Mr. Chipperley's nerves."
+
+In her beautiful, old-fashioned home at Newburyport, Mass., she has two
+beloved cats. But I will not attempt to improve on her own account of
+them:--
+
+"As for my own cats,--their name has been legion, although a few remain
+preeminent. There was Miss Spot who came to us already named, preferring
+our domicile to the neighboring one she had. Her only son was so black
+that he was known as Ink Spot, but her only daughter was so altogether
+ideal and black, too, that she was known as Beauty Spot. Beauty Spot led
+a sorrowful life, and was fortunately born clothed in black or her
+mourning would have been expensive, as she was always in a bereaved
+condition, her drowned offspring making a shoal in the Merrimac,
+although she had always plenty left. She solaced herself with music. She
+would never sit in any one's lap but mine, and in mine only when I sang;
+and then only when I sang 'The Last Rose of Summer.' This is really
+true. But she would spring into my husband's lap if he whistled. She
+would leave her sleep reluctantly, start a little way, and retreat,
+start and retreat again, and then give one bound and light on his knee
+or his arm and reach up one paw and push it repeatedly across his mouth
+like one playing the jew's-harp; I suppose to get at the sound. She
+always went to walk with us and followed us wherever we went about the
+island.
+
+"Lucifer and Phosphor have been our cats for the last ten years:
+Lucifer, entirely black, Phosphor, as yellow as saffron, a real golden
+fleece. My sister lived in town and going away for the summer left her
+cat in a neighbor's care, and the neighbor moved away meanwhile and left
+the cat to shift for herself. She went down to the apothecary's, two
+blocks away or more. There she had a family of kittens, but apparently
+came up to reconnoitre, for on my sister's return, she appeared with one
+kitten and laid it down at Kate's feet; ran off, and in time came with
+another which she left also, and so on until she had brought up the
+whole household. Lucifer was one of them.
+
+"He was as black as an imp and as mischievous as one. His bounds have
+always been tremendous: from the floor to the high mantel, or to the top
+of a tall buffet close under the ceiling. And these bounds of his,
+together with a way he has of gazing into space with his soulful and
+enormous yellow eyes, have led to a thousand tales as to his nightly
+journeyings among the stars; hurting his foot slumping through the
+nebula in Andromeda; getting his supper at a place in the milky way,
+hunting all night with Orion, and having awful fights with Sirius. He
+got his throat cut by alighting on the North Pole one night, coming down
+from the stars. The reason he slumps through the nebula is on account of
+his big feet; he has six toes (like the foot in George Augustus Sala's
+drawing) and when he walks on the top of the piazza you would think it
+was a burglar.
+
+"Lucifer's Mephistophelian aspect is increased not only by those feet,
+but by an arrow-pointed tail. He sucks his tail,--alas, and alas! In
+vain have we peppered it, and pepper-sauced it, and dipped it in
+Worcestershire sauce and in aloes, and done it up in curl papers, and
+glued on it the fingers of old gloves. At last we gave it up in despair,
+and I took him and put his tail in his mouth and told him to take his
+pleasure,--and that is the reason, I suppose, that he attaches himself
+particularly to me. He is very near-sighted with those magnificent orbs,
+for he will jump into any one's lap, who wears a black gown, but jump
+down instantly, and when he finds my lap curl down for a brief season.
+But he is not much of a lap-loving cat. He puts up his nose and smells
+my face all over in what he means for a caress, and is off. He is not a
+large eater, although he has been known to help himself to a whole steak
+at the table, being alone in the dining room; and when poultry are in
+the larder he is insistent till satisfied. But he wants his breakfast
+early. If the second girl, whose charge he is, does not rise in season,
+he mounts two flights of stairs and seats himself on her chest until she
+does rise. Then if she does not wait on him at once, he goes into the
+drawing-room, and springs to the top of the upright piano, and
+deliberately knocks off the bric-a-brac, particularly loving to
+encounter and floor a brass dragon candlestick. Then he springs to the
+mantel-shelf if he has not been seized and appeased, and repeats
+operations, and has even carried his work of destruction around the room
+to the top of a low bookcase and has proved himself altogether the wrong
+sort of person in a china-shop.
+
+"However, it is conceded in the family that Phosphor is not a cat
+merely: he is a person, and Lucifer is a spirit. Lucifer seldom purrs--I
+wonder if that is a characteristic of black cats?" [No; my black cats
+fairly roar.] "A little thread of sound, and only now and then, when
+very happy and loving, a rich, full strain. But Phosphor purrs like a
+windmill, like an electric car, like a tea-kettle, like a whole boiled
+dinner. When Phosphor came, Lucifer, six weeks her senior (Phosphor's
+excellencies always incline one to say 'she' of him), thought the little
+live yellow ball was made only for him to play with, and he cuffed and
+tossed him around for all he was worth, licked him all over twenty times
+a day, and slept with his arms about him. During those early years
+Phosphor never washed himself, Lucifer took such care of him, and they
+were a lovely sight in each other's arms asleep. But of late years a
+coolness has intervened, and now they never speak as they pass by. They
+sometimes go fishing together, Lucifer walking off majestically alone,
+always dark, mysterious, reticent, intent on his own affairs, making you
+feel that he has a sort of lofty contempt for yours. Sometimes, the mice
+depositing a dead fish in the crannies of the rocks, Lucifer appears
+with it in the twilight, gleaming silver-white in his jaws, and the
+great eyes gleaming like fire-balls above it. Phosphor is, however, a
+mighty hunter: mice, rats by the score, chipmunks,--all is game that
+comes to his net. He has cleaned out whole colonies of catbirds (for
+their insolence), and eaten every golden robin on the island.
+
+"It used to be very pretty to see them, when they were little, as El
+Mahdi, the peacock, spread his great tail, dart and spring upon it, and
+go whirling round with it as El Mahdi, fairly frantic with the little
+demons that had hold of him, went skipping and springing round and
+round. But although so fierce a fighter, so inhospitable to every other
+cat, Phosphor is the most affectionate little soul. He is still very
+playful, though so large, and last summer to see him bounding on the
+grass, playing with his tail, turning somersaults all by himself, was
+quite worth while. When we first happened to go away in his early years
+he wouldn't speak to us when we came back, he felt so neglected. I went
+away for five months once, before Lucifer was more than a year old. He
+got into no one's lap while I was gone, but the moment I sat down on my
+return, he jumped into mine, saluted me, and curled himself down for a
+nap, showing the plainest recognition. Now when one comes back, Phosphor
+is wild with joy--always in a well-bred way. He will get into your arms
+and on your shoulder and rub his face around, and before you know it his
+little mouth is in the middle of your mouth as much like a kiss as
+anything can be. Perhaps it isn't so well bred, but his motions are so
+quick and perfect it seems so. When you let him in he curls into heaps
+of joy, and fairly stands on his head sometimes. He is the most
+responsive creature, always ready for a caress, and his wild, great
+amber eyes beam love, if ever love had manifestation. His beauty is
+really extraordinary; his tail a real wonder. Lucifer, I grieve to say,
+looks very moth-eaten. Phosphor wore a bell for a short time once--a
+little Inch-Cape Rock bell--but he left it to toll all winter in a tall
+tree near the drawing-room window.
+
+"A charm of cats is that they seem to live in a world of their own, just
+as much as if it were a real dimension of space; and speaking of a
+fourth dimension, I am living in the expectation that the new
+discoveries in the matter of radiant energy will presently be revealing
+to all our senses the fact that there is no death.
+
+"We had some barn kittens once that lived in the hen-house, ate with the
+hens, and quarrelled with them for any tidbit. They curled up in the egg
+boxes and didn't move when the hens came to lay, and evidently had no
+idea that they were not hens.
+
+"Oh, there is no end to the cat situation. It began with the old fellow
+who put his hand under the cat to lift her up, and she arched her back
+higher and higher until he found it was the serpent Asgard, and it won't
+end with you and me. I don't know but she _is_ the serpent Asgard.
+I don't know if you have hypnotized or magnetized me, but I am writing
+as if I had known you intimately all my life, and feel as though I had.
+It is the freemasonry of cats. I always said they were possessed of
+spirits, and they use white magic to bring their friends together."
+
+Mrs. Spofford's "barn kittens" bring to mind an incident related by Mrs.
+Wood, the beautiful wife of Professor C.G. Wood, of the Harvard Medical
+School. At their summer place on Buzzard's Bay she has fifteen cats,
+mostly Angoras, Persians, and coons, with several dogs. These cats
+follow her all about the place in a regular troop, and a very handsome
+troop they are, with their waving, plumy tails tipped gracefully over at
+the ends as if saluting their superior officer. Among the dogs is a
+spaniel named Gyp that is particularly friendly with the cats. There are
+plenty of hens on the farm, and one spring a couple of bantams were
+added to the stock. The cats immediately took a great fancy to these
+diminutive bipeds, and watched them with the greatest interest. Finally
+the little hen had a flock of chickens. As the weather was still cold,
+the farmer put them upstairs in one of the barns, and every day Gyp
+would take seven or eight of those cats up there to see the fluffy
+little things. Dog and cats would seat themselves around the bantam and
+her brood and watch them by the hour, never offering to touch the
+chickens except when the little things were tired and went for a nap
+under their mother's wings; and then some cat--first one and then
+another--would softly poke its paw under the hen and stir up the family,
+making them all run out in consternation, and keeping things lively once
+more. The cats didn't dream of catching the chickens, only wanting,
+evidently, that they should emulate Joey and keep moving on.
+
+A writer in the _London Spectator_ tells of a favorite bantam hen
+with which the house cat has long been accustomed to play. This bantam
+has increased and multiplied, and keeps her family in a "coop" on the
+ground,--into which rats easily enter. At bedtime, however, pussy takes
+up her residence there, and bantam, the brood of chickens, and pussy
+sleep in happy harmony nightly. If any rats arrive, their experience
+must be sad and sharp. Another writer in the same number tells of a cat
+in Huddersfield, England, belonging to Canon Beardsley, who helps
+himself to a reel of cotton from the work-basket, takes it on the floor,
+and plays with it as long as he likes, and then jumps up and puts the
+reel back in its place again; just as our Bobinette used to get his
+tape-measure, although the latter never was known to put it away.
+
+Miss Sarah Orne Jewett is a cat-lover, too, and the dear old
+countrywomen "down in Maine," with whom one gets acquainted through her
+books, usually keep a cat also. Says she:--
+
+"I look back over so long a line of family cats, from a certain poor
+Spotty who died an awful death in a fit on the flagstones under the
+library window when I was less than five years old, to a lawless,
+fluffy, yellow and white coon cat now in my possession, that I find it
+hard to single out the most interesting pussy of all. I shall have to
+speak of two cats at least, one being the enemy and the other the friend
+of my dog Joe. Joe and I grew up together and were fond companions,
+until he died of far too early old age and left me to take my country
+walks alone.
+
+"Polly, the enemy, was the best mouser of all: quite the best business
+cat we ever had, with an astonishing intellect and a shrewd way of
+gaining her ends. She caught birds and mice as if she foraged for our
+whole family: she had an air of responsibility and a certain impatience
+of interruption and interference such as I have never seen in any other
+cat, and a scornful way of sitting before a person with fierce eyes and
+a quick, ominous twitching of her tail. She seemed to be measuring one's
+incompetence as a mouse-catcher in these moments, or to be saying to
+herself, 'What a clumsy, stupid person; how little she knows, and how I
+should like to scratch her and hear her squeak.' I sometimes felt as if
+I were a larger sort of helpless mouse in these moments, but sometimes
+Polly would be more friendly, and even jump into our laps, when it was a
+pleasure to pat her hard little head with its exquisitely soft, dark
+tortoise-shell fur. No matter if she almost always turned and caught the
+caressing hand with teeth and claws, when she was tired of its touch,
+you would always be ready to pat her next time; there was such a
+fascination about her that any attention on her part gave a thrill of
+pride and pleasure. Every guest and stranger admired her and tried to
+win her favor: while we of the household hid our wounds and delighted in
+her cleverness and beauty.
+
+"Polly was but a small cat to have a mind. She looked quite round and
+kittenish as she sat before the fire in a rare moment of leisure, with
+her black paws tucked under her white breast and her sleek back looking
+as if it caught flickers of firelight in some yellow streaks among the
+shiny black fur. But when she walked abroad she stretched out long and
+thin like a little tiger, and held her head high to look over the grass
+as if she were threading the jungle. She lashed her tail to and fro, and
+one turned out of her way instantly. You opened a door for her if she
+crossed the room and gave you a look. She made you know what she meant
+as if she had the gift of speech: at most inconvenient moments you would
+go out through the house to find her a bit of fish or to open the cellar
+door. You recognized her right to appear at night on your bed with one
+of her long-suffering kittens, which she had brought in the rain, out of
+a cellar window and up a lofty ladder, over the wet, steep roofs and
+down through a scuttle into the garret, and still down into warm
+shelter. Here she would leave it and with one or two loud, admonishing
+purrs would scurry away upon some errand that must have been like one of
+the border frays of old.
+
+"She used to treat Joe, the dog, with sad cruelty, giving him a sharp
+blow on his honest nose that made him meekly stand back and see her add
+his supper to her own. A child visitor once rightly complained that
+Polly had pins in her toes, and nobody knew this better than poor Joe.
+At last, in despair, he sought revenge. I was writing at my desk one
+day, when he suddenly appeared, grinning in a funny way he had, and
+wagging his tail, until he enticed me out to the kitchen. There I found
+Polly, who had an air of calling everything in the house her own. She
+was on the cook's table, gobbling away at some chickens which were being
+made ready for the oven and had been left unguarded. I caught her and
+cuffed her, and she fled through the garden door, for once tamed and
+vanquished, though usually she was so quick that nobody could administer
+justice upon these depredations of a well-fed cat. Then I turned and saw
+poor old Joe dancing about the kitchen in perfect delight. He had been
+afraid to touch Polly himself, but he knew the difference between right
+and wrong, and had called me to see what a wicked cat she was, and to
+give him the joy of looking on at the flogging.
+
+"It was the same dog who used sometimes to be found under a table where
+his master had sent him for punishment in his young days of lawless
+puppy-hood for chasing the neighbor's chickens. These faults had long
+been overcome, but sometimes, in later years, Joe's conscience would
+trouble him, we never knew why, and he would go under the table of his
+own accord, and look repentant and crestfallen until some forgiving and
+sympathetic friend would think he had suffered enough and bid him come
+out to be patted and consoled.
+
+"After such a house-mate as Polly, Joe had great amends in our next cat,
+yellow Danny, the most amiable and friendly pussy that ever walked on
+four paws. He took Danny to his heart at once: they used to lie in the
+sun together with Danny's head on the dog's big paws, and I sometimes
+used to meet them walking as coy as lovers, side by side, up one of the
+garden walks. When I could not help laughing at their sentimental and
+conscious air, they would turn aside into the bushes for shelter. They
+respected each other's suppers, and ate together on the kitchen hearth,
+and took great comfort in close companionship. Danny always answered if
+you spoke to him, but he made no sound while always opening his mouth
+wide to mew whenever he had anything to say, and looking up into your
+face with all his heart expressed. These affectations of speech were
+most amusing, especially in so large a person as yellow Danny. He was
+much beloved by me and by all his family, especially poor Joe, who must
+sometimes have had the worst of dreams about old Polly, and her sharp,
+unsparing claws."
+
+Miss Mary E. Wilkins is also a great admirer of cats. "I adore cats,"
+she says. "I don't love them as well as dogs, because my own nature is
+more after the lines of a dog's; but I adore them. No matter how tired
+or wretched I am, a pussy-cat sitting in a doorway can divert my mind.
+Cats love one so much: more than they will allow; but they have so much
+wisdom they keep it to themselves."
+
+Miss Wilkins's "Augustus" was moved with her from Brattleboro, Vt.,
+after her father's death and when she went to Randolph, Mass., to live.
+He had been the pet of the family for a long time, but he came to an
+untimely end.
+
+"I hope," says Miss Wilkins, "people's unintentional cruelty will not be
+remembered against them." Since living in Randolph she has had two
+lovely yellow and white cats, "Punch and Judy." The latter was shot by a
+neighbor, but Punch, the right-hand cat with the angelic expression,
+still survives.
+
+"I am quite sure," says his mistress, "he loves me better than anybody
+else, although he is so very close about it. Punch Wilkins has one
+accomplishment. He can open a door with an old-fashioned latch: but he
+cannot shut it."
+
+Louise Imogen Guiney is famous for her love and good comradeship with
+dogs, especially her setters and St. Bernards, but she is too thoroughly
+a poet not to be captivated by the grace and beauty of a cat.
+
+"I love the unsubmissive race," she says, "and have had much edification
+out of the charming friendships between our St. Bernards and our cats.
+Annie Clarke [the actress] once gave me two exquisite Angoras, little
+persons of character equal to their looks; but they died young and we
+have not since had the heart to replace them. I once had another coon, a
+small, spry, gray fellow named Scot, the tamest and most endearing of
+pets, always on your shoulder and a' that, who suddenly, on no
+provocation whatever, turned wild, lived for a year or more in the woods
+next our garden, hunting and fishing, although ceaselessly chased, and
+called, and implored to revisit his afflicted family. He associated
+sometimes with the neighbor's cat, but never, never more with humanity,
+until finally we found his pathetic little frozen body one Christmas
+near the barn. Do you remember Arnold's Scholar Gypsy? Our Scot was his
+feline equivalent.... Have you counted in Prosper Merimee among the
+confirmed lovers of cats? I remember a delightful little paragraph out
+of one of his letters about _un vieux chat noir, parfaitement laid,
+mais plein d'esprit et de discretion. Seulement il n'a eu que des gens
+vulgaires et manque d'usage._"
+
+Mrs. A.D.T. Whitney, who has written so many helpful stories for girls,
+is another lover of cats. Cats do not lie curled up on cushions
+everywhere in her books, as they do in Mrs. Spofford's. But in "Zerub
+Throop's Experiment" there is an amusing cat story, which, she declares,
+got so much mixed up with a ghost story that nobody ever knew which was
+which. And the incident is true in every particular, except the finding
+of a will or codicil, or something at the end, which is attached for
+purposes of fiction.
+
+A great deal has been written about the New York _Sun's_ famous
+cats. At my request, Mr. Dana furnished the following description of the
+interesting _Sun_ family. I can only vouch for its veracity by
+quoting the famous phrase, "If you see it in the _Sun_, it is so."
+
+"_Sun_ office cat (_Felis Domestica; var. Journalistica_).
+This is a variation of the common domestic cat, of which but one family
+is known to science. The habitat of the species is in Newspaper Row; its
+lair is in the _Sun_ building, its habits are nocturnal, and it
+feeds on discarded copy and anything else of a pseudo-literary nature
+upon which it can pounce. In dull times it can subsist upon a meagre
+diet of telegraphic brevities, police court paragraphs, and city
+jottings; but when the universe is agog with news, it will exhibit the
+insatiable appetite which is its chief distinguishing mark of difference
+from the common _felis domestica_. A single member of this family
+has been known, on a 'rush' night, to devour three and a half columns of
+presidential possibilities, seven columns of general politics, pretty
+much all but the head of a large and able-bodied railroad accident, and
+a full page of miscellaneous news, and then claw the nether garments of
+the managing editor, and call attention to an appetite still in good
+working order.
+
+"The progenitrix of the family arrived in the _Sun_ office many
+years ago, and installed herself in a comfortable corner, and within a
+few short months she had noticeably raised the literary tone of the
+paper, as well as a large and vociferous family of kittens. These
+kittens were weaned on reports from country correspondents, and the
+sight of the six children and the mother cat sitting in a semicircle was
+one which attracted visitors from all parts of the nation. Just before
+her death--immediately before, in fact--the mother cat developed a
+literary taste of her own and drank the contents of an ink-bottle. She
+was buried with literary honors, and one of her progeny was advanced to
+the duties and honors of office cat. From this time the line came down,
+each cat taking the 'laurel greener from the brows of him that uttered
+nothing base,' upon the death of his predecessor. There is but one blot
+upon the escutcheon of the family, put there by a recent incumbent who
+developed a mania at once cannibalistic and infanticidal, and set about
+making a free lunch of her offspring, in direct violation of the Raines
+law and the maternal instinct. She died of an overdose of chloroform,
+and her place was taken by one of the rescued kittens.
+
+"It is the son of this kitten who is the present proud incumbent of the
+office. Grown to cat-hood, he is a creditable specimen of his family,
+with beryl eyes, beautiful striped fur, showing fine mottlings of
+mucilage and ink, a graceful and aspiring tail, an appetite for copy
+unsurpassed in the annals of his race, and a power and perseverance in
+vocality, chiefly exercised in the small hours of the morning, that,
+together with the appetite referred to, have earned for him the name of
+the Mutilator. The picture herewith given was taken when the animal was
+a year and a half old. Up to the age of one year the Mutilator made its
+lair in the inside office with the Snake Editor, until a tragic ending
+came to their friendship. During a fortnight's absence of the office cat
+upon important business, the Snake Editor cultivated the friendship of
+three cockroaches, whom he debauched by teaching them to drink beer
+spilled upon his desk for that purpose. On the night of the cat's
+return, the three bugs had become disgracefully intoxicated, and were
+reeling around the desk beating time with their legs to a rollicking
+catch sung by the Snake Editor. Before the muddled insects could crawl
+into a crack, the Mutilator was upon them, and had bolted every one.
+Then with a look of reproach at the Snake Editor, he drew three
+perpendicular red lines across that gentleman's features with his claws
+and departed in high scorn, nor could he ever thereafter be lured into
+the inner office where the serpent-sharp was laying for him with a space
+measure. Since that time he has lived in the room occupied by the
+reporters and news editors.
+
+"Many hundreds of stories, some of them slanderous have been told about
+the various _Sun_ office cats, but we have admitted here none of
+these false tales. The short sketch given here is beyond suspicion in
+all its details, as can be vouched for by many men of high position who
+ought to know better."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+CONCERNING STILL OTHER PEOPLE'S CATS
+
+
+The nearest approach to the real French Salon in America is said to be
+found in Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton's Boston drawing-room. In former
+days, at her weekly Fridays, Sir Richard Coeur de Lion was always
+present, sitting on the square piano amidst a lot of other celebrities.
+The autographed photographs of Paderewski, John Drew, and distinguished
+litterateurs, however, used to lose nothing from the proximity of Mrs.
+Moulton's favorite maltese friend, who was on the most intimate terms
+with her for twelve years, and hobnobbed familiarly with most of the
+lions of one sort or another who have visited Boston and who invariably
+find their way into this room. If there were flowers on the piano,
+Richard's nose hovered near them in a perfect abandon of delight.
+Indeed, his fondness for flowers was a source of constant contention
+between him and his mistress, who feared lest he knock the souvenirs of
+foreign countries to the floor in his eagerness to climb wherever
+flowers were put. He was as dainty about his eating as in his taste for
+the beautiful, scorning beef and mutton as fit only for coarser mortals,
+and choosing, like any _gourmet_, to eat only the breast of
+chicken, or certain portions of fish or lobster. He was not proof
+against the flavor of liver, at any time; but recognized in it his one
+weakness,--as the delicate lady may who takes snuff or chews gum on the
+sly. When Mrs. Moulton first had him, she had also a little dog, and the
+two, as usual when a kitten is brought up with a dog, became the
+greatest of friends.
+
+That Richard was a close observer was proved by the way he used to wag
+his tail, in the same fashion and apparently for the same reasons as the
+dog. This went on for several years, but when the dog died, the fashion
+of wagging tails went out, so far as Richard Coeur de Lion was
+concerned.
+
+He had a fashion of getting up on mantels, the tops of bookcases, or on
+shelves; and his mistress, fearing demolition of her household Lares and
+Penates, insisted on his getting down, whereupon Richard would look
+reproachfully at her, apparently resenting this treatment for days
+afterward, refusing to come near her and edging off if she tried to make
+up with him.
+
+When Richard was getting old, a black cat came to Mrs. Moulton, who kept
+him "for luck," and named him the Black Prince. The older cat was always
+jealous of the newcomer, and treated him with lofty scorn. When he
+caught Mrs. Moulton petting the Black Prince, who is a very affectionate
+fellow Richard fiercely resented it and sometimes refused to have
+anything to do with her for days afterward, but finally came around and
+made up in shamefaced fashion.
+
+Mrs. Moulton goes to London usually in the summer, leaving the cats in
+the care of a faithful maid whom she has had for years. After she
+sailed, Richard used to come to her door for several mornings, and not
+being let in as usual, understood that his beloved mistress had left him
+again, whereupon he kept up a prolonged wailing for some time. He was
+correspondingly glad to see her on her return in October.
+
+Mrs. Moulton tells the following remarkable cat story:--
+
+"My mother had a cat that lived to be twenty-five years old. He was
+faithful and fond, and a great pet in the family, of course. About two
+years before his death, a new kitten was added to the family. This
+kitten, named Jim, immediately conceived the greatest affection for old
+Jack, and as the old fellow's senses of sight and smell failed so that
+he could not go hunting himself, Jim used to do it for both. Every day
+he brought Jack mice and squirrels and other game as long as he lived.
+Then, too, he used to wash Jack, lapping him all over as a mother cat
+does her kitten. He did this, too, as long as he lived. The feebler old
+Jack grew the more Jim did for him, and when Jack finally died of old
+age, Jim was inconsolable."
+
+Twenty-five years might certainly be termed a ripe old age for a cat,
+their average life extending only to ten or twelve years. But I have
+heard of one who seems to have attained even greater age. The mother of
+Jane Andrews, the writer on educational and juvenile subjects, had one
+who lived with them twenty-four years. He had peculiar markings and
+certain ways of his own about the house quite different from other cats.
+He disappeared one day when he was twenty-four, and was mourned as dead.
+But one day, some six or seven years later, an old cat came to their
+door and asked to be let in. He had the same markings, and on being let
+in, went directly to his favorite sleeping-places and lay down. He
+seemed perfectly familiar with the whole place, and went on with his
+life from that time, just as though he had never been away, showing all
+his old peculiarities. When he finally died, he must have been
+thirty-three years old.
+
+Although in other days a great many noted men have been devoted to cats,
+I do not find that our men of letters to-day know so much about cats.
+Mr. William Dean Howells says: "I never had a cat, pet or otherwise. I
+like them, but know nothing of them." Judge Robert Grant says, "My
+feelings toward cats are kindly and considerate, but not ardent."
+
+Thomas Bailey Aldrich says, "The only cat I ever had any experience with
+was the one I translated from the French of Emile de La Bedollierre many
+years ago for the entertainment of my children." [Footnote: "Mother
+Michel's Cat."] Brander Matthews loves them not. George W. Cable answers,
+when asked if he loves the "harmless, necessary cat," by the Yankee method,
+and says, "If you had three or four acres of beautiful woods in which were
+little red squirrels and chipmunks and fifty or more kinds of nesting
+birds, and every abutting neighbor kept a cat, and none of them kept their
+cat out of those woods--_would you like cats?_" which is, indeed,
+something of a poser.
+
+Colonel Thomas W. Higginson, however, confesses to a great fondness for
+cats, although he has had no remarkable cats of his own. He tells a
+story told him by an old sailor at Pigeon Cove, Mass., of a cat which
+he, the sailor, tried in vain to get rid of. After trying several
+methods he finally put the cat in a bag, walked a mile to Lane's Cove,
+tied the cat to a big stone with a firm sailor's knot, took it out in a
+dory some distance from the shore, and dropped the cat overboard. Then
+he went back home to find the cat purring on the doorstep.
+
+Those who are familiar with Charles Dudley Warner's "My Summer in a
+Garden" will not need to be reminded of Calvin and his interesting
+traits. Mr. Warner says: "I never had but one cat, and he was rather a
+friend and companion than a cat. When he departed this life I did not
+care to do as many men do when their partners die, take a 'second.'" The
+sketch of him in that delightful book is vouched for as correct.
+
+Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman, too, is a genuine admirer of cats and
+evidently knows how to appreciate them at their true value. At his home
+near New York, he and Mrs. Stedman have one who rejoices in the name
+"Babylon," having originated in Babylon, Long Island. He is a fine large
+maltese, and attracted a great deal of attention at the New York Cat
+Show in 1895. "We look upon him as an important member of our family,"
+says Mrs. Stedman, "and think he knows as much as any of us. He despises
+our two other cats, but he is very fond of human beings and makes
+friends readily with strangers. He is always present at the family
+dinner table at meal-time and expects to have his share handed to him
+carefully. He has a favorite corner in the study and has superintended a
+great deal of literary work." Mrs. Stedman's long-haired, blue Kelpie
+took a prize in the show of '95.
+
+Gail Hamilton was naturally a lover of cats, although in her crowded
+life there was not much time to devote to them. In the last year of her
+noble life she wrote to a friend as follows: "My two hands were eager to
+lighten the burden-bearing of a burdened world--but the brush fell from
+my hand. Now I can only sit in a nook of November sunshine, playing with
+two little black and white kittens. Well, I never before had time to
+play with kittens as much as I wished, and when I come outdoors and see
+them bounding toward me in long, light leaps, I am glad that they leap
+toward me and not away from me, little soft, fierce sparks of infinite
+energy holding a mystery of their own as inscrutable as life. And I
+remember that with all our high art, the common daily sun searches a man
+for one revealing moment, and makes a truer portrait than the most
+laborious painter. The divine face of our Saviour, reflected in the pure
+and noble traits of humanity, will not fail from the earth because my
+hand has failed in cunning."
+
+One would expect a poet of Ella Wheeler Wilcox's temperament to be
+passionately fond of cats, just as she is. One would expect, too, that
+only the most beautiful and luxurious of Persians and Angoras would
+satisfy her demand for a pet. This is also justifiable, as she has
+several magnificent cats, about whom she has published a number of
+interesting stories. Her Madame Ref is quite a noted cat, but Mrs.
+Wilcox's favorite and the handsomest of all is named Banjo, a gorgeous
+chinchilla and white Angora, with a silken coat that almost touches the
+floor and a ruff, or "lord mayor's chain," that is a finger wide. His
+father was Ajax, his mother was Madame Ref, and Mrs. Wilcox raised him.
+She has taught him many cunning tricks. He will sit up like a bear, and
+when his mistress says, "Hug me, Banjo," he puts both white paws around
+her neck and hugs her tight. Then she says, "Turn the other cheek," and
+he turns his furry chops for her to kiss. He also plays "dead," and
+rolls over at command. He, too, is fond of literary work, and
+superintends his mistress's writing from a drawer of her desk. Goody
+Two-eyes is another of Mrs. Wilcox's pets, and has one blue and one
+topaz eye.
+
+Who has not read Agnes Repplier's fascinating essays on "Agrippina" and
+"A Kitten"? I cannot quite believe she gives cats credit for the
+capacity for affection which they really possess, but her description of
+"Agrippina" is charming:--
+
+"Agrippina's beautifully ringed tail flapping across my copy distracts
+my attention and imperils the neatness of my penmanship. Even when she
+is disposed to be affable, turns the light of her countenance upon me,
+watches with attentive curiosity every stroke I make, and softly, with
+curved paw, pats my pen as it travels over the paper, even in these
+halcyon moments, though my self-love is flattered by her condescension,
+I am aware that I should work better and more rapidly if I denied myself
+this charming companionship. But, in truth, it is impossible for a lover
+of cats to banish these alert, gentle, and discriminating little
+friends, who give us just enough of their regard and complaisance to
+make us hunger for more. M. Fee, the naturalist, who has written so
+admirably about animals, and who understands, as only a Frenchman can
+understand, the delicate and subtle organization of a cat, frankly
+admits that the keynote of its character is independence. It dwells
+under our roofs, sleeps by our fire, endures our blandishments, and
+apparently enjoys our society, without for one moment forfeiting its
+sense of absolute freedom, without acknowledging any servile relation to
+the human creature who shelters it.
+
+"Rude and masterful souls resent this fine self-sufficiency in a
+domestic animal, and require that it shall have no will but theirs, no
+pleasure that does not emanate from them.
+
+"Yet there are people, less magisterial, perhaps, or less exacting, who
+believe that true friendship, even with an animal, may be built up on
+mutual esteem and independence; that to demand gratitude is to be
+unworthy of it; and that obedience is not essential to agreeable and
+healthy intercourse. A man who owns a dog is, in every sense of the
+word, its master: the term expresses accurately their mutual relations.
+But it is ridiculous when applied to the limited possession of a cat. I
+am certainly not Agrippina's mistress, and the assumption of authority
+on my part would be a mere empty dignity, like those swelling titles
+which afford such innocent delight to the Freemasons of our severe
+republic.
+
+"How many times have I rested tired eyes on her graceful little body,
+curled up in a ball and wrapped round with her tail like a parcel; or
+stretched out luxuriously on my bed, one paw coyly covering her face,
+the other curved gently inwards, as though clasping an invisible
+treasure. Asleep or awake, in rest or in motion, grave or gay, Agrippina
+is always beautiful; and it is better to be beautiful than to fetch and
+carry from the rising to the setting of the sun.
+
+"But when Agrippina has breakfasted and washed, and sits in the sunlight
+blinking at me with affectionate contempt, I feel soothed by her
+absolute and unqualified enjoyment. I know how full my day will be of
+things that I don't want particularly to do, and that are not
+particularly worth doing; but for her, time and the world hold only this
+brief moment of contentment. Slowly the eyes close, gently the little
+body is relaxed. Oh, you who strive to relieve your overwrought nerves
+and cultivate power through repose, watch the exquisite languor of a
+drowsy cat, and despair of imitating such perfect and restful grace.
+There is a gradual yielding of every muscle to the soft persuasiveness
+of slumber: the flexible frame is curved into tender lines, the head
+nestles lower, the paws are tucked out of sight: no convulsive throb or
+start betrays a rebellious alertness: only a faint quiver of unconscious
+satisfaction, a faint heaving of the tawny sides, a faint gleam of the
+half-shut yellow eyes, and Agrippina is asleep. I look at her for one
+wistful moment and then turn resolutely to my work. It were ignoble to
+wish myself in her place: and yet how charming to be able to settle down
+to a nap, _sans peur et sans reproche_, at ten o'clock in the
+morning."
+
+And again: "When I am told that Agrippina is disobedient, ungrateful,
+cold-hearted, perverse, stupid, treacherous, and cruel, I no longer
+strive to check the torrent of abuse. I know that Buffon said all this,
+and much more, about cats, and that people have gone on repeating it
+ever since, principally because these spirited little beasts have
+remained just what it pleased Providence to make them, have preserved
+their primitive freedom through centuries of effete and demoralizing
+civilization. Why, I wonder, should a great many good men and women
+cherish an unreasonable grudge against one animal because it does not
+chance to possess the precise qualities of another? 'My dog fetches my
+slippers for me every night,' said a friend, triumphantly, not long ago.
+'He puts them first to warm by the fire, and then brings them over to my
+chair, wagging his tail, and as proud as Punch. Would your cat do as
+much for you, I'd like to know?' Assuredly not. If I waited for
+Agrippina to fetch me shoes or slippers, I should have no other resource
+save to join as speedily as possible one of the barefooted religious
+orders of Italy. But after all, fetching slippers is not the whole duty
+of domestic pets.
+
+"As for curiosity, that vice which the Abbe Galiani held to be unknown
+to animals, but which the more astute Voltaire detected in every little
+dog that he saw peering out of the window of its master's coach, it is
+the ruling passion of the feline breast. A closet door left ajar, a box
+with half-closed lid, an open bureau drawer,--these are the objects that
+fill a cat with the liveliest interest and delight. Agrippina watches
+breathlessly the unfastening of a parcel, and tries to hasten matters by
+clutching actively at the string. When its contents are shown to her,
+she examines them gravely, and then, with a sigh of relief, settles down
+to repose. The slightest noise disturbs and irritates her until she
+discovers its cause. If she hears a footstep in the hall, she runs out
+to see whose it is, and, like certain troublesome little people I have
+known, she dearly loves to go to the front door every time the bell is
+rung. From my window she surveys the street with tranquil scrutiny, and
+if the boys are playing below, she follows their games with a steady,
+scornful stare, very different from the wistful eagerness of a friendly
+dog, quivering to join in the sport. Sometimes the boys catch sight of
+her, and shout up rudely at her window; and I can never sufficiently
+admire Agrippina's conduct upon these trying occasions, the well-bred
+composure with which she affects neither to see nor to hear them, nor to
+be aware that there are such objectionable creatures as children in the
+world. Sometimes, too, the terrier that lives next door comes out to sun
+himself in the street, and, beholding my cat sitting well out of reach,
+he dances madly up and down the pavement, barking with all his might,
+and rearing himself on his short legs, in a futile attempt to dislodge
+her. Then the spirit of evil enters Agrippina's little heart. The window
+is open and she creeps to the extreme edge of the stone sill, stretches
+herself at full length, peers down smilingly at the frenzied dog,
+dangles one paw enticingly in the air, and exerts herself with quiet
+malice to drive him to desperation. Her sense of humor is awakened by
+his frantic efforts and by her own absolute security; and not until he
+is spent with exertion, and lies panting and exhausted on the bricks,
+does she arch her graceful back, stretch her limbs lazily in the sun,
+and with one light bound spring from the window to my desk."
+
+And what more delightful word did ever Miss Repplier write than her
+description of a kitten? It, she says, "is the most irresistible
+comedian in the world. Its wide-open eyes gleam with wonder and mirth.
+It darts madly at nothing at all, and then, as though suddenly checked
+in the pursuit, prances sideways on its hind legs with ridiculous
+agility and zeal. It makes a vast pretence of climbing the rounds of a
+chair, and swings by the curtains like an acrobat. It scrambles up a
+table leg, and is seized with comic horror at finding itself full two
+feet from the floor. If you hasten to its rescue, it clutches you
+nervously, its little heart thumping against its furry sides, while its
+soft paws expand and contract with agitation and relief:--
+
+  "'And all their harmless claws disclose,
+  Like prickles of an early rose.'
+
+
+"Yet the instant it is back on the carpet it feigns to be suspicious of
+your interference, peers at you out of 'the tail o' its e'e,' and
+scampers for protection under the sofa, from which asylum it presently
+emerges with cautious, trailing steps as though encompassed by fearful
+dangers and alarms."
+
+Nobody can sympathize with her in the following description better than
+I, who for years was compelled by the insistence of my Pretty Lady to
+aid in the bringing up of infants:--
+
+"I own that when Agrippina brought her first-born son--aged two
+days--and established him in my bedroom closet, the plan struck me at
+the start as inconvenient. I had prepared another nursery for the little
+Claudius Nero, and I endeavored for a while to convince his mother that
+my arrangements were best. But Agrippina was inflexible. The closet
+suited her in every respect; and, with charming and irresistible
+flattery, she gave me to understand, in the mute language I knew so
+well, that she wished her baby boy to be under my immediate protection.
+
+"'I bring him to you because I trust you,' she said as plainly as looks
+can speak. 'Downstairs they handle him all the time, and it is not good
+for kittens to be handled. Here he is safe from harm, and here he shall
+remain,' After a few weak remonstrances, the futility of which I too
+clearly understood, her persistence carried the day. I removed my
+clothing from the closet, spread a shawl upon the floor, had the door
+taken from its hinges, and resigned myself, for the first time in my
+life, to the daily and hourly companionship of an infant.
+
+"I was amply rewarded. People who require the household cat to rear her
+offspring in some remote attic or dark corner of the cellar have no idea
+of all the diversion and pleasure that they lose. It is delightful to
+watch the little, blind, sprawling, feeble, helpless things develop
+swiftly into the grace and agility of kittenhood. It is delightful to
+see the mingled pride and anxiety of the mother, whose parental love
+increases with every hour of care, and who exhibits her young family as
+if they were infant Gracchi, the hope of all their race. During Nero's
+extreme youth, there were times when Agrippina wearied both of his
+companionship and of her own maternal duties. Once or twice she
+abandoned him at night for the greater luxury of my bed, where she slept
+tranquilly by my side, unmindful of the little wailing cries with which
+Nero lamented her desertion. Once or twice the heat of early summer
+tempted her to spend the evening on the porch roof which lay beneath my
+windows, and I have passed some anxious hours awaiting her return, and
+wondering what would happen if she never came back, and I were left to
+bring up the baby by hand.
+
+"But as the days sped on, and Nero grew rapidly in beauty and
+intelligence, Agrippina's affection for him knew no bounds. She could
+hardly bear to leave him even for a little while, and always came
+hurrying back to him with a loud, frightened mew, as if fearing he might
+have been stolen in her absence. At night she purred over him for hours,
+or made little gurgling noises expressive of ineffable content. She
+resented the careless curiosity of strangers, and was a trifle
+supercilious when the cook stole softly in to give vent to her fervent
+admiration. But from first to last she shared with me her pride and
+pleasure; and the joy in her beautiful eyes, as she raised them to mine,
+was frankly confiding and sympathetic. When the infant Claudius rolled
+for the first time over the ledge of the closet and lay sprawling on the
+bedroom floor, it would have been hard to say which of us was the more
+elated at his prowess."
+
+What became of these most interesting cats, is only hinted at; Miss
+Repplier's sincere grief at their loss is evident in the following:--
+
+"Every night they retired at the same time and slept upon the same
+cushion, curled up inextricably into one soft, furry ball. Many times I
+have knelt by their chair to bid them both good night; and always when I
+did so, Agrippina would lift her charming head, purr drowsily for a few
+seconds, and then nestle closer still to her first-born, with sighs of
+supreme satisfaction. The zenith of her life had been reached. Her cup
+of contentment was full.
+
+"It is a rude world, even for little cats, and evil chances lie in wait
+for the petted creatures we strive to shield from harm. Remembering the
+pangs of separation, the possibilities of unkindness or neglect, the
+troubles that hide in ambush on every unturned page, I am sometimes glad
+that the same cruel and selfish blow struck both mother and son, and
+that they lie together, safe from hurt or hazard, sleeping tranquilly
+and always, under the shadow of the friendly pines."
+
+Probably no modern cat has been more written about than Miss Mary L.
+Booth's Muff. There was a "Tippet," but he was early lost. Miss Booth,
+as the editor of _Harper's Bazar_, was the centre of a large circle
+of literary and musical people. Her Saturday evenings were to New York
+what Mrs. Moulton's Fridays are to Boston, the nearest approach to the
+French salon possible in America. At these Saturday evenings Muff always
+figured prominently, being dressed in a real lace collar (brought him
+from Yucatan by Madame la Plongeon, and elaborate and expensive enough
+for the most fastidious lady), and apparently enjoying the company of
+noted intellectual people as well as the best of them. And who knows, if
+he had spoken, what light he might have shed on what seemed to mere
+mortals as mysterious, abstruse, and occult problems? Perhaps, after
+all, he liked that "salon" because in reality he found so much to amuse
+him in the conversation; and perhaps he was, under that guise of
+friendly interest in noted scientists, reformers, poets, musicians, and
+litterateurs, only whispering to himself, "O Lord, what fools these
+mortals be!"
+
+"For when I play with my cat," says Montaigne, "how do I know whether
+she does not make a jest of me?"
+
+But Muff was a real nobleman among cats, and extraordinarily handsome.
+He was a great soft gray maltese with white paws and breast--mild,
+amiable, and uncommonly intelligent. He felt it his duty to help
+entertain Miss Booth's guests, always; and he more than once, at the
+beginning of a reception, came into the drawing-room with a mouse in his
+mouth as his offering to the occasion. Naturally enough "he caused the
+stampede," as Mrs. Spofford puts it, "that Mr. Gilbert forgot to put
+into 'Princess Ida' when her Amazons wild demonstrate their courage."
+
+As one of Miss Booth's intimate friends, Mrs. Spofford was much at her
+house and became early a devoted admirer of Muff's.
+
+"His latter days," she says, "were rendered miserable by a little silky,
+gray creature, an Angora named Vashti, who was a spark of the fire of
+the lower regions wrapped round in long silky fur, and who never let him
+alone one moment: who was full of tail-lashings and racings and leapings
+and fury, and of the most demonstrative love for her mistress. Once I
+made them collars with breastplates of tiny dangling bells, nine or ten;
+it excited them nearly to madness, and they flew up and down stairs like
+unchained lightning till the trinkets were taken off."
+
+In a house full of birds Muff never touched one, although he was an
+excellent mouser (who says cats have no conscience?). He was, although
+so socially inclined toward his mistress's guests, a timid person, and
+the wild back-yard cats filled him with terror.
+
+"But as one must see something of the world," continues Mrs. Spofford,
+"he used to jump from lintel to lintel of the windows of the block, if
+by chance his own were left open, and return when he pleased."
+
+Muff died soon after the death of Miss Booth. Vashti, who was very much
+admired by all her mistress's literary friends, was given to Miss Juliet
+Corson.
+
+Miss Edna Dean Proctor, the poet, is another admirer of fine cats. Her
+favorite, however, was the friend of her childhood called Beauty.
+
+"Beauty was my grandmother's cat," says Miss Proctor, "and the delight
+of my childhood. To this far-off day I remember her as distinctly as I
+do my aunt and cousins of that household, and even my dear grandmother
+herself. I know nothing of her ancestry and am not at all sure that she
+was royally bred, for she came, one chill night, a little wanderer to
+the door. But a shred of blue ribbon was clinging to her neck, and she
+was so pretty, and silky, and winsome that we children at once called
+her Beauty, and fancied she had strayed from some elegant home where she
+had been the pet of the household, lapping her milk from finest china
+and sleeping on a cushion of down. When we had warmed, and fed, and
+caressed her, we made her bed in a flannel-lined box among our dolls,
+and the next morning were up before the sun to see her, fearing her
+owners would appear and carry her away. But no one arrived to claim her,
+and she soon became an important member of the family, and grew
+handsomer, we thought, day by day. Her coat was gray with tiger
+markings, but paws and throat and nose were snowy white, and in spite of
+her excursions to barns and cellars her constant care kept them
+spotless--indeed, she was the very Venus of cats for daintiness and
+grace of pose and movement. To my grandmother her various attitudes had
+an undoubted meaning. If in a rainy day Beauty washed her face toward
+the west, her observant mistress would exclaim: 'See, kitty is washing
+her face to the west. It will clear.' Or, even when the sky was blue, if
+Beauty turned eastward for her toilet, the comment would be: 'Kitty is
+washing her face to the east. The wind must be getting "out" (from the
+sea), and a storm brewing.' And when in the dusk of autumn or winter
+evenings Beauty ran about the room, chasing her tail or frolicking with
+her kittens instead of sleeping quietly by the fire as was her wont, my
+grandmother would look up and say: 'Kitty is wild to-night. The wind
+will blow hard before morning.' If I sometimes asked how she knew these
+things, the reply would be, 'My mother told me when I was a little
+girl.' Now her mother, my great-grandmother, was a distinguished
+personage in my eyes, having been the daughter of Captain Jonathan
+Prescott who commanded a company under Sir William Pepperell at the
+siege of Louisburg and lost his life there; and I could not question the
+wisdom of colonial times. Indeed, to this hour I have a lingering belief
+that cats can foretell the weather.
+
+"And what a mouser she was! Before her time we often heard the rats and
+mice in the walls, but with her presence not one dared to peep, and
+cupboard and pantry were unmolested. Now and then she carried her forays
+to hedge and orchard, and I remember one sad summer twilight that saw
+her bring in a slender brown bird which my grandmother said was the
+cuckoo we had delighted to hear in the still mornings among the alders
+by the river. She was scolded and had no milk that night, and we never
+knew her to catch a bird again.
+
+"O to see her with her kittens! She always hid them in the haymows, and
+hunting and finding them brought us no end of excitement and pleasure.
+Twice a day, at least, she would come to the house to be fed, and then
+how we watched her returning steps, stealing cautiously along the path
+and waiting behind stack or door the better to observe her--for pussy
+knew perfectly well that we were eager to see her darlings, and enjoyed
+misleading and piquing us, we imagined, by taking devious ways. How well
+I recall that summer afternoon when, soft-footed and alone, I followed
+her to the floor of the barn. Just as she was about to spring to the mow
+she espied me, and, turning back, cunningly settled herself as if for a
+quiet nap in the sunny open door. Determined not to lose sight of her, I
+threw myself upon the fragrant hay; but in the stillness, the faint
+sighing of the wind, the far-off ripple of the river, the hazy outline
+of the hills, the wheeling swallows overhead, were blended at length in
+an indistinct dream, and I slept, oblivious of all. When I woke, pussy
+had disappeared, the sun was setting, the cows were coming from the
+pastures, and I could only return to the house discomfited. That
+particular family of kittens we never saw till a fortnight later, when
+the proud mother brought them in one by one, and laid them at my
+grandmother's feet.
+
+"What became of Beauty is as mysterious as the fate of the Dauphin. To
+our grief, she disappeared one November day, and we never saw her more.
+Sometimes we fancied she had been carried off by an admiring traveller:
+at others we tortured ourselves with the belief that the traditional
+wildcat of the north woods had devoured her. All we knew was that she
+had vanished; but when memory pictures that pleasant country home and
+the dear circle there, white-throated Beauty is always sleeping by the
+fire."
+
+Miss Fidelia Bridges, the artist, is another devoted cat lover, and at
+her home at Canaan, Ct., has had several interesting specimens.
+
+"Among my many generations of pet cats," says Miss Bridges, "one
+aristocratic maltese lady stands out in prominence before all the rest.
+She was a cat of great personal beauty and independence of character--a
+remarkable huntress, bringing in game almost as large as herself,
+holding her beautiful head aloft to keep the great wings of pigeons from
+trailing on the ground. She and her mother were fast friends from birth
+to death. When the young maltese had her first brood of kittens, her
+mother had also a family in another barrel in the cellar. When we went
+to see the just-arrived family, we found our Lady Malty's bed empty, and
+there in her mother's barrel were both families and both mothers. A
+delightful arrangement for the young mother, who could leave her
+children in the grandmother's care and enjoy her liberty when it pleased
+her to roam abroad. The young lady had an indomitable will, and when she
+decided to do a thing nothing would turn her aside. She found a favorite
+resting-place on a pile of blankets in a dark attic room. This being
+disapproved of by the elders, the door was kept carefully closed. She
+then found entrance through a stove-pipe hole, high up on the wall of an
+adjoining room. A cover was hung over the hole. She sprang up and
+knocked it off. Then, as a last resort, the hole was papered over like
+the wall-paper of the room. She looked, made a leap, and crashed through
+the paper with as merry an air as a circus-rider through his papered
+hoop. She had a habit of manoeuvring to be shut out of doors at
+bed-time, and then, when all was still, climbing up to my window by
+means of a porch over a door beneath it, to pass the night on my bed. In
+some alterations of the house, the porch was taken away. She looked with
+dismay for a moment at the destruction of her ladder, then calmly ran up
+the side of the house to my window, which she always after continued to
+do.
+
+"Next in importance, perhaps, is my present intimate companion, now ten
+years old and absolutely deaf, so that we communicate with signs. If I
+want to attract his attention I step on the floor: if to go to his
+dinner, I show him a certain blue plate: to call him in at night, I take
+a lantern outside the door, and the flash of light attracts his
+attention from a great distance. On one occasion he lived nine months
+alone in the house while I made a trip to Europe, absolutely refusing
+all the neighbors' invitations to enter any other house. A friend's
+gardener brought him his daily rations. As warm weather came, he spent
+his days in the fields, returning in the night for his food, so that at
+my return it was two or three days before he discovered that the house
+was open. The third evening he entered the open door, looked wildly
+about for a moment, but when I put my hand on him suddenly recognized me
+and overwhelmed me with affectionate caresses, and for two days and
+nights would not allow me out of his sight, unable to eat or sleep
+unless I was close at hand, and following me from room to room and chair
+to chair. And people say that cats have no affection!"
+
+At the Quincy House in Boston may be seen in the office an oil painting
+of an immense yellow cat. The first time I noticed the picture, I was
+proceeding into the dining room, and while waiting for dinner, was
+amused at seeing the original of the picture walk sedately in, all
+alone, and going to an empty table, seat himself with majestic grace in
+a chair. The waiter, seeing him, came forward and pushed up the chair as
+he would do for any other guest. The cat then waited patiently without
+putting his paws on the table, or violating any other law of table
+etiquette, until a plate of meat came, cut up to suit his taste (I did
+not hear him give his order), and then, placing his front paws on the
+edge of the table, he ate from his plate. When he had finished, he
+descended from his table and stalked out of the room with much dignity.
+He was always regular at his meals, and although he picked out a good
+seat, did not always sit at the same table. He was in appearance
+something like the famous orange cats of Venice, and attracted much
+attention, as might be expected, up to his death, at a ripe old age.
+
+Miss Frances Willard was a cat-lover, too, and had a beautiful cat which
+is known to all her friends.
+
+"Tootsie" went to Rest Cottage, the home of Frances Willard, when only a
+kitten, and there he lived, the pet of the household and its guests,
+until several years ago, when Miss Willard prepared to go abroad. Then
+she took Tootsie in her arms, carried him to the Drexel kennels in
+Chicago, and asked their owner, Mrs. Leland Norton, to admit him as a
+member of her large cat family, where he still lives. To his praise be
+it spoken, he has never forgotten his old friends at Rest Cottage. To
+this day, whenever any of them come to call upon him, he honors them
+with instant and hearty recognition. Miss Willard was sometimes forced
+to be separated from him more than a year at a time, but neither time
+nor change had any effect upon Tootsie. At the first sound of her voice
+he would spring to her side. He is a magnificent Angora, weighing
+twenty-four pounds, with the long, silky hair, the frill, or lord
+mayor's chain, the superb curling tail, and the large, full eyes of the
+thoroughbred. Then he has proved himself of aristocratic tendencies, has
+beautiful manners, is endowed with the human qualities of memory and
+discrimination, and is aesthetic in his tastes.
+
+Being the privileged character that he is, Tootsie always eats at the
+table with the family. He has his own chair and bib, and his manners are
+said to be exquisite.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+CONCERNING SOME HISTORIC CATS
+
+
+It is quite common for writers on the cat to say, "The story of
+Theophile Gautier's cats is too familiar to need comment." On the
+contrary, I do not believe it is familiar to the average reader, and
+that only those who know Gautier's "Menagerie In-time" in the original,
+recall the particulars of his "White and Black Dynasties." For this
+reason they shall be repeated in these pages. I use Mrs. Cashel-Hoey's
+translation, partly in a selfish desire to save myself time and labor,
+but principally because she has preserved so successfully the
+sympathetic and appreciative spirit of M. Gautier himself.
+
+"Dynasties of cats, as numerous as those of the Egyptian kings,
+succeeded each other in my dwelling," says he. "One after another they
+were swept away by accident, by flight, by death. All were loved and
+regretted: but life is made up of oblivion, and the memory of cats dies
+out like the memory of men." After making mention of an old gray cat who
+always took his part against his parents, and used to bite Madame
+Gautier's legs when she presumed to reprove her son, he passes on at
+once to the romantic period, and the commemoration of Childebrand.
+
+"This name at once reveals a deep design of flouting Boileau, whom I did
+not like then, but have since become reconciled to. Has not Nicholas
+said:--
+
+  "'O le plaisant projet d'un poete ignorant
+  Que de tant de heros va choisir Childebrant!'
+
+
+"Now I considered Childebrand a very fine name indeed, Merovingian,
+mediaeval, and Gothic, and vastly preferable to Agamemnon, Achilles,
+Ulysses, or any Greek name whatsoever. Romanticism was the fashion of my
+early days: I have no doubt the people of classical times called their
+cats Hector, Ajax, or Patroclus. Childebrand was a splendid cat of
+common kind, tawny and striped with black, like the hose of Saltabadil
+in 'Le Rois' Amuse.' With his large, green, almond-shaped eyes, and his
+symmetrical stripes, there was something tigerlike about him that
+pleased me. Childebrand had the honor of figuring in some verses that I
+wrote to 'flout' Boileau:--
+
+  "Puis je te decrirai ce tableau de Rembrandt
+  Que me fait tant plaisir: et mon chat Childebrand,
+  Sur mes genoux pose selon son habitude,
+  Levant sur moi la tete avec inquietude,
+  Suivra les mouvements de mon doigt qui dans l'air
+  Esquisse mon recit pour le rendre plus clair.
+
+
+"Childebrand was brought in there to make a good rhyme for Rembrandt,
+the piece being a kind of confession of the romantic faith made to a
+friend, who was then as enthusiastic as myself about Victor Hugo, Sainte
+Beuve, and Alfred de Musset.... I come next to Madame Theophile, a 'red'
+cat, with a white breast, a pink nose, and blue eyes, whom I called by
+that name because we were on terms of the closest intimacy. She slept at
+the foot of my bed: she sat on the arm of my chair while I wrote: she
+came down into the garden and gravely walked about with me: she was
+present at all my meals, and frequently intercepted a choice morsel on
+its way from my plate to my mouth. One day a friend who was going away
+for a short time, brought me his parrot, to be taken care of during his
+absence. The bird, finding itself in a strange place, climbed up to the
+top of its perch by the aid of its beak, and rolled its eyes (as yellow
+as the nails in my arm-chair) in a rather frightened manner, also moving
+the white membranes that formed its eyelids. Madame Theophile had never
+seen a parrot, and she regarded the creature with manifest surprise.
+While remaining as motionless as a cat mummy from Egypt in its swathing
+bands, she fixed her eyes upon the bird with a look of profound
+meditation, summoning up all the notions of natural history that she had
+picked up in the yard, in the garden, and on the roof. The shadow of her
+thoughts passed over her changing eyes, and we could plainly read in
+them the conclusion to which her scrutiny led, 'Decidedly this is a
+green chicken.'
+
+"This result attained, the next proceeding of Madame Theophile was to
+jump off the table from which she had made her observations, and lay
+herself flat on the ground in a corner of the room, exactly in the
+attitude of the panther in Gerome's picture watching the gazelles as
+they come down to drink at a lake. The parrot followed the movements of
+the cat with feverish anxiety: it ruffled its feathers, rattled its
+chain, lifted one of its feet and shook the claws, and rubbed its beak
+against the edge of its trough. Instinct told it that the cat was an
+enemy and meant mischief. The cat's eyes were now fixed upon the bird
+with fascinating intensity, and they said in perfectly intelligible
+language, which the poor parrot distinctly understood, 'This chicken
+ought to be good to eat, although it is green.' We watched the scene
+with great interest, ready to interfere at need. Madame Theophile was
+creeping nearer and nearer almost imperceptibly; her pink nose quivered,
+her eyes were half closed, her contractile claws moved in and out of
+their velvet sheaths, slight thrills of pleasure ran along her backbone
+at the idea of the meal she was about to make. Such novel and exotic
+food excited her appetite.
+
+"All in an instant her back took the shape of a bent bow, and with a
+vigorous and elastic bound she sprang upon the perch. The parrot, seeing
+its danger, said in a bass voice as grave and deep as M. Prudhomme's
+own, 'As tu dejeune, Jacquot?'
+
+"This utterance so terrified the cat that she sprang backwards. The
+blare of a trumpet, the crash and smash of a pile of plates flung to the
+ground, a pistol shot fired off at her ear, could not have frightened
+her more thoroughly. All her ornithological ideas were overthrown.
+
+"'Et de quoi? Du roti du roi?' continued the parrot.
+
+"Then might we, the observers, read in the physiognomy of Madame
+Theophile, 'This is not a bird, it is a gentleman; it talks.'
+
+  "'Quand j'ai bu du vin clairet,
+  Tout tourne, tout tourne an cabaret,'
+
+shrieked the parrot in a deafening voice, for it had perceived that its
+best means of defence was the terror aroused by its speech. The cat cast
+a glance at me which was full of questioning, but as my response was not
+satisfactory, she promptly hid herself under the bed, and from that
+refuge she could not be induced to stir during the whole of the day.
+People who are not accustomed to live with animals, and who, like
+Descartes, regard them as mere machines, will think that I lend
+unauthorized meanings to the acts of the 'volatile' and the 'quadruped,'
+but I have only faithfully translated their ideas into human language.
+The next day Madame Theophile plucked up courage and made another
+attempt, which was similarly repulsed. From that moment she gave it up,
+accepting the bird as a variety of man.
+
+"This dainty and charming animal was extremely fond of perfumes,
+especially of patchouli and the scent exhaled by India shawls. She was
+also very fond of music, and would listen, sitting on a pile of
+music-books, while the fair singers who came to try the critic's piano
+filled his room with melody. All the time Madame Theophile would evince
+great pleasure. She was, however, made nervous by certain notes, and at
+the high _la_ she would tap the singer's mouth with her paw. This
+was very amusing, and my visitors delighted in making the experiment. It
+never failed; the dilettante in fun was not to be deceived.
+
+"The rule of the 'White Dynasty' belonged to a later epoch, and was
+inaugurated in the person of a pretty little kitten as white as a powder
+puff, who came from Havana. On account of his spotless whiteness he was
+called Pierrot; but when he grew up this name was very properly
+magnified into Don-Pierrot-de-Navarre, which was far more majestic, and
+suggested 'grandee-ism.' [M. Theophile Gautier lays it down as a dogma
+that all animals with whom one is much taken up, and who are 'spoiled,'
+become delightfully good and amiable. Don-Pierrot-de-Navarre
+successfully supported his master's theory; perhaps he suggested it.]
+
+"He shared in the life of the household with the enjoyment of quiet
+fireside friendship that is characteristic of cats. He had his own place
+near the fire, and there he would sit with a convincing air of
+comprehension of all that was talked of and of interest in it; he
+followed the looks of the speakers, and uttered little sounds toward
+them as though he, too, had objections to make and opinions to give upon
+the literary subjects which were most frequently discussed. He was very
+fond of books, and when he found one open on a table he would lie down
+on it, turn over the edges of the leaves with his paws, and after a
+while fall asleep, for all the world as if he had been reading a
+fashionable novel. He was deeply interested in my writing, too; the
+moment I took up my pen he would jump upon the desk, and follow the
+movement of the penholder with the gravest attention, making a little
+movement with his head at the beginning of each line. Sometimes he would
+try to take the pen out of my hand.
+
+"Don-Pierrot-de-Navarre never went to bed until I had come in. He would
+wait for me just inside the outer door and rub himself to my legs, his
+back in an arch, with a glad and friendly purring. Then he would go on
+before me, preceding me with a page-like air, and I have no doubt, if I
+had asked him, he would have carried the candlestick. Having thus
+conducted me to my bedroom, he would wait quietly while I undressed, and
+then jump on my bed, take my neck between his paws, gently rub my nose
+with his own, and lick me with his small, pink tongue, as rough as a
+file, uttering all the time little inarticulate cries, which expressed
+as clearly as any words could do his perfect satisfaction at having me
+with him again. After these caresses he would perch himself on the back
+of the bedstead and sleep there, carefully balanced, like a bird on a
+branch. When I awoke, he would come down and lie beside me until I got
+up.
+
+"Pierrot was as strict as a concierge in his notions of the proper hour
+for all good people to return to their homes. He did not approve of
+anything later than midnight. In those days we had a little society
+among friends, which we called 'The Four Candles,'--the light in our
+place of meeting being restricted to four candles in silver
+candlesticks, placed at the four corners of the tables. Sometimes the
+talk became so animated that I forgot all about time, and twice or three
+times Pierrot sat up for me until two o'clock in the morning. After a
+while, however, my conduct in this respect displeased him, and he
+retired to rest without me. I was touched by this mute protest against
+my innocent dissipation, and thenceforth came home regularly at twelve
+o'clock. Nevertheless, Pierrot cherished the memory of my offence for
+some time; he waited to test the reality of my repentance, but when he
+was convinced that my conversion was sincere, he deigned to restore me
+to his good graces, and resumed his nocturnal post in the anteroom.
+
+"To gain the friendship of a cat is a difficult thing. The cat is a
+philosophical, methodical, quiet animal, tenacious of its own habits,
+fond of order and cleanliness, and it does not lightly confer its
+friendship. If you are worthy of its affection, a cat will be your
+friend, but never your slave. He keeps his free will, though he loves,
+and he will not do for you what he thinks unreasonable; but if he once
+gives himself to you, it is with such absolute confidence, such fidelity
+of affection. He makes himself the companion of your hours of solitude,
+melancholy, and toil. He remains for whole evenings on your knee,
+uttering his contented purr, happy to be with you, and forsaking the
+company of animals of his own species. In vain do melodious mewings on
+the roof invite him to one of those cat parties in which fish bones play
+the part of tea and cakes; he is not to be tempted away from you. Put
+him down and he will jump up again, with a sort of cooing sound that is
+like a gentle reproach; and sometimes he will sit upon the carpet in
+front of you, looking at you with eyes so melting, so caressing, and so
+human, that they almost frighten you, for it is impossible to believe
+that a soul is not there.
+
+"Don-Pierrot-de-Navarre had a sweetheart of the same race and of as
+snowy a whiteness as himself. The ermine would have looked yellow by the
+side of Seraphita, for so this lovely creature was named, in honor of
+Balzac's Swedenborgian romance. Seraphita was of a dreamy and
+contemplative disposition. She would sit on a cushion for hours
+together, quite motionless, not asleep, and following with her eyes, in
+a rapture of attention, sights invisible to mere mortals. Caresses were
+agreeable to her, but she returned them in a very reserved manner, and
+only in the case of persons whom she favored with her rarely accorded
+esteem. She was fond of luxury, and it was always upon the handsomest
+easy-chair, or the rug that would best show off her snowy fur, that she
+would surely be found. She devoted a great deal of time to her toilet,
+her glossy coat was carefully smoothed every morning. She washed herself
+with her paw, and licked every atom of her fur with her pink tongue
+until it shone like new silver. When any one touched her, she instantly
+effaced all trace of the contact; she could not endure to be tumbled. An
+idea of aristocracy was suggested by her elegance and distinction, and
+among her own people she was a duchess at least. She delighted in
+perfumes, would stick her nose into bouquets, bite scented handkerchiefs
+with little spasms of pleasure, and walk about among the scent bottles
+on the toilet table, smelling at their stoppers; no doubt, she would
+have used the powder puff if she had been permitted. Such was Seraphita,
+and never did cat more amply justify a poetic name. I must mention here
+that, in the days of the White Dynasty, I was also the happy possessor
+of a family of white rats, and that the cats, always supposed to be
+their natural, invariable, and irreconcilable enemies, lived in perfect
+harmony with my pet rodents. The rats never showed the slightest
+distrust of the cats, nor did the cats ever betray their confidence.
+Don-Pierrot-de-Navarre was very much attached to them. He would sit
+close to their cage and observe their gambols for hours together, and if
+by any chance the door of the room in which they were left was shut, he
+would scratch and mew gently until some one came to open it and allow
+him to rejoin his little white friends, who would often come out of the
+cage and sleep close to him. Seraphita, who was of a more reserved and
+disdainful temper, and who disliked the musky odor of the white rats,
+took no part in their games; but she never did them any harm, and would
+let them pass before her without putting out a claw.
+
+"Don-Pierrot-de-Navarre, who came from Havana, required a hothouse
+temperature: and this he always had in his own apartments. The house
+was, however, surrounded by extensive gardens, divided by railings,
+through and over which cats could easily climb, and in those gardens
+were trees inhabited by a great number of birds. Pierrot would
+frequently take advantage of an open door to get out of an evening and
+go a-hunting through the wet grass and flower-beds: and, as his mewing
+under the windows when he wanted to get in again did not always awaken
+the sleepers in the house, he frequently had to stay out until morning.
+His chest was delicate, and one very chilly night he caught a cold which
+rapidly developed into phthisis. At the end of a year of coughing, poor
+Don Pierrot had wasted to a skeleton, and his coat, once so silky, was a
+dull, harsh white. His large, transparent eyes looked unnaturally large
+in his shrunken face: the pink of his little nose had faded, and he
+dragged himself slowly along the sunny side of the wall with a
+melancholy air, looking at the yellow autumnal leaves as they danced and
+whirled in the wind. Nothing is so touching as a sick animal: it submits
+to suffering with such gentle and sad resignation. We did all in our
+power to save Pierrot: a skilful doctor came to see him, felt his pulse,
+sounded his lungs, and ordered him ass's milk. He drank the prescribed
+beverage very readily out of his own especial china saucer. For hours
+together he lay stretched upon my knee, like the shadow of a sphinx. I
+felt his spine under my finger tips like the beads of a rosary, and he
+tried to respond to my caresses by a feeble purr that resembled a
+death-rattle. On the day of his death he was lying on his side panting,
+and suddenly, with a supreme effort, he rose and came to me. His large
+eyes were opened wide, and he gazed at me with a look of intense
+supplication, a look that seemed to say, 'Save me, save me, you, who are
+a man.' Then he made a few faltering steps, his eyes became glassy, and
+he fell down, uttering so lamentable a cry, so dreadful and full of
+anguish, that I was struck dumb and motionless with horror. He was
+buried at the bottom of the garden under a white rose tree, which still
+marks the place of his sepulture. Three years later Seraphita died, and
+was buried by the side of Don Pierrot. With her the White Dynasty became
+extinct, but not the family. This snow-white couple had three children,
+who were as black as ink. Let any one explain that mystery who can. The
+kittens were born in the early days of the great renown of Victor Hugo's
+'Les Miserables,' when everybody was talking of the new masterpiece, and
+the names of the personages in it were in every mouth. The two little
+male creatures were called Enjolras and Gavroche, and their sister
+received the name of Eponine. They were very pretty, and I trained them
+to run after a little ball of paper and bring it back to me when I threw
+it into the corner of the room. In time they would follow the ball up to
+the top of the bookcase, or fish for it behind boxes or in the bottom of
+china vases with their dainty little paws. As they grew up they came to
+disdain those frivolous amusements, and assumed the philosophical and
+meditative quiet which is the true temperament of the cat.
+
+"To the eyes of the careless and indifferent observer, three black cats
+are just three black cats, but those who are really acquainted with
+animals know that their physiognomy is as various as that of the human
+race. I was perfectly well able to distinguish between these little
+faces, as black as Harlequin's mask, and lighted up by disks of emerald
+with golden gleams. Enjolras, who was much the handsomest of the three,
+was remarkable for his broad, leonine head and full whiskers, strong
+shoulders, and a superb feathery tail. There was something theatrical
+and pretentious in his air, like the posing of a popular actor. His
+movements were slow, undulatory, and majestic: so circumspect was he
+about where he set his feet down that he always seemed to be walking
+among glass and china. His disposition was by no means stoical, and he
+was much too fond of food to have been approved of by his namesake. The
+temperate and austere Enjolras would certainly have said to him, as the
+angel said to Swedenborg, 'You eat too much.' I encouraged his
+gastronomical tastes, and Enjolras attained a very unusual size and
+weight.
+
+"Gavroche was a remarkably knowing cat, and looked it. He was
+wonderfully active, and his twists, twirls, and tumbles were very comic.
+He was of a Bohemian temperament, and fond of low company. Thus he would
+occasionally compromise the dignity of his descent from the illustrious
+Don-Pierrot-de-Navarre, grandee of Spain of the first class, and the
+Marquesa Dona Seraphita, of aristocratic and disdainful bearing. He
+would sometimes return from his expeditions to the street, accompanied
+by gaunt, starved companions, whom he had picked up in his wanderings,
+and he would stand complacently by while they bolted the contents of his
+plate of food in a violent hurry and in dread of dispersion by a
+broomstick or a shower of water. I was sometimes tempted to say to
+Gavroche, 'A nice lot of friends you pick up,' but I refrained, for,
+after all, it was an amiable weakness: he might have eaten his dinner
+all by himself.
+
+"The interesting Eponine was more slender and graceful than her
+brothers, and she was an extraordinarily sensitive, nervous, and
+electric animal. She was passionately attached to me, and she would do
+the honors of my hermitage with perfect grace and propriety. When the
+bell rang, she hastened to the door, received the visitors, conducted
+them to the salon, made them take seats, talked to them--yes, talked,
+with little coos, murmurs, and cries quite unlike the language which
+cats use among themselves, and which bordered on the articulate speech
+of man. What did she say? She said quite plainly: 'Don't be impatient:
+look at the pictures, or talk with me, if I amuse you. My master is
+coming down.' On my appearing she would retire discreetly to an
+arm-chair or the corner of the piano, and listen to the conversation
+without interrupting it, like a well-bred animal accustomed to good
+society.
+
+"Eponine's intelligence, fine disposition, and sociability led to her
+being elevated by common consent to the dignity of a person, for reason,
+superior instinct, plainly governed her conduct. That dignity conferred
+on her the right to eat at table like a person, and not in a corner on
+the floor, from a saucer, like an animal. Eponine had a chair by my side
+at breakfast and dinner, but in consideration of her size she was
+privileged to place her fore paws on the table. Her place was laid,
+without a knife and fork, indeed, but with a glass, and she went
+regularly through dinner, from soup to dessert, awaiting her turn to be
+helped, and behaving with a quiet propriety which most children might
+imitate with advantage. At the first stroke of the bell she would
+appear, and when I came into the dining room she would be at her post,
+upright in her chair, her fore paws on the edge of the tablecloth, and
+she would present her smooth forehead to be kissed, like a well-bred
+little girl who was affectionately polite to relatives and old people.
+When we had friends to dine with us, Eponine always knew that company
+was expected. She would look at her place, and if a knife, fork, and
+spoon lay near her plate she would immediately turn away and seat
+herself on the piano-stool, her invariable refuge. Let those who deny
+the possession of reason to animals explain, if they can, this little
+fact, apparently so simple, but which contains a world of induction.
+From the presence near her plate of those implements which only man can
+use, the observant and judicious cat concluded that she ought on this
+occasion to give way to a guest, and she hastened to do so. She was
+never mistaken: only, when the visitor was a person whom she knew and
+liked, she would jump on his knee and coax him for a bit off his plate
+by her graceful caresses. She survived her brothers, and was my dear
+companion for several years.... Such is the chronicle of the Black
+Dynasty."
+
+Although cats have no place in the Bible, neither can their enemies who
+sing the praise of the dog, find much advantage there: for that most
+excellent animal is referred to in anything but a complimentary
+fashion--"For without are dogs and sorcerers."
+
+The great prophet of Allah, however, knew a good cat when he saw it.
+"Muezza" even contributed her small share to the development of the
+Mahometan system: for did she not sit curled up in her master's sleeve,
+and by her soft purring soothe and deepen his meditations? And did she
+not keep him dreaming so long that she finally became exhausted herself,
+and fell asleep in his flowing sleeve; whereupon did not Mahomet, rather
+than disturb her, and feeling that he must be about his Allah's
+business, cut off his sleeve rather than disturb the much loved Muezza?
+The nurses of Cairo tell this story to their young charges to this day.
+
+Cardinal Richelieu had many a kitten, too; and morose and ill-tempered
+as he was, found in them much amusement. His love for them, however, was
+not that unselfish love which led Mahomet to cut off his sleeve; but
+simply a selfish desire for passing amusement. He cared nothing for that
+most interesting process, the development of a kitten into a cat, and
+the study of its individuality which is known only to the real lover of
+cats. For it is recorded of him that as soon as his pets were three
+months old he sent them away, evidently not caring where, and procured
+new ones.
+
+M. Champfleury, however, thinks it possible that there may not be any
+real foundation for this story about Richelieu. He refers to the fact
+that Moncrif says not a word about the celebrated cardinal's passion for
+those creatures; but he does say, "Everybody knows that one of the
+greatest ministers France ever possessed, M. Colbert, always had a
+number of kittens playing about that same cabinet in which so many
+institutions, both honorable and useful to the nation, had their
+origin." Can it be that Richelieu has been given credit for Colbert's
+virtues?
+
+In various parts of Chateaubriand's "Memoires" may be found eulogiums on
+the cat. So well known was his fondness for them, that even when his
+other feelings and interests faded with age and decay, his affections
+for cats remained strong to the end. This love became well known to all
+his compeers, and once on an embassy to Rome the Pope gave him a cat. He
+was called "Micetto." According to Chateaubriand's biographer, M. de
+Marcellus, "Pope Leo XII's cat could not fail to reappear in the
+description of that domestic hearth where I have so often seen him
+basking. In fact, Chateaubriand has immortalized his favorite in the
+sketch which begins, 'My companion is a big cat, of a greyish red.'"
+This ecclesiastical pet was always dignified and imposing in manners,
+ever conscious that he had been the gift of a sovereign pontiff, and had
+a tremendous weight of reputation to maintain. He used to stroke his
+tail when he desired Madame Recamier to know that he was tired.
+
+"I love in the cat," said Chateaubriand to M. de Marcellus, "that
+independent and almost ungrateful temper which prevents it from
+attaching itself to any one: the indifference with which it passes from
+the salon to the house-top. When you caress it, it stretches itself out
+and arches its back, indeed: but that is caused by physical pleasure,
+not, as in the case of the dog, by a silly satisfaction in loving and
+being faithful to a master who returns thanks in kicks. The cat lives
+alone, has no need of society, does not obey except when it likes, and
+pretends to sleep that it may see the more clearly, and scratches
+everything that it can scratch. Buffon has belied the cat: I am laboring
+at its rehabilitation, and hope to make of it a tolerably good sort of
+animal, as times go."
+
+Cardinal Wolsey, Lord High Chancellor of England, was another cat-lover,
+and his superb cat sat in a cushioned arm-chair by his side in the
+zenith of his pride and power, the only one in that select circle who
+was not obliged to don a wig and robe while acting in a judicial
+capacity. Then there was Bouhaki, the proud Theban cat that used to wear
+gold earrings as he sat at the feet of King Hana, his owner, perhaps,
+but not his master, and whose reproduction in the tomb of Hana in the
+Necropolis at Thebes, between his master's feet in a statue, is one of
+the most ancient reproductions of a cat. And Sainte-Beuve, whose cat
+used to roam at will over his desk and sit or lie on the precious
+manuscripts no other person was allowed to touch; it is flattering to
+know that the great Frenchman and I have one habit in common; and Miss
+Repplier owns to it too. "But Sainte-Beuve," says she, "probably had
+sufficient space reserved for his own comfort and convenience. I have
+not; and Agrippina's beautifully ringed tail flapping across my copy
+distracts my attention and imperils the neatness of my penmanship." And
+even as I write these pages, does the Pretty Lady's daughter Jane lie on
+my copy and gaze lovingly at me as I work.
+
+Julian Hawthorne is another writer whose cat is an accompaniment of his
+working hours. In this connection we must not forget M. Brasseur
+Wirtgen, a student of natural history who writes of his cat: "My habit
+of reading," he says, "which divided us from each other in our
+respective thoughts, prejudiced my cat very strongly against my books.
+Sometimes her little head would project its profile on the page which I
+was perusing, as though she were trying to discover what it was that
+thus absorbed me: doubtless, she did not understand why I should look
+for my happiness beyond the presence of a devoted heart. Her solicitude
+was no less manifest when she brought me rats or mice. She acted in this
+case exactly as if I had been her son: dragging enormous rats, still in
+the throes of death, to my feet: and she was evidently guided by logic
+in offering me a prey commensurate with my size, for she never presented
+any such large game to her kittens. Her affectionate attention
+invariably caused her a severe disappointment. Having laid the product
+of her hunting expedition at my feet, she would appear to be greatly
+hurt by my indifference to such delicious fare."
+
+That Tasso had a cat we know because he wrote a sonnet to her. Alfred de
+Musset's cats are apostrophized in his verses. Dr. Johnson's Hodge held
+a soft place for many years in the gruff old scholar's breast. And has
+not every one heard how the famous Dr. Johnson fetched oysters for his
+beloved Hodge, lest the servants should object to the trouble, and vent
+their displeasure on his favorite?
+
+Nor can one forget Sir Isaac Newton and his cats: for is it not alleged
+that the great man had two holes cut in his barn door, one for the
+mother, and a smaller one for the kitten?
+
+Byron was fond of cats: in his establishment at Ravenna he had five of
+them. Daniel Maclise's famous portrait of Harriet Martineau represents
+that estimable woman sitting in front of a fireplace and turning her
+face to receive the caress of her pet cat crawling to a resting-place
+upon her mistress's shoulder.
+
+Although La Fontaine in his fables shows such a delicate appreciation of
+their character and ways, it is doubtful whether he honestly loved cats.
+But his friend and patron, the Duchess of Bouillon, was so devoted to
+them that she requested the poet to make her a copy with his own hand of
+all his fables in which pussy appears. The exercise-book in which they
+were written was discovered a few years ago among the Bouillon papers.
+
+Baudelaire, it is said, could never pass a cat in the street without
+stopping to stroke and fondle it. "Many a time," said Champfleury, "when
+he and I have been walking together, have we stopped to look at a cat
+curled luxuriously in a pile of fresh white linen, revelling in the
+cleanliness of the newly ironed fabrics. Into what fits of contemplation
+have we fallen before such windows, while the coquettish laundresses
+struck attitudes at the ironing boards, under the mistaken impression
+that we were admiring them." It was also related of Baudelaire that,
+"going for the first time to a house, he is restless and uneasy until he
+has seen the household cat. But when he sees it, he takes it up, kisses
+and strokes it, and is so completely absorbed in it, that he makes no
+answer to what is said to him."
+
+Professor Huxley's notorious fondness for cats was a fad which he shared
+with Paul de Koch, the novelist, who, at one time, kept as many as
+thirty cats in his house. Many descriptions of them are to be found
+scattered through his novels. His chief favorite, Fromentin, lived
+eleven years with him.
+
+Pierre Loti has written a charming and most touching history of two of
+his cats--Moumette Blanche and Moumette Chinoise--which all true
+cat-lovers should make a point of reading.
+
+Algernon Swinburne, the poet, is devoted to cats. His favorite is named
+Atossa. Robert Southey was an ardent lover of cats. Most people have
+read his letter to his friend Bedford, announcing the death of one.
+"Alas, Grosvenor," he wrote, "this day poor Rumpel was found dead, after
+as long and happy a life as cat could wish for, if cats form wishes on
+that subject. His full titles were: The Most Noble, the Archduke
+Rumpelstiltzchen, Marcus Macbum, Earl Tomlefnagne, Baron Raticide,
+Waowhler and Scratch. There should be a court-mourning in Catland, and
+if the Dragon (your pet cat) wear a black ribbon round his neck, or a
+band of crape _a la militaire_ round one of his fore paws it will
+be but a becoming mark of respect." Then the poet-laureate adds, "I
+believe we are each and all, servants included, more sorry for his loss,
+or, rather, more affected by it, than any of us would like to confess."
+
+Josh Billings called his favorite cat William, because he considered no
+shorter name fitted to the dignity of his character. "Poor old man," he
+remarked one day, to a friend, "he has fits now, so I call him
+Fitz-William."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+CONCERNING CATS IN ENGLAND
+
+
+If the growing fancy for cats in this country is benefiting the feline
+race as a whole, they have to thank the English people for it. For
+certain cats in England are held at a value that seems preposterous to
+unsophisticated Americans. At one cat and bird show, held at the Crystal
+Palace, near London, some of the cats were valued at thirty-five hundred
+pounds sterling ($17,500)--as much as the price of a first-class
+race-horse.
+
+For more than a quarter of a century National Cat Shows have been held
+at Crystal Palace and the Westminster Aquarium, which have given great
+stimulus to the breeding of fine cats, and "catteries" where high-priced
+cats and kittens are raised are common throughout the country.
+
+England was the first, too, to care for lost and deserted cats and dogs.
+At Battersea there is a Temporary Home for both these unfortunates,
+where between twenty and twenty-five thousand dogs and cats are
+sheltered and fed. The objects of this home, which is supported entirely
+by voluntary subscriptions, are to restore lost pets to their owners, to
+find suitable homes for unclaimed cats and dogs, and to painlessly
+destroy useless and diseased ones. There is a commodious cat's house
+where pets may be boarded during their owner's absence; and a separate
+house where lost and deserted felines are sheltered, fed, and kindly
+tended.
+
+Since long before Whittington became Lord Mayor of London, indeed, cats
+have been popular in England: for did not the law protect them? As to
+the truth of the story of Whittington's cat, there has been much earnest
+discussion. Although Whittington lived from about 1360 to 1425, the
+story seems to have been pretty generally accepted for three hundred
+years after his death. A portrait still exists of him, with one hand
+holding a cat, and when his old house was remodelled in recent times, a
+carved stone was found in it showing a boy with a cat in his arms.
+Several similar tales have been found, it is argued, in which the heroes
+in different countries have started to make a fortune by selling a cat.
+But as rats and mice were extremely common then, and it has been shown
+that a single pair of rats will in three years multiply into over six
+hundred thousand, which will eat as much as sixty-four thousand men, why
+shouldn't a cat be deemed a luxury even for a king's palace? The
+argument that the cat of Whittington was a "cat," or boat used for
+carrying coal, is disproved by the fact that no account of such vessels
+in Whittington's time can be found, and also that the trade in coal did
+not begin in Europe for some time afterward. And there really seems
+nothing improbable in the story that at a time when a kitten big enough
+to kill mice brought fourpence in England, such an animal, taken to a
+rat-infested, catless country, might not be sold for a sum large enough
+to start an enterprising youth in trade. Surely, the beginnings of some
+of our own railroad kings and financiers may as well look doubtful to
+future generations.
+
+It is a pretty story--that of Whittington; how he rose from being a mere
+scullion at fourteen, to being "thrice Lord Mayor of London." According
+to what are claimed to be authentic documents, the story is something
+more than a nursery tale, and runs thus: Poor Dick Whittington was born
+at Shropshire, of such very poor parents that the boy, being of an
+ambitious nature, left home at fourteen, and walked to London, where he
+was taken into the hospital of St. John at Clerkenwell, in a menial
+capacity. The prior, noticing his good behavior and diligent conduct,
+took a fancy to him, and obtained him a position in a Mr. Fitzwarren's
+household on Tower Hill. For some time at this place his prospects did
+not improve; he was nothing but a scullion, ridiculed and disliked by
+the cook and other servants. Add to this the fact that an incredible
+swarm of mice and rats infested the miserable room in which he slept,
+and it would seem that he was indeed a "poor Richard." One fortunate
+day, however, he conceived the idea of buying a cat, and as good luck
+would have it, he was enabled within a few days to earn a penny or two
+by blacking the boots of a guest at the house. That day he met a woman
+with a cat for sale, and after some dickering (for she asked more money
+for it than the boy possessed in the world), Dick Whittington carried
+home his cat and put it in a cupboard or closet opening from his room.
+That night when he retired he let the cat out of the cupboard, and she
+evidently had "no end of fun"; for, according to these authentic
+accounts, "she destroyed all the vermin which ventured to make their
+appearance." For some time after that she passed her days in the
+cupboard (in hiding from the cook) and her nights in catching mice.
+
+And then came the change. Mr. Fitzwarren was fitting out a vessel for
+Algiers, and kindly offered all his servants a chance to send something
+to barter with the natives. Poor Dick had nothing but his cat, but the
+commercial instinct was even then strong within him, and with an
+enterprise worthy of the early efforts of any of our self-made men, he
+decided to send that, and accordingly placed it, "while the tears run
+plentifully down his cheeks," in the hands of the master of the vessel.
+She must have been a most exemplary cat, for by the time they had
+reached Algiers, the captain was so fond of her that he allowed no one
+to handle her but himself. Not even he, however, expected to turn her
+into money; but the opportunity soon came.
+
+At a state banquet, given by the Dey, the captain and his officers were
+astonished to notice that rats and mice ran freely in and out, stealing
+half the choice food, which was spread on the carpet; and this was a
+common, every-day occurrence. The captain saw his, or Whittington's,
+opportunity, and stated that he knew a certain remedy for this state of
+affairs; whereupon he was invited to dinner next day, to which he
+carried the cat, and the natural consequence ensued. This sudden and
+swift extermination of the pests drove the Dey and his court half
+frantic with delight; and the captain, who must have been the original
+progenitor of the Yankee race, drove a sharp bargain by assuming to be
+unwilling to part with the cat, so that the Dey finally "sent on board
+his ship the choicest commodities, consisting of gold, jewels, and
+silks."
+
+Meanwhile, things had gone from bad to worse with the youth, destined to
+become not only Lord Mayor of London, but the envy and admiration of
+future generations of youths; and he made up his mind to run away from
+his place. This he did, but while he was on his way to more rural
+scenes, he sat down on a stone at the foot of Highgate Hill (a stone
+that still remains marked as "Whittington's Stone") and paused to
+reflect on his prospects. His thoughts turned back to the home he had
+left, where he had at least plenty to eat, and, although the "authentic
+reports" use a great many words to tell us so, the boy was homesick.
+Just then the sound of Bow Bells reached him, and to his youthful fancy
+seemed to call him back:--
+
+  "Return, return, Whittington;
+  Thrice Lord Mayor of London."
+
+
+Thus the old tale hath it. At any rate, the boy gave up the idea of
+flight and went back to Mr. Fitzwarren's house. The second night after,
+his master sent for him in the midst of one of the cook's tirades, and
+going to the "parlour" he was apprised of his sudden wealth; because,
+added to the rest of his good luck, that captain happened to be an
+honest man. And then he went into trade and married the daughter of Mr.
+Fitzwarren and became Lord Mayor of London, and lived even happier ever
+after than they do in most fairy tales. And everybody, even the cook,
+admired and loved him after he had money and position, as has been known
+to happen outside of fairy tales.
+
+Whether or not cats in England owe anything of their position to-day to
+the Whittington story, it is certain that they have more really
+appreciating friends there than in any other country. The older we grow
+in the refinements of civilization, the more we value the finely bred
+cat. In England it has long been the custom to register the pedigree of
+cats as carefully as dog-fanciers in this country do with their fancy
+pets. Some account of the Cat Club Stud Book and Register will be found
+in the next chapter. Queen Victoria, and the Princess of Wales, and
+indeed many members of the nobility are cat-lovers, and doubtless this
+fact influences the general sentiment in England.
+
+Among the most devoted of Pussy's English admirers is the Hon. Mrs.
+McLaren Morrison, who is the happy possessor of some of the most perfect
+dogs and cats that have graced the bench. She lives at Kepwick Park, in
+her stately home in Yorkshire--a lovely spot, commanding a delightful
+view of picturesque Westmoreland on one side and on the other three
+surrounded and sheltered by hills and moors. Some of her pets go with
+her, however, to her flat in Queen Anne's Mansions, and even to her
+residence in Calcutta. It is at Kepwick Park that Mrs. McLaren Morrison
+has her celebrated "catteries." Here there are magnificent blue, black
+and silver and red Persians; snowy white, blue-eyed beauties; grandly
+marked English tabbies; handsome blue Russians, with their gleaming
+yellow-topaz eyes; some Chinese cats, with their long, edge-shaped heads,
+bright golden eyes, and shiny, short-haired black fur; and a pair of
+Japanese pussies, pure white and absolutely without tails. One of the
+handsomest specimens of the feline race ever seen is her blue Persian,
+Champion Monarch, who, as a kitten in 1893, won the gold medal at the
+Crystal Palace given for the best pair of kittens in the show, and the
+next year the Beresford Challenge Cup at Cruft's Show, for the best
+long-haired cat, besides taking many other honors. Among other well-known
+prize winners are the champions Snowball and Forget-me-not, both pure
+white, with lovely turquoise-blue eyes. Of Champion Nizam (now dead) that
+well-known English authority on cats, Mr. A.A. Clark, said his was the
+grandest head of any cat he had ever seen. Nizam was a perfect specimen
+of that rare and delicate breed of cats, a pure chinchilla. The numberless
+kittens sporting all day long are worthy of the art of Madame Henriette
+Ronner, and one could linger for hours in these delightful and most
+comfortable catteries watching their gambols. The gentle mistress of this
+fair and most interesting domain, the Hon. Mrs. McLaren Morrison herself,
+is one of the most attractive and fascinating women of the day--one who
+adds to great personal beauty all the charm of mental culture and much
+travel. She has made Kepwick Park a veritable House Beautiful with the
+rare curios and art treasures collected with her perfect taste in the
+many lands she has visited, and it is as interesting and enjoyable to a
+virtuoso as it is to an animal lover. Mrs. McLaren Morrison exhibits at
+all the cat shows, often entering as many as twenty-five cats. Other
+English ladies who exhibit largely are Mrs. Herring, of Lestock House,
+and Miss Cockburn Dickinson, of Surrey. Mrs. Herring's Champion Jimmy
+is very well known as a first prize-winner in many shows. He is a
+short-haired, exquisitely marked silver tabby valued at two thousand
+pounds ($10,000).
+
+Another feline celebrity also well known to frequenters of English cat
+shows, is Madame L. Portier's magnificent and colossal Blue Boy, whose
+first appearance into this world was made on the day sacred to St.
+Patrick, 1895. He has a fine pedigree, and was raised by Madame Portier
+herself. Blue Boy commenced his career as a show cat, or rather kitten,
+at three months old, when he was awarded a first prize, and when the
+judge told his mistress that if he fulfilled his early promise he would
+make a grand cat. This he has done, and is now one of the finest
+specimens of his kind in England. He weighs over seventeen pounds, and
+always has affixed to his cage on the show-bench this request, "Please
+do not lift this cat by the neck; he is too heavy." He has long dark
+blue fur, with a ruff of a lighter shade and brilliant topaz eyes.
+Already Blue Boy has taken many prizes. He is a gelded cat and one of
+the fortunate cats who have "Not for Sale" after their names in the show
+catalogues.
+
+To Mrs. C. Hill's beautiful long-haired Patrick Blue fell the honor, at
+the Crystal Palace Show in 1896, of a signed and framed photograph of
+the Prince of Wales, presented by his Royal Highness for the best
+long-haired cat in the show, irrespective of sex or nationality. Besides
+the prize given by the Prince, Patrick Blue was the proud winner of the
+Beresford Challenge Cup for the best blue long-haired cat, and the India
+Silver Bowl for the best Persian. He also was born on St. Patrick's Day,
+hence his name. He was bred by Mrs. Blair Maconochie, his father, Blue
+Ruin I, being a celebrated gold medallist. His mother, Sylvia, who
+belongs to Mrs. Maconochie, has never been shown, her strong point being
+her lovely color, which is most happily reproduced in her perfect son.
+Patrick Blue has all the many charms of a petted cat, and was
+undoubtedly one of the prominent attractions of the first Championship
+Show of the National Cat Club in 1896.
+
+Silver Lambkin is another very famous English cat, owned by Miss
+Gresham, of Surrey. Princess Ranee, owned by Miss Freeland, of
+Mottisfont, near Romney; Champion Southsea Hector, owned by Miss
+Sangster, at Southsea; champions Prince Victor and Shelly, of Kingswood
+(both of whom have taken no end of prizes), are other famous English
+cats.
+
+Topso, a magnificent silver tabby male, belonging to Miss Anderson
+Leake, of Dingley Hill, was at one time the best long-haired silver
+tabby in England, and took the prize on that account in 1887; his sons,
+daughters, grandsons, and granddaughters, have all taken prizes at
+Crystal Palace in the silver tabby classes, since that time.
+
+Lady Marcus Beresford has for the last fifteen years made quite a
+business of the breeding and rearing of cats. At Bishopsgate, near
+Egham, she has what is without doubt the finest cattery. "I have
+applications from all parts of the world for my cats and kittens," said
+Lady Marcus, in a talk about her hobby, "and I may tell you that it is
+largely because of this that I founded the Cat Club, which has for its
+object the general welfare of the cat and the improvement of the breed.
+My catteries were established in 1890, and at one time I had as many as
+150 cats and kittens. Some of my pets live in a pretty cottage covered
+with creepers, which might well be called Cat Cottage. No expense has
+been spared in the fittings of the rooms, and every provision is made
+for warmth and ventilation. One room is set apart for the girl who takes
+entire charge of and feeds the pussies. She has a boy who works with her
+and performs the rougher tasks. There is a small kitchen for cooking the
+meals for the cats, and this is fitted with every requisite. On the
+walls are racks to hold the white enamelled bowls and plates used for
+the food. There is a medicine chest, which contains everything that is
+needful for prompt and efficacious treatment in case pussy becomes sick.
+On the wall are a list of the names and a full description of all the
+inmates of the cattery, and a set of rules to be observed by both the
+cats and their attendants. These rules are not ignored, and it is a
+tribute to the intelligence of the cat to see how carefully pussy can
+become amenable to discipline, if once given to understand of what that
+discipline consists.
+
+"Then there is a garden cattery. I think this is the prettiest of all.
+It is covered with roses and ivy. In this there are three rooms,
+provided with shelves and all other conveniences which can add to the
+cats' comfort and amusement. The residences of the male cats are most
+complete, for I have given them every attention possible. Each male cat
+has his separate sleeping apartments, closed with wire and with a 'run'
+attached. Close at hand is a large, square grass 'run,' and in this each
+gentleman takes his daily but solitary exercise. One of the stringent
+rules of the cattery is that no two males shall ever be left together,
+and I know that with my cats if this rule were not observed, both in
+letter and precept, it would be a case of 'when Greek meets Greek.'
+
+"I vary the food for my cats as much as possible. One day we will have
+most appetizing bowls of fish and rice. At the proper time you can see
+these standing in the cat kitchen ready to be distributed. Another day
+these bowls will be filled with minced meat. In the very hot weather a
+good deal of vegetable matter is mixed with the food. Swiss milk is
+given, so there is no fear of its turning sour. For some time I have
+kept a goat on the premises, the milk from which is given to the
+delicate or younger kittens.
+
+"I have started many of my poorer friends in cat breeding, and they have
+proved conclusively how easily an addition to their income can be made,
+not only by breeding good Persian kittens and selling them, but by
+exhibiting them at the various shows and taking prizes. But of course
+there is a fashion in cats, as in everything else. When I started
+breeding blue Persians about fifteen years ago they were very scarce,
+and I could easily get twenty-five dollars apiece for my kittens. Now
+this variety is less sought after, and self-silvers, commonly called
+chinchillas, are in demand."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+CONCERNING CAT CLUBS AND CAT SHOWS
+
+
+The annual cat shows in England, which have been held successively for
+more than a quarter of a century, led to the establishment in 1887 of a
+National Cat Club, which has steadily grown in membership and interest,
+and by the establishment of the National Stud Book and Register has
+greatly raised the standard of felines in the mother country. It has
+many well-known people as members, life members, or associates; and from
+time to time people distinguished in the cat world have been added as
+honorary members.
+
+The officers of the National Cat Club of England, since its
+reconstruction in March, 1898, are as follows:--
+
+_Presidents._--Her Grace the Duchess of Bedford; Lord Marcus
+Beresford.
+
+_Vice-presidents._--Lily, Duchess of Marlborough, now Lady Wm.
+Beresford; the Countess of Warwick; Lady Granville Gordon; Hon. Mrs.
+McL. Morrison; Madame Ronner; Mr. Isaac Woodiwiss; the Countess of
+Sefton; Lady Hothfield; the Hon. Mrs. Brett; Mr. Sam Woodiwiss; Mr.
+H.W. Bullock.
+
+_President of Committee._--Mr. Louis Wain.
+
+_Committee_.--Lady Marcus Beresford; Mrs. Balding; Mr. Sidney
+Woodiwiss; Mr. Hawkins; Mrs. Blair Maconochie; Mrs. Vallance; Mr.
+Brackett; Mr. F. Gresham.
+
+_Hon. Secretary and Hon. Treasurer_.--Mrs. Stennard Robinson.
+
+This club has a seal and a motto: "Beauty lives by kindness." It
+publishes a stud book in which are registered pedigrees and championship
+wins which are eligible for it. Only wins obtained from shows held under
+N.C.C. rules are recorded free of charge. The fee for ordinary
+registration is one shilling per cat, and the stud book is published
+annually. There are over two thousand cats now entered in this National
+Cat Club Stud Book, the form of entry being as follows (L.F. means
+long-haired female; C.P., Crystal Palace):--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No. 1593, Mimidatzi, L.F. Silver Tabby.
+
+Miss Anna F. Gardner, Hamswell House, near Bath, shown as Mimi.
+
+Bred by Miss How, Bridgeyate, near Bristol. Born April, 1893. Alive.
+
+Sire, Blue Boy the Great of Islington, 1090 (Mrs H.B. Thompson).
+
+Dam, Boots of Bridgeyate, 1225 (Miss How).
+
+Prizes won--1st Bilton, 2nd, C.P. 1893, Kitten Class.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No. 1225, Boots of Bridgeyate. L.F. Silver Tabby.
+
+Miss E. How, Bridgeyate House, Warmly, Bristol.
+
+Former owner, Mrs. Foote, 43 Palace Gardens, Kensington.
+
+Born March, 1892. Alive.
+
+Some of the cats entered have records of prizes covering nearly half a
+page of the book. The advantage of such a book to cat owners can be
+readily seen. A cat once entered never changes its number, no matter how
+many owners he may have, and his name cannot be changed after December
+31 of the year in which he is registered.
+
+The more important rules of the English National Cat Club are given in
+condensed form as follows:--
+
+The name is "The National Cat Club."
+
+_Objects_: To promote honesty in the breeding of cats, so as to
+insure purity in each distinct breed or variety; to determine the
+classification required, and to insure the adoption of such
+classification by breeders, exhibitors, judges, and the committees of
+all cat shows; to encourage showing and breeding by giving championship
+and other prizes, and otherwise doing all in its power to protect and
+advance the interest of cats and their owners. The National Cat Club
+shall frame a separate set of rules for cat shows to be called "National
+Cat Club Rules," and the committees of those cat shows to which the
+rules are given, shall be called upon to sign a guarantee to the
+National Cat Club binding them to provide good penning and effectual
+sanitation, also to the punctual payment of prize money and to the
+proper adjudication of prizes.
+
+_Stud Book_: The National Cat Club shall keep a stud book.
+
+_Neuter Classes_.--For gelded cats.
+
+_Kitten Classes_.--Single entries over three and under eight months.
+
+_Kitten Brace_.--Kittens of any age.
+
+_Brace_.--For two cats of any age.
+
+_Team_.--For three or more cats, any age.
+
+
+In Paris, although cats have not been commonly appreciated as in
+England, there is an increasing interest in them, and cat shows are now
+a regular feature of the Jardin d'Acclimation. This suggests the subject
+of the cat's social position in France. Since the Revolution the animal
+has conquered in this country "_toutes les liberties_," excepting
+that of wearing an entire tail, for in many districts it is the fashion
+to cut the caudal appendage short.
+
+In Paris cats are much cherished wherever they can be without causing
+too much unpleasantness with the landlord. The system of living in flats
+is not favorable to cat culture, for the animal, not having access
+either to the tiles above or to the gutter below, is apt to pine for
+fresh air, and the society of its congeners. Probably in no other city
+do these creatures lie in shop windows and on counters with such an
+arrogant air of proprietorship. In restaurants, a very large and fat cat
+is kept as an advertisement of the good feeding to be obtained on the
+premises. There is invariably a cat in a _charbonnier's_ shop, and
+the animal is generally one that was originally white, but long ago came
+to the conclusion that all attempts to keep itself clean were hopeless.
+Its only consolation is that it is never blacker than its master. It is
+well known that the Persians and Angoras are much esteemed in Paris and
+are, to some extent, bred for sale. In the provinces, French cats are
+usually low-bred animals, with plebeian heads and tails, the stringlike
+appearance of the latter not being improved by cropping. Although not
+generally esteemed as an article of food in France, there are still many
+people scattered throughout the country who maintain that a _civet de
+chat_ is as good, or better, than a _civet de lievre_.
+
+M. Francois Coppee's fondness for cats as pets is so well known that
+there was great fitness in placing his name first upon the jury of
+awards at the 1896 cat show in Paris. Such other well-known men as Emile
+Zola, Andre Theuriet, and Catulle Mendes, also figured on the list.
+There is now an annual "Exposition Feline Internationale."
+
+In this country the first cat show of general interest was held at
+Madison Square Garden, New York, in May, 1895. Some years before, there
+had been a cat show under the auspices of private parties in Boston, and
+several minor shows had been held at Newburgh, N.Y., and other places.
+But the New York shows were the first to attract general attention. One
+hundred and seventy-six cats were exhibited by one hundred and
+twenty-five owners, besides several ocelots, wild cats, and civets. For
+some reason the show at Madison Square Garden in March, 1896, catalogued
+only one hundred and thirty-two cats and eighty-two owners. Since that
+time there have been no large cat shows in New York.
+
+There have been several cat shows in Boston since 1896, but these are so
+far only adjuncts to poultry and pigeon shows. Great interest has been
+manifest in them, however, and the entries have each year run above a
+hundred. Some magnificent cats are exhibited, although as a rule the
+animals shown are somewhat small, many kittens being placed there for
+sale by breeders.
+
+Several attempts to start successful cat clubs in this country have been
+made. At the close of the New York show in 1896, an American Cat Club
+was organized for the purpose "of investigating, ascertaining, and
+keeping a record of the pedigrees of cats, and of instituting,
+maintaining, controlling, and publishing a stud book, or book of
+registry of such kind of domestic animals in the United States of
+America and Canada, and of promoting and holding exhibitions of such
+animals, and generally for the purpose of improving the breed thereof,
+and educating the public in its knowledge of the various breeds and
+varieties of cats."
+
+The officers were as follows:--
+
+_President_.--Rush S. Huidekoper, 154 E. 57th St., New York City.
+
+_Vice-presidents_.--W.D. Mann, 208 Fifth Ave., New York City; Mrs.
+E.N. Barker, Newburgh, N.Y.
+
+_Secretary-treasurer_.--James T. Hyde, 16 E. 23d St., New York City.
+
+_Executive Committee_.--T. Farrar Rackham, E. Orange, N.J.; Miss
+Edith Newbold, Southampton, L.I.; Mrs. Harriet C. Clarke, 154 W. 82d
+St., New York City; Charles R. Pratt, St. James Hotel, New York City;
+Joseph W. Stray, 229 Division St., Brooklyn, N.Y.
+
+More successful than this club, however, is the Beresford Cat Club
+formed in Chicago in the winter of 1899. The president is Mrs. Clinton
+Locke, who is a member of the English cat clubs, and whose kennel in
+Chicago contains some of the finest cats in America. The Beresford Cat
+Club has the sanction of John G. Shortall, of the American Humane
+Society, and on its honorary list are Miss Agnes Repplier, Madame
+Ronner, Lady Marcus Beresford, Miss Helen Winslow, and Mr. Louis Wain.
+
+At their cat shows, which are held annually, prizes are offered for all
+classes of cats, from the common feline of the back alley up to the
+aristocratic resident of milady's boudoir.
+
+The Beresford Club Cat shows are the most successful of any yet given in
+America. One hundred and seventy-eight prizes were awarded in the show
+of January, 1900, and some magnificent cats were shown. It is said by
+those who are in a position to know that there are no better cats shown
+in England now than can be seen at the Beresford Show in Chicago. The
+exhibits cover short and long haired cats of all colors, sizes, and
+ages, with Siamese cats, Manx cats, and Russian cats. At the show in
+January, 1900, Mrs. Clinton Locke exhibited fourteen cats of one color,
+and Mrs. Josiah Cratty five white cats. This club numbers one hundred
+and seventy members and has a social position and consequent strength
+second to none in America. It is a fine, honorable club, which has for
+its objects the protection of the Humane Society and the caring for all
+cats reported as homeless or in distress. It aims also to establish
+straightforward and honest dealings among the catteries and to do away
+with the humbuggery which prevails in some quarters about the sales and
+valuation of high-bred cats. This club cannot fail to be of great
+benefit to such as want to carry on an honest industry by the raising
+and sale of fine cats. It will also improve the breeding of cats in this
+country, and thereby raise the standard and promote a more general
+intelligence among the people with regard to cats. Some of the best
+people in the United States belong to the Beresford Club, the membership
+of which is by no means confined to Chicago; on the contrary, the club
+is a national one and the officers and board of directors are:--
+
+_President._--Mrs. Clinton Locke.
+
+_1st Vice-president._--Mrs W. Eames Colburn.
+
+_2d Vice-president._--Mrs. F.A. Howe.
+
+_Corresponding Secretary._--Mrs. Henry C. Clark.
+
+_Recording Secretary_.--Miss Lucy Claire Johnstone.
+
+_Treasurer_.--Mrs. Charles Hampton Lane.
+
+Mrs. Elwood H. Tolman.
+
+Mrs. J.H. Pratt.
+
+Mrs. Mattie Fisk Green.
+
+Mrs. F.A. Story.
+
+Miss Louise L. Fergus.
+
+The club is anxious to have members all over the United States, just as
+the English cat clubs do. The non-resident annual fees are only one
+dollar, and a member has to be proposed by one and endorsed by two other
+members. The register cats for the stud book are entered at one dollar
+each, and it is proposed to give shows once a year. The main objects of
+the club are to improve the breeds of fancy cats in America, to awaken a
+more general interest in them, and to secure better treatment for the
+ordinary common cat. The shows will be given for the benefit of the
+Humane Society.
+
+The Chicago Cat Club has done excellent work also, having established a
+cat home, or refuge, for stray, homeless, or diseased cats, with a
+department for boarding pet cats during the absence of their owners. It
+is under the personal care and direction of Dr. C.A. White, 78 E. 26th
+Street. The first cat to be admitted there was one from Cleveland, Ohio,
+which was to be boarded for three months during the absence of its owner
+in Europe and also to be treated for disease. This club was incorporated
+under the state laws of Illinois, on January 26, 1899. In connection
+with it is a children's cat club, which has for its primary object the
+teaching of kindness to animals by awakening in the young people an
+appreciative love for cats. At the show of the Chicago Cat Club, small
+dogs and cavies are exhibited also, the Cavy Club and the Pet Dog Club
+having affiliated with the Chicago Cat Club.
+
+The president of the Chicago Cat Club is Mrs. Leland Norton, of the
+Drexel Kennels, at 4011 Drexel Boulevard, Chicago. The corresponding
+secretary is Mrs. Laura Daunty Pelham, 315 Interocean Building, and the
+other officers are: Vice-president, Miss Gertrude Estabrooks; recording
+secretary, Miss Jennie Van Allen; and treasurer, Mrs. Ella B. Shepard.
+Membership is only one dollar a year, and the registration fee in the
+Chicago stud book fifty cents for each cat.
+
+The cat shows already held and the flourishing state of our cat clubs
+have proved that America has as fine, if not finer, cats than can be
+found in England, and that interest in finely bred cats is on the
+increase in this country. The effect of the successful cat clubs and cat
+shows must be to train intelligent judges and to raise the standard of
+cats in this country. It will also tend to make the cat shows of such a
+character that kind-hearted owners need not hesitate to enter their
+choicest cats. As yet, however, the judging at cat shows is not so well
+managed as in England. It should be a rule that the judges of cats
+should not only understand their fine points, but should be in sympathy
+with the little pets.
+
+Cat dealers who have a number of cats entered for competition, should
+not be allowed on the board of judges. In England, the cats to be judged
+are taken by classes into a tent for the purpose, and the door is
+fastened against all but the judges; whereas over here the cats are too
+often taken out of their cages in the presence of a crowd of spectators
+and judged on a table or some public place, thereby frightening the
+timid ones and bringing annoyance to the owners.
+
+Again, there should be several judges. In England there are seven,
+including two or three women, and these are assigned to different
+classes: Mr. Harrison Weir, F.R.H.S., the well-known authority on cats,
+and Louis Wain, the well-known cat artist, are among them. In this
+country there are a number of women who are not dealers, but who are
+fully posted in the necessary qualifications for a high-bred cat.
+American cat shows should have at least three judges, one of whom, at
+least, should be a woman. A cat should be handled gently and kept as
+calm as possible during the judging. Women are naturally more gentle in
+their methods, and more tenderhearted. When my pets are entered for
+competition, may some wise, kind woman have the judging of them!
+
+In judging a cat the quality and quantity of its fur is the first thing
+considered. In a long-haired cat this includes the "lord mayor's chain,"
+or frill, the tail, and, most important of all, the ear-tufts. The tufts
+between the toes and the flexibility of the tail are other important
+points. The shape of head, eyes, and body are also carefully noted. A
+short-haired cat is judged first for color, then for eyes, head,
+symmetry, and ears.
+
+In all cats the head should show breadth between the eyes. The eyes
+should be round and open. White cats to be really valuable should have
+blue eyes (without deafness); black cats should have yellow eyes; other
+cats should have pea-green eyes, or in some cases, as in the brown,
+self-colored eyes. The nose should be short and tapering. The teeth
+should be good, and the claws flat. The lower leg should be straight,
+and the upper hind leg lie at closed angles. The foot should be small
+and round (in the maltese, pointed). A good cat has a light frame, but a
+deep chest; a slim, graceful, and fine neck; medium-sized ears with
+rounded tips. The croup should be square and high; the tail of a
+short-haired cat long and tapering, and of a long-haired cat broad and
+bent over at the end.
+
+The good results of a cat show are best told in a few words by one who
+has acted as judge at an American exhibition.
+
+"One year," he said, "people have to learn that there is such a thing as
+a cat; the next they come to the show and learn to tell the different
+breeds; another year they learn the difference between a good cat and a
+poor one; and the next year they become exhibitors, and tell the judges
+how to award the premiums."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+CONCERNING HIGH-BRED CATS IN AMERICA
+
+
+One of the first American women to start a "cattery" in this country was
+Mrs. Clinton Locke, wife of the rector of Grace Church, Chicago. As a
+clergyman's wife she has done a great deal of good among the various
+charities of her city simply from the income derived from her kennels.
+She has been very generous in gifts of her kittens to other women who
+have made the raising of fine cats a means to add to a slender income,
+and has sent beautiful cats all over the United States, to Mexico, and
+even to Germany. Under her hospitable roof at 2825 Indiana Avenue is a
+cat family of great distinction. First, there is The Beadle, a splendid
+blue male with amber eyes, whose long pedigree appears in the third
+volume of the N.C.C.S.B. under the number 1872, sired by Glaucus,
+and his dam was Hawthorne Bounce. His pedigree is traced for many
+generations. He was bred by Mrs. Dean of Hawthornedene, Slough, England.
+The Beadle took first prize at the cat show held in Chicago in 1896. He
+also had honorable mention at two cat shows in England when a kitten,
+under the name of Bumble Bee. Lord Gwynne is a noble specimen, a
+long-haired white cat with wonderful blue eyes. He was bred from
+Champion Bundle, and his mother was out of The Masher, No. 1027, winner
+of many championships. His former owner was Mrs. Davies, of Upper
+Cattesham. Mrs. Locke purchased him from A.A. Clarke, one of the best
+judges of cats in England. Lord Gwynne took a prize at the Brighton Cat
+Show in England in 1895, as a kitten. The father of The Beadle's mate,
+Rosalys, was the famous "Bluebeard."
+
+Mrs. Locke's chinchillas are the finest ones in this country. Atossa,
+the mother cat, has a wonderful litter of kittens. She was bred to Lord
+Argent, one of the three celebrated stud chinchillas in England. She
+arrived in this country in July, and ten days after gave birth to her
+foreign kittens. One of the kittens has been sold to Mrs. Dr.
+Forsheimer, of Cincinnati, and another to Mrs. W.E. Colburn, of South
+Chicago. The others Mrs. Locke will not part with at any price.
+
+Smerdis, the grand chinchilla male brought over as a future mate for
+Atossa, is a royal cat. He looks as though he had run away from Bengal,
+but, like all of Mrs. Locke's cats, he is gentle and loving. He is the son
+of Lord Southampton, the lightest chinchilla stud in England (N.C.C.S.B.
+1690), and his mother is Silver Spray, No. 1542. His maternal grandparents
+are Silver King and Harebell, and his great-grandparents Perso and
+Beauty,--all registered cats. On his father's side a pedigree of three
+generations can be traced. One of her more recent importations is Lord
+Gwynne's mate, Lady Mertice, a beautiful long-haired cat with blue eyes.
+Other famous cats of hers have been Bettina, Nora, Doc, Vashti, Marigold,
+Grover, and Wendell.
+
+One of Mrs Locke's treasures is a _bona fide_ cat mummy, brought by
+Mrs. Locke from Egypt. It has been verified at the Gizeh Museum to be
+four thousand years old.
+
+It is fully twenty-five years since Mrs. Locke began to turn her
+attention to fine cats, and when she imported her first cat to Chicago
+there was only one other in the United States. That one was Mrs. Edwin
+Brainard's Madam, a wonderful black, imported from Spain. Her first
+long-haired cat was Wendell, named for the friend who brought him from
+Persia, and his descendants are now in the Lockehaven Cattery. Queen
+Wendella is one of the most famous cats in America to-day, and mother of
+the beautiful Lockehaven Quartette. These are all descended from the
+first Wendell. The kittens in the Lockehaven Quartette went to Mrs. S.S.
+Leach, Bonny Lea, New London, Ct.; Miss Lucy Nichols, Ben Mahr Cattery,
+Waterbury, Ct.; Miss Olive Watson, Warrensburg, Pa.; and Mrs. B.M.
+Gladding, at Memphis, Tenn, Mrs. Locke's Lord Argent, descended from
+Atossa and the famous Lord Argent, of England, is a magnificent cat,
+while her Smerdis is the son of the greatest chinchillas in the world.
+Rosalys II, now owned by Mr. C.H. Jones, of Palmyra, N.Y., was once her
+cat, and was the daughter of Rosalys (owned by Miss Nichols, of
+Waterbury, Ct), who was a granddaughter of the famous Bluebeard, of
+England. These, with the beautiful brown tabby, Crystal, owned by Mr.
+Jones, have all been prize winners. Lucy Claire is a recent importation,
+who won second and third prizes in England under the name of Baby
+Flossie. She is the daughter of Duke of Kent and Topso, of Merevale. Her
+paternal grandparents are Mrs. Herring's well-known champion, Blue Jack,
+and Marney. The maternal grandparents are King Harry, a prize winner at
+Clifton and Brighton, and Fluff.
+
+Mrs. Locke's cats are all imported. She has sometimes purchased cats
+from Maine or elsewhere for people who did not care to pay the price
+demanded for her fine kittens, but she has never had in her own cattery
+any cats of American origin. Her stock, therefore, is probably the
+choicest in America. She always has from twenty to twenty-five cats, and
+the cat-lover who obtains one of her kittens is fortunate indeed. A
+beautiful pair of blacks in Mrs. Locke's cattery have the most desirable
+shade of amber eyes, and are named "Blackbird" and "St. Tudno"; she has
+also a choice pair of Siamese cats called "Siam" and "Sally Ward."
+
+Mrs. Josiah Cratty, of Oak Park, has a cattery called the "Jungfrau
+Katterie," and her cats are remarkably beautiful. Her Bartimaeus and
+True Blue are magnificent white cats, sired by Mrs. Locke's Lord Gwynne.
+
+Miss L.C. Johnstone, of Chicago, has some of the handsomest cats in the
+country. Cherie is a wonderful blue shaded cat; Lord Humm is a splendid
+brown tabby; while Beauty Belle is an exceedingly handsome white cat.
+Miss Johnstone takes great pains with her cats, and is rewarded by
+having them rated among the best in America.
+
+Some of the beautiful cats which have been sent from Chicago to homes
+elsewhere are Teddy Roosevelt, a magnificent white, sired by Mrs. W.E.
+Colburn's Paris, and belonging to Mrs. L. Kemp, of Huron, S. Dak.;
+Silver Dick, a gorgeous buff and white, whose grandmother was Mrs.
+Colburn's Caprice, and who is owned by Mrs. Porter L. Evans, of East St.
+Louis; Toby, a pure white with green eyes, owned by Mrs. Elbert W.
+Shirk, of Indianapolis; and Amytis, a chinchilla belonging to Mrs. S.S.
+Leach, of New London, sired by Mrs. Locke's Smerdis, and the daughter of
+Rosalys II.
+
+Miss Cora Wallace, of East Brady, Pa., has Lord Ruffles, son of the
+first Rosalys and The Beadle, formerly Bumble Bee. Mrs. Fisk Greene, of
+Chicago, now owns a beautiful cat in Bumble Bee, and another in Miss
+Merrylegs, a blue with golden eyes, the daughter of Bumble Bee and Black
+Sapho. The Misses Peacock, of Topeka, have a pair of whites called
+Prince Hilo and Rosebud, the latter having blue eyes. Mrs. Frederick
+Monroe, of Riverside, Ill., owns a remarkable specimen of a genuine
+Russian cat, a perfect blue of extraordinary size. Miss Elizabeth
+Knight, of Milwaukee, has a beautiful silver tabby, Winifred, the
+daughter of Whychwood, Miss Kate Loraine Gage's celebrated silver tabby,
+of Brewster, N.Y. The most perfect "lavender blue" cat belongs to Miss
+Lucy E. Nichols, of Waterbury, Ct., and is named Roscal. He has
+beautiful long fur, with a splendid ruff and tail, and is a son of
+Rosalys and The Beadle.
+
+Mrs. Leland Norton has a number of magnificent cats. It was she who
+adopted Miss Frances Willard's "Tootsie," the famous cat which made two
+thousand dollars for the temperance cause. Miss Nella B. Wheatley has
+very fine kennels, and raises some beautiful cats. Her Taffy is a
+beautiful buff and white Angora, which has been very much admired. Her
+cats have been sold to go to many other cities. Speaking from her own
+experience Miss Wheatley says, "Raising Angoras is one of the most
+fascinating of employments, and I have found, when properly taken care
+of, they are among the most beautiful, strong, intelligent, and playful
+of all animals."
+
+Mrs. W.E. Colburn is another very successful owner of cat kennels. She
+has had some of the handsomest cats in this country, among which are
+"Paris," a magnificent white cat with blue eyes, and his mother,
+"Caprice," who has borne a number of wonderfully fine pure white Angoras
+with the most approved shade of blue eyes. Her cattery is known as the
+"Calumet Kennel," and there is no better judge of cats in the country
+than Mrs. Colburn.
+
+So much has been said of the cats which were "mascots" on the ships
+during the Cuban War that it is hardly necessary to speak of them. Tom,
+the mascot of the _Maine_, and Christobal have been shown in
+several cities of the Union since the war.
+
+The most beautiful collection of brown tabbies is owned by Mr. C.H.
+Jones, of Palmyra, N.Y., who has the "Crystal Cattery." Crystal, the son
+of Mrs. E.M. Barker's "King Humbert," is the champion brown tabby of
+America, and is a magnificent creature, of excellent disposition and
+greatly admired by cat fanciers everywhere. Mona Liza, his mate, and
+Goozie and Bubbles make up as handsome a quartet of this variety as one
+could wish to see. Goozie's tail is now over twelve inches in
+circumference. Mr. Jones keeps about twenty fine cats in stock all the
+time.
+
+The most highly valued cat in America is Napoleon the Great, whose owner
+has refused four thousand dollars for him. A magnificent fellow he is
+too, with his bushy orange fur and lionlike head. He is ten years old
+and weighs twenty-three pounds, which is a remarkable weight in a male
+cat, only gelded ones ordinarily running above fifteen pounds. Napoleon
+was bred by a French nobleman, and was born at the Chateau
+Fontainebleau, near Paris, in 1888. He is a pure French Angora, which is
+shown by his long crinkly hair--so long that it has to be frequently
+clipped to preserve the health and comfort of the beautiful creature.
+This clipping is what causes the uneven quality of fur which appears in
+his picture. His mother was a famous cat, and his grandmother was one of
+the grandest dams of France (no pun intended). The latter lived to be
+nineteen years old, and consequently Napoleon the Great is regarded by
+his owners as a mere youth. He has taken first prizes and medals
+wherever he has been exhibited, and at Boston, 1897, won the silver cup
+offered for the best cat in the exhibition.
+
+Another fine cat belonging to Mrs. Weed, is Marguerite, mother of Le
+Noir, a beautiful black Angora, sired by Napoleon the Great and owned by
+Mrs. Weed. Juno is Napoleon's daughter, born in 1894, and is valued at
+fifteen hundred dollars. When she was seven months old her owners
+refused two hundred dollars for her. She is a tortoise-shell and white
+French Angora, and a remarkably beautiful creature. All these cats are
+great pets, and are allowed the freedom of the house and barns, although
+when they run about the grounds there is always a man in attendance. Six
+or seven thousand dollars' worth of cats sporting on the lawn together
+is a rich sight, but not altogether without risk.
+
+Mrs. Fabius M. Clarke's "Persia," a beautiful dark chinchilla, is one of
+the finest cats in this country. She began her career by taking special
+and first prizes at Fastmay's Cat Show in England, as the best long-haired
+kitten. She also took the first prize as a kitten at Lancashire, and at
+the National Cat Show in New York in 1895. She was bred in England; sire,
+King of Uhn; dam, Brunette, of pure imported Persian stock. Mrs. Clarke
+brought her home in January, 1895, and she is still worshipped as a family
+pet at her New York home. "Sylvio" was also brought over at the same time.
+He was a beautiful long-haired male silver tabby, and bred by Mrs. A.F.
+Gardner. Sylvio was sired by the famous Topso of Dingley (owned by Miss
+Leake), famous as the best long-haired tabby in England. Sylvio's mother
+was Mimidatzi, whose pedigree is given in the previous chapter. "Mimi's"
+sire was the champion Blue Boy the Great, whose mother was Boots of
+Bridgeyate, whose pedigree is also given in the extract from the stud
+book. Sylvio took a first prize at the New York Show, 1895, but
+unfortunately was poisoned before he was a year old. This seems the
+greater pity, because he had a remarkably fine pedigree, and gave promise
+of being one of the best cats America has yet seen.
+
+Persia is a handsome specimen of the fine blue chinchilla class. She is
+quiet, amiable, and shows her high breeding in her good manners and
+intelligence. Her tail is like a fox's brush, and her ruff gladdens the
+heart of every cat fancier that beholds her. She is an aristocratic
+little creature, and seems to feel that she comes of famous foreign
+ancestry. Mrs. Clarke makes great pets of her beautiful cats, and trains
+them to do many a cunning trick.
+
+Another cat which has won several prizes, and took the silver bowl
+offered for the best cat and litter of kittens in the 1895 cat show of
+New York is Ellen Terry, a handsome orange and white, exhibited by Mrs.
+Fabius M. Clarke. At that show she had seven beautiful kittens, and they
+all reposed in a dainty white and yellow basket with the mother,
+delighting the hearts of all beholders. She now belongs to Mrs. Brian
+Brown, of Brooklyn. She is a well-bred animal, with a pretty face and
+fine feathering. One of the kittens who won the silver bowl in 1895 took
+the second prize for long-haired white female in New York, in March,
+1896. She is a beautiful creature, known as Princess Dinazarde, and
+belongs to Mrs. James S.H. Umsted, of New York.
+
+Sylvia is still in Mrs. Clarke's possession, and is a beautiful
+creature, dainty, refined, and very jealous of her mistress's affection.
+Mrs. Clarke also owns a real Manx cat, brought from the Isle of Man by
+Captain McKenzie. It acts like a monkey, climbing up on mantels and
+throwing down pictures and other small objects, in the regular monkey
+spirit of mischief. It has many queer attributes, and hops about like a
+rabbit. She also owns Sapho, who was bred by Ella Wheeler Wilcox from
+her Madame Ref and Mr. Stevens's Ajax, an uncommonly handsome white
+Angora.
+
+The sire of Topso and Sylvia was Musjah, owned by Mr. Ferdinand Danton,
+a New York artist. He was a magnificent creature, imported from Algiers
+in 1894; a pure blue Persian of uncommon size and beautiful coloring.
+Musjah was valued at two hundred dollars, but has been stolen from Mr.
+Danton. Probably his present owner will not exhibit him at future cat
+shows.
+
+Ajax is one of the finest white Angoras in this country. His owner, Mr.
+D.W. Stevens, of West-field, Mass., has refused five hundred dollars for
+him, and would not consider one thousand dollars as a fair exchange for
+the majestic creature. He was born in 1893, and is valued, not only for
+his fine points, but because he is a family pet, with a fine disposition
+and uncommon intelligence. At the New York show in 1895, and at several
+other shows, he has won first prizes.
+
+One of his sons bids fair to be as fine a cat as Ajax. This is Sampson,
+bred by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from Madame Ref, and owned by Mrs. Brian
+Brown. Mr. Stevens has a number of other high-bred cats, one of whom is
+Raby, a reddish black female, with a red ruff. Another is Lady, who is
+pure white; and then there are Monkey and Midget, who are black and
+white Angoras. All of these cats are kept in a pen, half of which is
+within the barn, and the other half out of doors and enclosed by wire
+netting. Ajax roams over the house at will, and the others pass some of
+the time there, but the entire collection, sometimes numbering
+twenty-five, is too valuable to be given the freedom of all outdoors.
+Both Mr. and Mrs. Stevens are very fond of cats, and have made a study
+of them in sickness and health. Some years ago, a malicious raid was
+made on the pen, and every cat poisoned with the exception of Raby,
+whose life was saved only by frequent and generous doses of skunk's oil
+and milk.
+
+At the first New York show, Miss Ethel Nesmith Anderson's Chico, an
+imported Persian, took the second prize, after Ajax, in the pure white,
+longhaired class. The third prize was won by Snow, another imported
+Angora, belonging to Mr. George A. Rawson, of Newton, Mass. Snow had
+already taken a prize at Crystal Palace. He is a magnificent animal. Mr.
+Rawson owns a number of beautiful cats, which are the pride of his
+family, and bring visitors from all parts of the country. His
+orange-colored, long-haired Dandy won first prizes at the Boston shows
+of 1896 and 1897 in the gelded class. He is beautifully marked, and has
+a disposition as "childlike and bland" as the most exacting owner could
+wish. Miss Puff is also owned by Mr. Rawson, and presents him with
+beautiful white Angora kittens every year. The group of ten white
+kittens, raised by him in 1896, gives some idea of the beauty of these
+kittens: although the picture was taken with a high wind blowing in
+their faces, causing one white beauty to conceal all marks of
+identification except an ear, and another to hide completely behind his
+playmates.
+
+Mustapha was entered by Dr. Huidekoper in the first New York show, but
+not for competition. He was a magnificent brindled Persian gelded cat,
+six years old, who enjoyed the plaudits of the multitude just as well as
+though he had taken first prize. He was very fond of his master, but
+very shy with strangers when at home. He slept on the library desk, or a
+cushion next his master's bed whenever he could be alone with the
+doctor, but at other times preferred his own company or that of the
+cook.
+
+Another cat that attracted a great deal of attention was Master Pettet's
+Tommy, a white Persian, imported in 1889 and valued at five hundred
+dollars, although no money consideration could induce his owners to part
+with him. He was brought from the interior of Persia, where he was
+captured in a wild state. He was kept caged for over a year, and would
+not be tamed; but at last he became domesticated, and is now one of the
+dearest pets imaginable. His fur is extremely long and soft, without a
+colored hair. His tail is broad and carried proudly aloft, curling over
+toward his back when walking. His face is full of intelligence: his ears
+well-tipped and feathered, and his ruff a thing of beauty and a joy
+forever.
+
+King Max, a long-haired, black male, weighing thirteen pounds at the age
+of one year, and valued at one thousand dollars, took first prizes in
+Boston in January, 1897, '98, and '99. He is owned by Mrs. E.R. Taylor,
+of Medford, Mass., and attracts constant attention during shows. His fur
+is without a single white hair and is a finger deep; his ruff encircles
+his head like a great aureole. He is not only one of the most beautiful
+cats I have ever seen, but one of the best-natured: as his reputation
+for beauty spreads among visitors at the show, everybody wants to see
+him, and he has no chance at all for naps. Generally he is brought
+forward and taken from his cage a hundred times a day; but not once does
+he show the least sign of ill-temper, and even on the last day of the
+show he keeps up a continual low purr of content and happiness. Perhaps
+he knows how handsome he is.
+
+Grover B., the Mascotte, is a Philadelphia cat who took the twenty-five
+dollar gold medal in 1895, at the New York show, as the heaviest white
+cat exhibited. He belongs to Mr. and Mrs. W.P. Buchanan, and weighs over
+twenty pounds. He is a thoroughbred, and is valued at one thousand
+dollars, having been brought from the Isle of Malta, and he wears a
+one-hundred-dollar gold collar. He is a remarkable cat, noted
+particularly for his intelligence and amiability. He is very dainty in
+his choice of food, and prefers to eat his dinners in his high chair at
+the table. He has a fascinating habit of feeding himself with his paws.
+He is very talkative just before meal-times, and is versed in all the
+feline arts of making one's self understood. He waits at the front door
+for his master every night, and will not leave him all the evening. He
+sleeps in a bed of his own, snugly wrapped up in blankets, and he is
+admired by all who know him, not more for his beauty than for his
+excellent deportment. He furnishes one more proof that a properly
+trained and well-cared-for cat has a large amount of common sense and
+appreciation.
+
+Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett's tiger cat Dick attracted a great deal of
+attention at the first New York show. He weighs twenty-two pounds and is
+three feet long, with a girth of twenty-four inches; and he has attained
+some degree of prominence in her writings.
+
+A trio of cats that were a centre of attraction at that first show
+belonged to Colonel Mann, of _Town Topics_. They were jet black,
+and rejoiced in the names of Taffy, The Laird, and Little Billee. They
+took a first prize, but two of them have since come to an untimely end.
+Colonel Mann is a devoted lover of animals, and has given a standing
+order that none of his employees shall, if they see a starving kitten on
+the street, leave it to suffer and die. Accordingly his office is a sort
+of refuge for unfortunate cats, and one may always see a number of
+happy-looking creatures there, who seem to appreciate the kindness which
+surrounds them. The office is in a fifth story overlooking Fifth Avenue:
+and the cats used to crawl out on the wide window-ledge in summer-time
+and enjoy the air and the view of Madison Square. But alas! The Laird
+and Little Billee came to their deaths by jumping from their high perch
+after sparrows and falling to the pavement below. Now there is a strong
+wire grating across the windows, and Taffy, a monstrous, shiny black
+fellow, is the leader in the "_Town Topics_ Colony."
+
+Dr. H.L. Hammond, of Killingly, Ct., makes a speciality of the rare
+Australian cats, and has taken numerous prizes with them at every cat
+show in this country, where they are universally admired. His Columbia
+is valued at six hundred dollars, and his Tricksey at five hundred
+dollars. They are, indeed, beautiful creatures, though somewhat unique
+in the cat world, as we see it. They are very sleek cats, with fur so
+short, glossy, and fine that it looks like the finest satin. Their heads
+are small and narrow, with noses that seem pointed when compared with
+other cats. They are very intelligent and affectionate little creatures,
+and make the loveliest of pets. Dr. and Mrs. Hammond are extremely fond
+of their unusual and valuable cat family,--and tell the most interesting
+tales of their antics and habits. His Columbia was an imported cat, and
+the doctor has reason to believe that she with her mate are originally
+from the Siamese cat imported from Siam to Australia. They are all very
+delicate as kittens, the mother rarely having more than one at a time.
+With two exceptions, these cats have never had more than two kittens at
+a litter. They are very partial to heat, but cannot stand cold weather.
+They have spells of sleeping when nothing has power to disturb them, but
+when they do wake up they have a "high time," running and playing. They
+are affectionate, being very fond of their owner, but rather shy with
+strangers. They are uncommonly intelligent, too, and are very teachable
+when young. They are such beautiful creatures, besides being rare in
+this part of the world, that it is altogether probable that they will be
+much sought after as pets.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+CONCERNING CATS IN POETRY
+
+
+As far back as the ninth century, a poem on a cat was written, which has
+come down to us from the Arabic. Its author was Ibn Alalaf Alnaharwany,
+of Bagdad, who died in 318 A.H. or A.D. 930. He was one of the better
+known poets of the khalifate, and his work may still be found in the
+original. The following verses, which were translated by Dr. Carlyle,
+are confessedly a paraphrase rather than a strict translation; but, of
+course, the sense is the same. Commentators differ on the question as to
+whether the poet really meant anything more in this poem than to sing of
+the death of a pet, and some have tried to ascribe to it a hidden
+meaning which implies beautiful slaves, lovers, and assignations; just
+as the wise Browning student discovers meanings in that great poet's
+works of which he never dreamed. Nevertheless, we who love cats are fain
+to believe that this follower of Mahomet meant only to celebrate the
+merits--perhaps it would hardly do to call them virtues--of his beloved
+cat.
+
+The lines are inscribed,--
+
+  ON A CAT
+
+  THAT WAS KILLED AS SHE WAS ATTEMPTING TO ROB A DOVE-HOUSE
+
+  BY IBN ALALAF ALNAHARWANY
+
+
+  Poor Puss is gone!--'tis Fate's decree--
+    Yet I must still her loss deplore;
+  For dearer than a child was she,
+    And ne'er shall I behold her more!
+
+  With many a sad, presaging tear,
+    This morn I saw her steal away,
+  While she went on without a fear,
+    Except that she should miss her prey.
+
+  I saw her to the dove-house climb,
+    With cautious feet and slow she stept,
+  Resolved to balance loss of time
+    By eating faster than she crept.
+
+  Her subtle foes were on the watch,
+    And marked her course, with fury fraught;
+  And while she hoped the birds to catch,
+    An arrow's point the huntress caught.
+
+  In fancy she had got them all,
+    And drunk their blood and sucked their breath;
+  Alas! she only got a fall,
+    And only drank the draught of death.
+
+  Why, why was pigeon's flesh so nice,
+    That thoughtless cats should love it thus?
+  Hadst thou but lived on rats and mice,
+    Thou hadst been living still, poor Puss!
+
+  Cursed be the taste, howe'er refined,
+    That prompts us for such joys to wish;
+  And cursed the dainty where we find
+    Destruction lurking in the dish.
+
+
+Among the poets, Pussy has always found plenty of friends. Her feline
+grace and softness has inspired some of the greatest, and, from Tasso
+and Petrarch down, her quiet and dignified demeanor have been celebrated
+in verse. Mr. Swinburne, within a few years, has written a charming poem
+which was published in the _Athenaeum_, and which places the writer
+among the select inner circle of true cat-lovers. He calls his verses--
+
+  TO A CAT
+
+  Stately, kindly, lordly friend,
+    Condescend
+  Here to sit by me, and turn
+  Glorious eyes that smile and burn,
+  Golden eyes, love's lustrous meed,
+  On the golden page I read.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Dogs may fawn on all and some
+      As they come:
+  You a friend of loftier mind,
+  Answer friends alone in kind.
+  Just your foot upon my hand
+  Softly bids it understand.
+
+
+Thomas Gray's poem on the death of Robert Walpole's cat, which was
+drowned in a bowl of goldfish, was greatly prized by the latter; after
+the death of the poet the bowl was placed on a pedestal at Strawberry
+Hill, with a few lines from the poem as an inscription. In a letter
+dated March 1, 1747, accompanying it, Mr. Gray says:--
+
+"As one ought to be particularly careful to avoid blunders in a
+compliment of condolence, it would be a sensible satisfaction to me
+(before I testify my sorrow and the sincere part I take in your
+misfortune) to know for certain who it is I lament. [Note the 'Who.'] I
+knew Zara and Selima (Selima was it, or Fatima?), or rather I knew them
+both together, for I cannot justly say which was which. Then, as to your
+handsome cat, the name you distinguish her by, I am no less at a loss,
+as well knowing one's handsome cat is always the cat one likes best; or
+if one be alive and the other dead, it is usually the latter that is the
+handsomest. Besides, if the point were never so clear, I hope you do not
+think me so ill bred or so imprudent as to forfeit all my interest in
+the survivor. Oh, no; I would rather seem to mistake and imagine, to be
+sure, it must be the tabby one that had met with this sad accident. Till
+this affair is a little better determined, you will excuse me if I do
+not cry, 'Tempus inane peto, requiem, spatiumque doloris.'"
+
+He closes the letter by saying, "There's a poem for you; it is rather
+too long for an epitaph." And then the familiar--
+
+  "'Twas on a lofty vase's side,
+  Where China's gayest art had dy'd
+    The azure flowers that blow:
+  Demurest of the tabby kind,
+  The pensive Selima, reclined,
+    Gazed on the lake below."
+
+
+Wordsworth's "Kitten and the Falling Leaves," is in the high, moralizing
+style.
+
+  "That way look, my Infant, lo!
+  What a pretty baby show.
+  See the kitten on the wall,
+  Sporting with the leaves that fall,
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "But the kitten, how she starts,
+  Crouches, stretches, paws, and darts
+  First at one and then its fellow,
+  Just as light and just as yellow:
+  There are many now--now one,
+  Now they stop, and there are none.
+  What intentness of desire
+  In her upward eye of fire!
+  With a tiger-leap halfway
+  Now she meets the coming prey,
+  Lets it go as fast, and then
+  Has it in her power again:
+  Now she works with three or four.
+  Like an Indian conjuror:
+  Quick as he in feats of art,
+  Far beyond in joy of heart.
+  Were her antics played in the eye
+  Of a thousand standers-by,
+  Clapping hands with shout and stare,
+  What would little Tabby care
+  For the plaudits of the crowd?
+  Over happy to be proud,
+  Over wealthy in the treasure
+  Of her own exceeding pleasure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Pleased by any random toy:
+  By a kitten's busy joy,
+  Or an infant's laughing eye
+  Sharing in the ecstacy:
+  I would fain like that or this
+  Find my wisdom in my bliss:
+  Keep the sprightly soul awake,
+  And have faculties to take,
+  Even from things by sorrow wrought,
+  Matter for a jocund thought,
+  Spite of care and spite of grief,
+  To gambol with life's falling leaf."
+
+
+Cowper's love for animals was well known. At one time, according to Lady
+Hesketh, he had besides two dogs, two goldfinches, and two canaries,
+five rabbits, three hares, two guinea-pigs, a squirrel, a magpie, a jay,
+and a starling. In addition he had, at least, one cat, for Lady Hesketh
+says, "One evening the cat giving one of the hares a sound box on the
+ear, the hare ran after her, and having caught her, punished her by
+drumming on her back with her two feet hard as drumsticks, till the
+creature would actually have been killed had not Mrs. Unwin rescued
+her." It might have been this very cat that was the inspiration of
+Cowper's poem, "To a Retired Cat," which had as a moral the familiar
+stanza:--
+
+  "Beware of too sublime a sense
+  Of your own worth and consequence:
+  The man who dreams himself so great
+  And his importance of such weight,
+  That all around, in all that's done,
+  Must move and act for him alone,
+  Will learn in school of tribulation
+  The folly of his expectation."
+
+
+Baudelaire wrote:--
+
+  "Come, beauty, rest upon my loving heart,
+  But cease thy paws' sharp-nailed play,
+  And let me peer into those eyes that dart
+  Mixed agate and metallic ray."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Grave scholars and mad lovers all admire
+  And love, and each alike, at his full tide
+  Those suave and puissant cats, the fireside's pride,
+  Who like the sedentary life and glow of fire."
+
+
+Goldsmith also wrote of the kitten:--
+
+  "Around in sympathetic mirth
+    Its tricks the kitten tries:
+  The cricket chirrups in the hearth,
+    The crackling fagot flies."
+
+
+Does this not suggest a charming glimpse of the poet's English home?
+
+Keats was evidently not acquainted with the best and sleekest pet cat,
+and his "Sonnet to a Cat" does not indicate that he fully appreciated
+their higher qualities.
+
+Mr. Whittier, our good Quaker poet, while not attempting an elaborate
+sonnet or stilted elegiac, shows a most appreciative spirit in the lines
+he wrote for a little girl who asked him one day, with tears in her
+eyes, to write an epitaph for her lost Bathsheba.
+
+  "Bathsheba: To whom none ever said scat,
+              No worthier cat
+              Ever sat on a mat
+              Or caught a rat:
+              _Requies-cat_."
+
+
+Clinton Scollard, however, has given us an epitaph that many
+sympathizing admirers would gladly inscribe on the tombstones of their
+lost pets, if it were only the popular fashion to put tombstones over
+their graves. This is Mr. Scollard's tribute, the best ever written:--
+
+  GRIMALKIN
+
+  AN ELEGY ON PETER, AGED TWELVE
+
+  In vain the kindly call: in vain
+  The plate for which thou once wast fain
+  At morn and noon and daylight's wane,
+        O King of mousers.
+  No more I hear thee purr and purr
+  As in the frolic days that were,
+  When thou didst rub thy velvet fur
+        Against my trousers.
+
+  How empty are the places where
+  Thou erst wert frankly debonair,
+  Nor dreamed a dream of feline care,
+        A capering kitten.
+  The sunny haunts where, grown a cat,
+  You pondered this, considered that,
+  The cushioned chair, the rug, the mat,
+        By firelight smitten.
+
+  Although of few thou stoodst in dread,
+  How well thou knew a friendly tread,
+  And what upon thy back and head
+        The stroking hand meant.
+  A passing scent could keenly wake
+  Thy eagerness for chop or steak,
+  Yet, Puss, how rarely didst thou break
+        The eighth commandment.
+
+  Though brief thy life, a little span
+  Of days compared with that of man,
+  The time allotted to thee ran
+        In smoother metre.
+  Now with the warm earth o'er thy breast,
+  O wisest of thy kind and best,
+  Forever mayst thou softly rest,
+        _In pace_, Peter.
+
+
+One only has to read this poem to feel that Mr. Scollard knew what it is
+to love a gentle, intelligent, affectionate cat--made so by kind
+treatment.
+
+To Francois Coppee the cat is as sacred as it was to the Egyptians of
+old. The society of his feline pets is to him ever delightful and
+consoling, and it may have inspired him to write some of his most
+melodious verses. Nevertheless he is not the cat's poet. It was Charles
+Cros who wrote:--
+
+  "Chatte blanche, chatte sans tache,
+  Je te demande dans ces vers
+  Quel secret dort dans tes yeux verts,
+  Quel sarcasme sous ta moustache?"
+
+
+Here is a version in verse of the famous "Kilkenny Cats":--
+
+  "O'Flynn, she was an Irishman, as very well was known,
+  And she lived down in Kilkenny, and she lived there all alone,
+  With only six great large tom-cats that knowed their ways about;
+  And everybody else besides she scrupulously shut out."
+
+  "Oh, very fond of cats was she, and whiskey, too, 'tis said,
+  She didn't feed 'em very much, but she combed 'em well instead:
+  As may be guessed, these large tom-cats did not get very sleek
+  Upon a combing once a day and a 'haporth' once a week.
+
+  "Now, on one dreary winter's night O'Flynn she went to bed
+  With a whiskey bottle under her arm, the whiskey in her head.
+  The six great large tom-cats they all sat in a dismal row,
+  And horridly glared their hazy eyes, their tails wagged to and fro.
+
+  "At last one grim graymalkin spoke, in accents dire to tell,
+  And dreadful were the words which in his horrid whisper fell:
+  And all the six large tom-cats in answer loud did squall,
+  'Let's kill her, and let's eat her, body, bones, and all.'
+
+  "Oh, horrible! Oh, terrible! Oh, deadly tale to tell!
+  When the sun shone through the window-hole all seemed still and well:
+  The cats they sat and licked their paws all in a merry ring.
+  But nothing else in all the house looked like a living thing.
+
+  "Anon they quarrelled savagely--they spit, they swore, they hollered:
+  At last these six great large tom-cats they one another swallered:
+  And naught but one long tail was left in that once peaceful dwelling,
+  And a very tough one, too, it was--it's the same that I've been telling."
+
+
+By far more artistic is the version for which I am indebted to Miss
+Katharine Eleanor Conway, herself a poet of high order and a lover of
+cats.
+
+THE KILKENNY CATS
+
+  There wanst was two cats in Kilkenny,
+  Aitch thought there was one cat too many;
+    So they quarrelled and fit,
+    They scratched and they bit,
+    Till, excepting their nails,
+    And the tips of their tails,
+  Instead of two cats, there wasn't any.
+
+
+This version comes from Ireland, and is doubtless the correct original.
+
+"Note," says Miss Conway, "the more than Greek delicacy with which the
+tragedy is told. No mutilation, no gore; just an effacement--prompt and
+absolute--'there wasn't any.' It would be hard to overpraise that fine
+touch."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+CONCERNING CAT ARTISTS
+
+
+While thousands of artists, first and last, have undertaken to paint
+cats, there are but few who have been able to do them justice. Artists
+who have possessed the technical skill requisite to such delicate work
+have rarely been willing to give to what they have regarded as
+unimportant subjects the necessary study; and those who have been
+willing to study cats seriously have possessed but seldom the skill
+requisite to paint them well.
+
+Thomas Janvier, whose judgment on such matters is unquestioned, declares
+that not a dozen have succeeded in painting thoroughly good cat
+portraits, portraits so true to nature as to satisfy--if they could
+express their feelings in the premises--the cat subjects and their cat
+friends. Only four painters, he says, ever painted cats habitually and
+always well.
+
+Two members of this small but highly distinguished company flourished
+about a century ago in widely separated parts of the world, and without
+either of them knowing that the other existed.
+
+One was a Japanese artist, named Ho-Kou-Say, whose method of painting,
+of course, was quite unlike that to which we are accustomed in this
+western part of the world, but who had a wonderful faculty for making
+his queer little cat figures seem intensely alive.
+
+The other was a Swiss artist, named Gottfried Mind, whose cat pictures
+are so perfect in their way that he came to be honorably known as "the
+Cat Raphael."
+
+The other two members of the cat quartet are the French artist, Monsieur
+Louis Eugene Lambert, whose pictures are almost as well known in this
+country as they are in France; and the Dutch artist, Madame Henriette
+Ronner, whose delightful cat pictures are known even better, as she
+catches the softer and sweeter graces of the cat more truly than
+Lambert.
+
+A thoroughly good picture of a cat is hard to paint, from a technical
+standpoint, because the artist must represent not only the soft surface
+of fur, but the underlying hard lines of muscle: and his studies must be
+made under conditions of cat perversity which are at times quite enough
+to drive him wild. If he is to represent the cat in repose, he must wait
+for her to take that position of her own accord; and then, just as his
+sketch is well under way, she is liable to rise, stretch herself, and
+walk off. If his picture is to represent action, he must wait for the
+cat to do what he wants her to do, and that many times before he can be
+quite sure that his drawing is correct. With these severe limitations
+upon cat painting, it is not surprising that very few good pictures of
+cats have been painted.
+
+Gottfried Mind has left innumerable pen sketches to prove his intimate
+knowledge of the beauty and charm of the cat. He was born at Berne in
+1768. He had a special taste for drawing animals even when very young,
+bears and cats being his favorite subjects. As he grew older he obtained
+a wonderful proficiency, and his cat pictures appeared with every
+variety of expression. Their silky coats, their graceful attitudes,
+their firm shape beneath the undulating fur, were treated so as to make
+Mind's cats seem alive.
+
+It was Madame Lebrun who named him the "Raphael of Cats," and many a
+royal personage bought his pictures. He, like most cat painters, kept
+his cats constantly with him, knowing that only by persistent and never
+tiring study could he ever hope to master their infinite variety. His
+favorite mother cat kept closely at his side when he worked, or perhaps
+in his lap; while her kittens ran over him as fearlessly as they played
+with their mother's tail. When a terrible epidemic broke out among the
+cats of Berne in 1809, he hid his Minette safely from the police, but he
+never quite recovered from the horror of the massacre of the eight
+hundred that had to be sacrificed for the general safety of the people.
+He died in 1814, and in poverty, although a few years afterward his
+pictures brought extravagant prices.
+
+Burbank, the English painter, has done some good things in cat pictures.
+The expression of the face and the peculiar light in the cat's eye made
+up the realism of Burbank's pictures, which were reproductions of sleek
+and handsome drawing-room pets, whose shining coats he brings out with
+remarkable precision.
+
+The ill-fated Swiss artist Cornelius Wisscher's marvellous tom-cat has
+become typical.
+
+Delacroix, the painter of tigers, was a man of highly nervous
+temperament, but his cat sketches bring out too strongly the tigerish
+element to be altogether successful.
+
+Louis Eugene Lambert was a pupil of Delacroix. He was born in Paris,
+September 25, 1825, and the chief event of his youth was, perhaps, the
+great friendship which existed between him and Maurice Sands. Entomology
+was a fad with him for a time, but he finally took up his serious
+life-work in 1854, when he began illustrating for the _Journal of
+Agriculture_. In connection with his work, he began to study animals
+carefully, making dogs his specialty. In 1862 he illustrated an edition
+of La Fontaine, and in 1865 he obtained his first medal for a painting
+of dogs. In 1866 his painting of cats, "L'Horloge qui avance," won
+another medal, and brought his first fame as a cat painter. In 1874 he
+was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. His "Envoi" in 1874, "Les
+Chats du Cardinal," and "Grandeur Decline" brought more medals. Although
+he has painted hosts of excellent dog pictures, cats are his favorites,
+on account, as he says, of "les formes fines et gracieux; mouvements,
+souple et subtil."
+
+In the Luxembourg Gallery, Mr. Lambert's "Family of Cats" is considered
+one of the finest cat pictures in the world. In this painting the mother
+sits upon a table watching the antics of her four frivolous kittens.
+There is a wonderful smoothness of touch and refinement of treatment
+that have never yet been excelled. "After the Banquet" is another
+excellent example of the same smoothness of execution, with fulness of
+action instead of repose. And yet there is an undeniable lack of the
+softer attributes which should be evident in the faces of the group.
+
+It is here that Madame Ronner excels all other cat painters, living or
+dead. She not only infuses a wonderful degree of life into her little
+figures, but reproduces the shades of expression, shifting and variable
+as the sands of the sea, as no other artist of the brush has done.
+Asleep or awake, her cats look exactly to the "felinarian" like cats
+with whom he or she is familiar. Curiosity, drowsiness, indifference,
+alertness, love, hate, anxiety, temper, innocence, cunning, fear,
+confidence, mischief, earnestness, dignity, helplessness,--they are all
+in Madame Ronner's cats' faces, just as we see them in our own cats.
+
+Madame Ronner is the daughter of Josephus Augustus Knip, a landscape
+painter of some celebrity sixty years ago, and from her father she
+received her first art education. She is now over seventy years old, and
+for nearly fifty years has made her home in Brussels. There, she and her
+happy cats, a big black Newfoundland dog named Priam, with a pert
+cockatoo named Coco, dwell together in a roomy house in its own grounds,
+back a little from the Charleroi Road. Madame Ronner has a good son to
+care for her, and she loves the animals, who are both her servants and
+her friends. Every day she spends three good hours of the morning in her
+studio, painting her delightful cat pictures with the energy of a young
+artist and the expert precision which we know so well. She was sixteen
+when she succeeded in painting a picture which was accepted and sold at
+a public exhibition at Dusseldorf. This was a study of a cat seated in a
+window and examining with great curiosity a bumblebee; while it would
+not compare with her later work, there must have been good quality in
+it, or it would not have got into a Dusseldorf picture exhibition at
+all. At any rate, it was the beginning of her successful career as an
+artist. From that time she managed to support herself and her father by
+painting pictures of animals. For many years, however, she confined
+herself to painting dogs. Her most famous picture, "The Friend of Man,"
+belongs to this period--a pathetic group composed of a sorrowing old
+sand-seller looking down upon a dying dog still harnessed to the little
+sand-wagon, with the two other dogs standing by with wistful looks of
+sympathy. When this picture was exhibited, in 1860, Madame Ronner's fame
+was established permanently.
+
+But it so happened that in the same year a friendly kitten came to live
+in her home, wandering in through the open doorway from no one knew
+where, and deciding, after sniffing about the place in cat fashion, to
+remain there for the remainder of its days. And it also happened that
+Madame Ronner was lured by this small stranger, who so coolly quartered
+himself upon her, to change the whole current of her artistic life, and
+to paint cats instead of dogs. Of course, this change could not be made
+in a moment; but after that the pictures which she painted to please
+herself were cat pictures, and as these were exhibited and her
+reputation as a cat painter became established, cat orders took the
+place of dog orders more and more, until at last her time was given
+wholly to cat painting. Her success in painting cat action has been due
+as much to her tireless patience as to her skill; a patience that gave
+her strength to spend hours upon hours in carefully watching the quick
+movements of the lithe little creatures, and in correcting again and
+again her rapidly made sketches.
+
+Every cat-lover knows that a cat cannot be induced, either by reason or
+by affection, to act in accordance with any wishes save its own. Also
+that cats find malicious amusement in doing what they know they are not
+wanted to do, and that with an affectation of innocence that materially
+aggravates their deliberate offence.
+
+But Madame Ronner, through her long experience, has evolved a way to get
+them to pose as models. Her plan is the simple one of keeping her models
+prisoners in a glass box, enclosed in a wire cage, while she is painting
+them. Inside the prison she cannot always command their actions, but her
+knowledge of cat character enables her to a certain extent to persuade
+them to take the pose which she requires. By placing a comfortable
+cushion in the cage she can tempt her model to lie down; some object of
+great interest, like a live mouse, for instance, exhibited just outside
+the cage is sure to create the eager look that she has shown so well on
+cat faces; and to induce her kittens to indulge in the leaps and bounds
+which she has succeeded so wonderfully in transferring to canvas, she
+keeps hanging from the top of the cage a most seductive "bob."
+
+Madame Ronner's favorite models are "Jem" and "Monmouth," cats of rare
+sweetness of temper, whose conduct in all relations of life is above
+reproach. The name of "Monmouth," as many will recall, was made famous
+by the hero of Monsieur La Bedolierre's classic, "Mother Michel and her
+Cat," [Footnote: Translated into English by Thomas Bailey Aldrich.] and
+therefore has clustering about it traditions so glorious that its wearers
+in modern times must be upheld always by lofty hopes and high resolves.
+Doubtless Monmouth Ronner feels the responsibility entailed upon him by
+his name.
+
+In the European galleries are several noted paintings in which the cat
+appears more or less unsuccessfully. Breughel and Teniers made their
+grotesque "Cat Concerts" famous, but one can scarcely see why, since the
+drawing is poor and there is no real insight into cat character evident.
+The sleeping cat, in Breughel's "Paradise Lost" in the Louvre, is
+better, being well drawn, but so small as to leave no chance for
+expression. Lebrun's "Sleep of the Infant Jesus," in the Louvre, has a
+slumbering cat under the stove, and in Barocci's "La Madonna del Gatto"
+the cat is the centre of interest. Holman Hunt's "The Awakening
+Conscience" and Murillo's Holy Family "del Pajarito" give the cat as a
+type of cruelty, but have failed egregiously in accuracy of form or
+expression. Paul Veronese's cat in "The Marriage at Cana" is fearfully
+and wonderfully made, and even Rembrandt failed when he tried to
+introduce a cat into his pictures.
+
+Rosa Bonheur has been wise enough not to attempt cat pictures, knowing
+that special study, for which she had not the time or the inclination,
+is necessary to fit an artist to excel with the feline character.
+Landseer, too, after trying twice, once in 1819 with "The Cat Disturbed"
+and once in 1824 with "The Cat's Paw," gave up all attempts at dealing
+with Grimalkin. Indeed, most artists who have attempted it, have found
+that to be a wholly successful cat artist such whole-hearted devotion to
+the subject as Madame Ronner's is the invariable price of distinction.
+
+Of late, however, more artists are found who are willing to pay this
+price, who are giving time and study not only to the subtle shadings of
+the delicate fur, but to the varying facial expression and sinuous
+movements of the cat. Margaret Stocks, of Munich, for example, is
+rapidly coming to the front as a cat painter, and some predict for her
+(she is still a young woman) a future equal to Madame Ronner's. Gambier
+Bolton's "Day Dreams" shows admirably the quality and "tumbled-ness" of
+an Angora kitten's fur, while the expression and drawing are equally
+good. Miss Cecilia Beaux's "Brighton Cats" is famous, and every student
+of cats recognizes its truthfulness at once.
+
+Angora and Persian kittens find another loving and faithful student in
+J. Adam, whose paintings have been photographed and reproduced in this
+country times without number. "Puss in Boots" is another foreign picture
+which has been photographed and sold extensively in this country.
+"Little Milksop" by the same artist, Mr. Frank Paton, gives fairly
+faithful drawing and expression of two kittens who have broken a milk
+pitcher and are eagerly lapping up the contents.
+
+In the Munich Gallery there is a painting by Claus Meyer, "Bose Zungen,"
+which has become quite noted. His three old cats and three young cats
+show three gossiping old crones by the side of whom are three small and
+awkward kittens.
+
+Of course, there are no artists whose painting of the cat is to be
+compared with Madame Ronner's. Mr. J.L. Dolph, of New York City, has
+painted hundreds of cat pieces which have found a ready sale, and Mr.
+Sid L. Brackett, of Boston, is doing very creditable work. A successful
+cat painter of the younger school is Mr. N.N. Bickford, of New York,
+whose "Peek-a-Boo" hangs in a Chicago gallery side by side with cats of
+Madame Ronner and Monsieur Lambert. "Miss Kitty's Birthday" shows that
+he has genuine understanding of cat character, and is mastering the
+subtleties of long white fur.
+
+Mr. Bickford is a pupil of Jules Lefebvre Boulanger and Miralles. It was
+by chance that he became a painter of cats. Mademoiselle Marie Engle,
+the prima-donna, owned a beautiful white Angora cat which she prized
+very highly, and as her engagements abroad compelled her to part with
+the cat for a short time, she left Mizzi with the artist until her
+return. One day Mr. Bickford thought he would try painting the white,
+silken fur of Mizzi: the result not only surprised him but also his
+artist friends, who said, "Lambert himself could not have done better."
+
+Upon Miss Engle's return, seeing what an inspiration her cat had been,
+she gave her to Mr. Bickford, and it is needless to add that he has
+become deeply attached to his beautiful model. Mizzi is a pure white
+Angora, with beautiful blue eyes, and silky fur. She won first prize at
+the National Cat Show of 1895, but no longer attends cat shows, on
+account of her engagements as professional model.
+
+Ben Austrian, who has made a success in painting other animals, has done
+a cat picture of considerable merit. The subject was Tix, a beautiful
+tiger-gray, belonging to Mr. Mahlon W. Newton, of Philadelphia. The cat
+is noted, not only in Philadelphia, but among travelling men, as he
+resides at a hotel, and is quite a prominent member of the office force.
+He weighs fifteen pounds and is of a very affectionate nature, following
+his master to the park and about the establishment like a dog. During
+the day he lives in the office, lying on the counter or the key-rack,
+but at night he retires with his master at eleven or twelve o'clock,
+sleeping in his own basket in the bathroom, and waking his master
+promptly at seven every morning. Tix's picture hangs in the office of
+his hotel, and is becoming as famous as the cat.
+
+Elizabeth Bonsall is a young American artist who has exhibited some good
+cat pictures, and whose work promises to make her famous some day, if
+she does not "weary in well-doing"; and Mr. Jean Paul Selinger's
+"Kittens" are quite well known.
+
+The good cat illustrator is even more rare than the cat painters.
+Thousands of readers recall those wonderfully lifelike cats and kittens
+which were a feature of the _St. Nicholas_ a few years ago,
+accompanied by "nonsense rhymes" or "jingles." They were the work of
+Joseph G. Francis, of Brookline, Mass., and brought him no little fame.
+He was, and is still, a broker on State Street, Boston, and in his busy
+life these inimitable cat sketches were but an incident. Mr. Francis is
+a devoted admirer of all cats, and had for many years loved and studied
+one cat in particular. It was by accident that he discovered his own
+possibilities in the line of cat drawing, as he began making little
+pen-and-ink sketches for his own amusement and then for that of his
+friends. The latter persuaded him to send some of these drawings to the
+_St. Nicholas_ and the _Wide-Awake_ magazines, and, rather to
+his surprise, they were promptly accepted, and the "Francis cats" became
+famous. Mr. Francis does but little artistic work, nowadays, more
+important business keeping him well occupied; besides, he says, he "is
+not in the mood for it."
+
+Who does not know Louis Wain's cats?--that prince of English
+illustrators. Mr. Wain's home, when not in London, is at Bendigo Lodge,
+Westgate, Kent. He began his artistic career at nineteen, after a
+training in the best London schools. He was not a hard worker over his
+books, but his fondness for nature led him to an artist's career.
+American Indian stories were his delight, and accounts of the wandering
+outdoor life of our aborigines were instrumental in developing his
+powers of observation regarding the details of nature. Always fond of
+dumb animals, he began life by making sketches for sporting papers at
+agricultural shows all over England. It was his own cat "Peter" who
+first suggested to Louis Wain the fanciful cat creations which have made
+his name famous. Watching Peter's antics one evening, he was tempted to
+do a small study of kittens, which was promptly accepted by a magazine
+editor in London. Then he trained Peter to become a model and the
+starting-point of his success. Peter has done more to wipe out of
+England the contempt in which the cat was formerly held there, than any
+other feline in the world. He has done his race a service in raising
+their status from neglected, forlorn creatures on the one hand, or the
+pampered, overfed object of old maids' affections on the other, to a
+dignified place in the English house.
+
+The double-page picture of the "Cat's Christmas Dance" in the _London
+Illustrated News_ of December 6, 1890, contains a hundred and fifty
+cats, with as many varying facial expressions and attitudes. It occupied
+eleven working days of Mr. Wain's time, but it caught the public fancy
+and made a tremendous hit all over the world. Louis Wain's cats
+immediately became famous, and he has had more orders than he can fill
+ever since. He works eight hours a day, and then lays aside his brush to
+study physical science, or write a humorous story. He has written and
+illustrated a comic book, and spent a great deal of time over a more
+serious one.
+
+Among the best known of his cat pictures, after the "Christmas Party,"
+is his "Cats' Rights Meeting," which not even the most ardent suffragist
+can study without laughter. From a desk an ardent tabby is expounding,
+loud and long, on the rights of her kind. In front of her is a double
+row of felines, sitting with folded arms, and listening with absorbed
+attention. The expressions of these cats' faces, some ardent, some
+indignant, some placid, but all interested, form a ridiculous contrast
+to a row of "Toms" in the rear, who evidently disagree with the
+lecturer, and are prepared to hiss at her more "advanced" ideas.
+"Returning Thanks" is nearly as amusing, with its thirteen cats seated
+at table over their wine, while one offers thanks, and the remainder
+wear varying expressions of devotion, indifference, or irreverence.
+"Bringing Home the Yule Log" gives twenty-one cats, and as many
+individual expressions of joy or discomfort; and the "Snowball Match"
+shows a scene almost as hilarious as the "Christmas Dance."
+
+Mr. Wain believes there is a great future for black and white work if a
+man is careful to keep abreast of the times. "A man should first of all
+create his public and draw upon his own fund of originality to sustain
+it," he says, "taking care not to pander to the degenerate tendencies
+which would prevent his work from elevating the finer instincts of the
+people." Says a recent visitor to the Wain household: "I wonder if Peter
+realizes that he has done more good than most human beings, who are
+endowed not only with sense but with brains? if in the firelight, he
+sees the faces of many a suffering child whose hours of pain have been
+shortened by the recital of his tricks, and the pictures of himself
+arrayed in white cravat, or gayly disporting himself on a 'see-saw'? I
+feel inclined to wake him up, and whisper how, one cold winter's night,
+I met a party of five little children, hatless and bootless, hurrying
+along an East-end slum, and saying encouragingly to the youngest, who
+was crying with cold and hunger, 'Come along: we'll get there soon.' I
+followed them down the lighted street till they paused in front of a
+barber's shop, and I heard their voices change to a shout of merriment:
+for in the window was a crumpled Christmas supplement, and Peter, in a
+frolicsome mood, was represented entertaining at a large cats'
+tea-party. Hunger, and cold, and misery were all dispelled. Who would
+not be a cat of Louis Wain's, capable of creating ten minutes' sunshine
+in a childish heart?"
+
+Mr. Wain announces a discovery in relation to cats which corroborates a
+theory of my own, adopted from long observation and experience.
+
+"I have found," he says, "as a result of many years of inquiry and
+study, that people who keep cats and are in the habit of petting them,
+do not suffer from those petty ailments which all flesh is heir to.
+Rheumatism and nervous complaints are uncommon with them, and Pussy's
+lovers are of the sweetest temperament. I have often felt the benefit,
+after a long spell of mental effort, of having my cats sitting across my
+shoulders, or of half an hour's chat with Peter."
+
+This is a frequent experience of my own. Nothing is more restful and
+soothing after a busy day than sitting with my hands buried in the soft
+sides of one of my cats.
+
+"Do you know," said one of my neighbors, recently, "when I am troubled
+with insomnia, lately, I get up and get Bingo from his bed, and take him
+to mine. I can go to sleep with my hands on him."
+
+There is a powerful magnetic influence which emanates from a sleepy or
+even a quiet cat, that many an invalid has experienced without realizing
+it. If physicians were to investigate this feature of the cat's
+electrical and magnetic influence, in place of anatomical research after
+death, or the horrible practice of vivisection, they might be doing a
+real service to humanity.
+
+Mr. Wain's success as an illustrator brought him great prominence in the
+National Cat Club of England, and he has been for a number of years its
+president, doing much to raise the condition and quality of cats and the
+status of the club. He has a number of beautiful and high-bred cats at
+Bendigo Lodge.
+
+With regard to the painting of cats Champfleury said, "The lines are so
+delicate, the eyes are distinguished by such remarkable qualities, the
+movements are due to such sudden impulses, that to succeed in the
+portrayal of such a subject, one must be feline one's self." And Mr.
+Spielman gives the following advice to those who would paint cats:--
+
+"You must love them, as Mahomet and Chesterfield loved them: be as fond
+of their company as Wolsley and Richelieu, Mazarin and Colbert, who
+retained them even during their most impressive audiences: as Petrarch,
+and Dr. Johnson, and Canon Liddon, and Ludovic Halevy, who wrote with
+them at their elbow: and Tasso and Gray, who celebrated them in verse:
+as sympathetic as Carlyle, whom Mrs. Allingham painted in the company of
+his beloved 'Tib' in the garden at Chelsea, or as Whittington, the hero
+of our milk-and-water days: think of El Daher Beybars, who fed all
+feline comers, or 'La Belle Stewart,' Duchess of Richmond, who, in the
+words of the poet, 'endowed a college' for her little friends: you must
+be as approbative of their character, their amenableness to education,
+their inconstancy, not to say indifference and their general lack of
+principle, as Madame de Custine: and as appreciative of their daintiness
+and grace as Alfred de Musset. Then, and not till then, can you consider
+yourself sentimentally equipped for studying the art of cat painting."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+CONCERNING CAT HOSPITALS AND REFUGES
+
+
+At comparatively frequent intervals we read of some woman, historic or
+modern, who has left an annuity (as the Duchess of Richmond, "La Belle
+Stewart") for the care of her pet cats; now and then a man provides for
+them in his will, as Lord Chesterfield, for instance, who left a
+permanent pension for his cats and their descendants. But I find only
+one who has endowed a home for them and given it sufficient means to
+support the strays and waifs who reach its shelter.
+
+Early in the eighties, Captain Nathan Appleton, of Boston (a brother of
+the poet Longfellow's wife, and of Thomas Appleton, the celebrated wit),
+returned from a stay in London with a new idea, that of founding some
+sort of a refuge, or hospital, for sick or stray cats and dogs. He had
+visited Battersea, and been deeply impressed with the need of a shelter
+for small and friendless domestic animals.
+
+At Battersea there is an institution similar to the one the Society for
+Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in New York have at East 120th Street,
+where stray animals may be sent and kept for a few days awaiting the
+possible appearance of a claimant or owner; at the end of which time the
+animals are placed in the "lethal chamber," where they die instantly and
+painlessly by asphyxiation. In Boston, the Society of Prevention of
+Cruelty to Animals have no such refuge or pound, but in place of it keep
+one or two men whose business it is to go wherever sent and "mercifully
+put to death" the superfluous, maimed, or sick animals that shall be
+given them.
+
+Captain Appleton's idea, however, was something entirely different from
+this. These creatures, he argued, have a right to their lives and the
+pursuit of happiness after their own fashion, and he proposed to help
+them to enjoy that right. He appealed to a few sympathetic friends and
+gave two or three acres of land from his own estate, near "Nonantum
+Hill," where the Apostle Eliot preached to the Indians, and where his
+iodine springs are located. He had raised a thousand or two dollars and
+planned a structure of some kind to shelter stray dogs and cats, when
+the good angel that attends our household pets guided him to the lawyer
+who had charge of the estates of Miss Ellen M. Gifford, of New Haven,
+Ct. "I think I can help you," said the lawyer. But he would say nothing
+more at that time. A few weeks later, Captain Appleton was sent for.
+Miss Gifford had become deeply interested in the project, and after
+making more inquiries, gave the proposed home some twenty-five thousand
+dollars, adding to this amount afterward and providing for the
+institution in her will. It has already had over one hundred thousand
+dollars from Miss Gifford's estates, and it is so well endowed and well
+managed that it is self-supporting.
+
+The Ellen M. Gifford Sheltering Home for Animals is situated near the
+Brookline edge of the Brighton district in Boston. In fact, the
+residential portion of aristocratic Brookline is so fast creeping up to
+it that the whole six acres of the institution will doubtless soon be
+disposed of at a very handsome profit, while the dogs and cats will
+retire to a more remote district to "live on the interest of their
+money."
+
+The main building is a small but handsome brick affair, facing on Lake
+Street. This is the home of the superintendent, and contains, besides,
+the offices of the establishment. Over the office is a tablet with this
+inscription, taken from a letter of Miss Gifford's about the time the
+home was opened:--
+
+"If only the waifs, the strays, the sick, the abused, would be sure to
+get entrance to the home, and anybody could feel at liberty to bring in
+a starved or ill-treated animal and have it cared for without pay, my
+object would be obtained. March 27, 1884."
+
+The superintendent is a lover of animals as well as a good business
+manager, and his work is in line with the sentence just quoted. Any one
+wanting a cat or a dog, and who can promise it a good home, may apply
+there. But Mr. Perkins does not take the word of a stranger at random.
+He investigates their circumstances and character, and never gives away
+an animal unless he can be reasonably sure of its going to a good home.
+For instance, he once received an application from one man for six cats.
+The wholesale element in the order made him slightly suspicious, and he
+immediately drove to Boston, where he found that his would-be customer
+owned a big granary overrun with mice. He sent the six cats, and two
+weeks later went to see how they were getting on, when he found them
+living happily in a big grain-loft, fat and contented as the most
+devoted Sultan of Egypt could have asked. None but street cats and stray
+dogs, homeless waifs, ill-treated and half starved, are received at this
+home. Occasionally, some family desiring to get rid of the animal they
+have petted for months, perhaps years, will send it over to the
+Sheltering Home. But if Mr. Perkins can find where it came from he
+promptly returns it, for even this place, capable of comfortably housing
+a hundred cats and as many dogs, cannot accommodate all the unfortunates
+that are picked up in the streets of Boston. The accommodations, too,
+while they are comfortable and even luxurious for the poor creatures
+that have hitherto slept on ash-barrels and stone flaggings, are unfit
+for household pets that have slept on cushions, soft rugs, and milady's
+bed.
+
+There is a dog-house and a cat-house, sufficiently far apart that the
+occupants of one need not be disturbed by those of the other. In the
+dog-house there are rows of pens on each side of the middle aisle, in
+which from one to four or five dogs, according to size, are kept when
+indoors. These are of all sorts, colors, dispositions, and sizes,
+ranging from pugs to St. Bernards, terriers to mastiffs. There are few
+purely bred dogs, although there are many intelligent and really
+handsome ones. The dogs are allowed to run in the big yard that opens
+out from their house at certain hours of the day; but the cats' yards
+are open to them all day and night. All yards and runs are enclosed with
+wire netting, and the cat-house has partitions of the same. All around
+the sides of the cat-house are shelves or bunks, which are kept supplied
+with clean hay, for their beds. Here one may see cats of every color and
+assorted sizes, contentedly curled up in their nests, while their
+companions sit blinking in the sun, or run out in the yards. Cooked
+meat, crackers and milk, and dishes of fresh water are kept where they
+can get at them. The cats all look plump and well fed, and, indeed, the
+ordinary street cat must feel that his lines have fallen in pleasant
+places.
+
+Not so, however, with pet cats who may be housed there. They miss the
+companionship of people, and the household belongings to which they have
+been accustomed. Sometimes it is really pathetic to see one of these
+cast-off pets climb up the wire netting and plainly beg the visitor to
+take him away from that strange place, and give him such a home as he
+has been used to. In the superintendent's house there is usually a good
+cat or two of this sort, as he is apt to test a well-bred cat before
+giving him away.
+
+Somewhat similar, and even older than the Ellen Gifford Sheltering Home,
+is the Morris Refuge of Philadelphia. This institution, whose motto is
+"The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his
+works," was first established in May, 1874, by Miss Elizabeth Morris and
+other ladies who took an interest in the protection of suffering
+animals. It does not limit its tender mercies to cats and dogs, but
+cares for every suffering animal. It differs from the Ellen Gifford Home
+chiefly in the fact that, while the latter is a _home_ for stray
+cats and dogs, the Morris Refuge has for its object the care for and
+disposal of suffering animals of all sorts. In a word, it brings relief
+to most of these unfortunate creatures by means of a swift and painless
+death.
+
+It was first known as the City Refuge, although it was never maintained
+by the city. In January, 1889, it was reorganized and incorporated as
+the "Morris Refuge for Homeless and Suffering Animals." It is supported
+by private contributions, and is under the supervision of Miss Morris
+and a corps of kind-hearted ladies of Philadelphia. A wagon is kept at
+the home to respond to calls, and visits any residence where suffering
+animals may need attention. The agent of the society lives at the refuge
+with his family, and receives animals at any time. When notice is
+received of an animal hurt or suffering, he sends after it. Chloroform
+is invariably taken along, in order that, if expedient, the creature may
+be put out of its agony at once. This refuge is at 1242 Lombard Street,
+and there is a temporary home where dogs are boarded at 923 South 11th
+Street.
+
+In 1895, out of 23,067 animals coming under the care of the association,
+19,672 were cats. In 1896, there were 24,037 animals relieved and
+disposed of, while the superintendent answered 230 police calls. Good
+homes are found for both dogs and cats, but not until the agent is sure
+that they will be kindly treated.
+
+In Miss Morris's eighth annual report she says: "Looking back to the
+formation of the first society for the prevention of cruelty to animals,
+we find since that time a gradual awakening to the duties man owes to
+those below him in the scale of animal creation. The titles of those
+societies and their objects, as defined by their charters, show that at
+first it was considered sufficient to protect animals from cruel
+treatment: very few people gave thought to the care of those that were
+without homes. Now many are beginning to think of the evil of being
+overrun with numbers of homeless creatures, whose sufferings appeal to
+the sympathies of the humane, and whose noise and depredations provoke
+the cruelty of the hard-hearted: hence the efforts that are being made
+in different cities to establish refuges. A request has lately been
+received from Montreal asking for our reports, as it is proposed to
+found a home for animals in that city, and information is being
+collected in relation to such institutions."
+
+Lady Marcus Beresford has succeeded in establishing and endowing a home
+for cats in Englefield Green, Windsor Park. She has made a specialty of
+Angoras, and her collection is famous. Queen Victoria and her daughters
+take a deep interest, not alone in finely bred cats, but in poor and
+homeless waifs as well. Her Royal Highness, in fact, took pains to write
+the London S.P.C.A. some years ago, saying she would be very glad to
+have them do something for the safety and protection of cats, "_which
+are so generally misunderstood and grossly ill-treated_." She herself
+sets a good example in this respect, and when her courts remove from one
+royal residence to another, her cats are taken with her.
+
+There is a movement in Paris, too, to provide for sick and homeless cats
+as well as dogs. Two English ladies have founded a hospital near
+Asnieres, where ailing pets can be tended in illness, or boarded for
+about ten cents a day; and very well cared for their pensioners are.
+There is also a charity ward where pauper patients are received and
+tended carefully, and afterward sold or given away to reliable people.
+Oddly, this sort of charity was begun by Mademoiselle Claude Bernard,
+the daughter of the great scientist who, it is said, tortured more
+living creatures to death than any other. Vivisection became a passion
+with him, but Mademoiselle Bernard is atoning for her father's cruelty
+by a singular devotion to animals, and none are turned from her gates.
+
+This is the way they do it in Cairo even now, according to Monsieur
+Prisse d'Avennes, the distinguished Egyptologist:--
+
+"The Sultan, El Daher Beybars, who reigned in Egypt and Syria toward 658
+of the Hegira (1260 A.D.) and is compared by William of Tripoli to Nero
+in wickedness, and to Caesar in bravery, had a peculiar affection for
+cats. At his death, he left a garden, 'Gheyt-el-Quoltah' (the cats'
+orchard), situated near his mosque outside Cairo, for the support of
+homeless cats. Subsequently the field was sold and resold several times
+by the administrator and purchasers. In consequence of a series of
+dilapidations it now produces a nominal rent of fifteen piastres a year,
+which with certain other legacies is appropriated to the maintenance of
+cats. The Kadi, who is the official administrator of all pious and
+charitable bequests, ordains that at the hour of afternoon prayer,
+between noon and sunset, a daily distribution of animals' entrails and
+refuse meat from the butchers' stalls, chopped up together, shall be
+made to the cats of the neighborhood. This takes place in the outer
+court of the 'Mehkemeh,' or tribunal, and a curious spectacle may then
+be seen. At this hour all the terraces near the Mehkemeh are crowded
+with cats: they come jumping from house to house across the narrow Cairo
+streets, hurrying for their share: they slide down walls and glide into
+the court, where they dispute, with great tenacity and much growling,
+the scanty meal so sadly out of proportion to the number of guests. The
+old ones clear the food in a moment: the young ones and the newcomers,
+too timid to fight for their chance, must content themselves with
+licking the ground. Those wanting to get rid of cats take them there and
+deposit them. I have seen whole baskets of kittens deposited in the
+court, greatly to the annoyance of the neighbors."
+
+There are similar customs in Italy and Switzerland. In Geneva cats prowl
+about the streets like dogs at Constantinople. The people charge
+themselves with their maintenance, and feed the cats who come to their
+doors at the same hour every day for their meals.
+
+In Florence, a cloister near St. Lorenzo's Church serves as a refuge for
+cats. It is an ancient and curious institution, but I am unable to find
+whether it is maintained by the city or by private charities. There are
+specimens of all colors, sizes, and kinds, and any one who wants a cat
+has but to go there and ask for it. On the other hand, the owner of a
+cat who is unable or unwilling to keep it may take it there, where it is
+fed and well treated.
+
+In Rome, they have a commendable system of caring for their cats. At a
+certain hour butchers' men drive through the city, with carts well
+stocked with cat's meat. They utter a peculiar cry which the cats
+recognize, and come hurrying out of the houses for their allowances,
+which are paid for by the owners at a certain rate per month.
+
+In Boston, during the summer of 1895, a firm of butchers took
+subscriptions from philanthropic citizens, and raised enough to defray
+the expenses of feeding the cats on the Back Bay,--where, in spite of
+the fact that the citizens are all wealthy and supposedly humane, there
+are more starving cats than elsewhere in the city. But the experiment
+has not been repeated.
+
+Hospitals for sick animals are no new thing, but a really comfortable
+home for cats is an enterprise in which many a woman who now asks
+despondently what she can do in this overcrowded world to earn a living,
+might find pleasant and profitable.
+
+A most worthy charity is that of the Animal Rescue League in Boston,
+which was started by Mrs. Anna Harris Smith in 1899. She put a call in
+the newspapers, asking those who were interested in the subject to
+attend a meeting and form a league for the protection and care of lost
+or deserted pets. The response was immediate and generous. The Animal
+Rescue League was formed with several hundred members, and in a short
+time the house at 68 Carver Street was rented, and a man and his wife
+put in charge. Here are brought both cats and dogs from all parts of
+Boston and the suburbs, where they are sure of kind treatment and care.
+If they are diseased they are immediately put out of existence by means
+of the lethal chamber; otherwise they are kept for a few days in order
+that they may be claimed by their owners if lost, or have homes found
+for them whenever it is possible. During the first year over two
+thousand cats were cared for, and several hundred dogs. This home is
+maintained by voluntary contributions and by the annual dues of
+subscribers. These are one dollar a year for associate members and five
+dollars for active members. It is an excellent charity, and one that may
+well be emulated in other cities.
+
+There are several cat asylums and refuges in the Far West, and certainly
+a few more such institutions as the Sheltering Home at Brighton, Mass.,
+or the Morris Refuge would be a credit to a country. How better than by
+applying it to our cats can we demonstrate the truth of Solomon's maxim,
+"A merciful man is merciful to his beast"?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF CATS
+
+
+If any of my readers hunger and thirst for information concerning the
+descent of the cat through marsupial ancestors and mesozoic mammals to
+the generalized placental or monodelphous carnivora of to-day, let them
+consult St. George Mivart, who gives altogether the most comprehensive
+and exhaustive scientific study to the cat ever published, and whose
+book on the cat is an excellent work for the earnest beginner in the
+study of biological science. He says no more complete example can be
+found of a perfectly organized living being than that supplied by the
+highest mammalian family--_Felidae_.
+
+"On the whole," he sums up, "it seems probable that the mammalia, and
+therefore the cat, descends from some highly developed, somewhat
+reptile-like batrachian of which no trace has been found."
+
+Away back in the eighth century of the Hegira, an Arab naturalist gives
+this account of the creation of the cat: "When, as the Arab relates,
+Noah made a couple of each animal to enter the ark, his companions and
+family asked, 'What security can you give us and the other animals, so
+long as the lion dwells with us on this narrow vessel?' Then Noah betook
+himself to prayer, and entreated the Lord God. Immediately fever came
+down from heaven and seized upon the king of beasts." This was the
+origin of fever. But constituents in Noah's time, as now, were
+ungrateful; and no sooner was the lion disposed of, than the mouse was
+discovered to be an object of suspicion. They complained that there
+would be no safety for provisions or clothing. "And so Noah renewed his
+supplication to the Most High, the lion sneezed, and a cat ran out of
+his nostrils. From that time the mouse has been timid and has hidden in
+holes."
+
+In the Egyptian gallery of the British Museum there is an excellent
+painting of a tabby cat assisting a man to capture birds. Hieroglyphic
+inscriptions as far back as 1684 B.C. mention the cat, and there is at
+Leyden a tablet of the eighteenth or nineteenth dynasty with a cat
+seated under a chair. A temple at Beni-Hassan is dedicated to Pasht or
+Bubastis, the goddess of cats, which is as old as Thothmes IV of the
+eighteenth dynasty, 1500 B.C.; and the cat appears in written rituals of
+that dynasty. Herodotus tells of the almost superstitious reverence
+which dwellers along the Nile felt for the cat, and gravely states that
+when one died a natural death in any house, the inmates shaved their
+eyebrows as a token of grief; also, that in case of a fire the first
+thing they saved was the household cat. Fortunate pussies!
+
+It is thought that cats were introduced into Greece from Egypt, although
+Professor Rolleston, of Cambridge University, believes the Grecian pet
+cat to have been the white-breasted marten. Yet why should he? Is not a
+soft, white-breasted maltese or tabby as attractive? The idea that cats
+were domesticated in Western Europe by the Crusaders is thought to be
+erroneous; but pet cats were often found in nunneries in the Middle
+Ages, and Pope Gregory the Great, toward the end of the sixth century,
+had a pet cat of which he was very fond.
+
+An old writer says, "A favorite cat sometimes accompanied the Egyptians
+on these occasions [of sport], and the artist of that day intends to
+show us by the exactness with which he represents her seizing her prey,
+that cats were trained to hunt and carry water-fowl." There are old
+Egyptian paintings representing sporting scenes along the Nile, where
+the cats plunge into the water of the marshes to retrieve and carry
+game; while plenty of mural paintings show them sitting under the
+arm-chair of the mistress of the house. Modern naturalists, however,
+claim a radical difference between those old Egyptian retrieving cats
+and our water-hating pussies. There are no records of cats between that
+period in Egypt, about 1630 B.C., and 260 B.C., when they seem to have
+become acclimated in Greece and Rome. There is in the Bordeaux Museum an
+ancient picture of a young girl holding a cat, on a tomb of the
+Gallo-Roman Epoch, and cats appeared in the heraldry of that date; but
+writers of those ages speak rather slightingly of them. Then for
+centuries the cat was looked upon as a diabolic creature, fit company
+for witches.
+
+"Why," says Balthazar Bekker in the seventeenth century, "is a cat
+always found among the belongings of witches, when according to the
+Sacred Book, and Apocalypse in particular, it is the dog, not a feline
+animal, that consorts with the sorcerers?"
+
+In Russia even yet the common people believe that black cats become
+devils at the end of seven years, and in many parts of Southern Europe
+they are still supposed to be serving apprenticeship as witches. In
+Sicily the peasants are sure that if a black cat lives with seven
+masters, the soul of the seventh will surely accompany him back to the
+dominion of Hades. In Brittany there is a dreadful tale of cats that
+dance with unholy glee around the crucifix while their King is being put
+to death. Cats figure in Norwegian folk-lore, too, as witches and
+picturesque incumbents of ghost-haunted houses and nocturnal revels. And
+even to-day there is a legend in Westminster to the effect that the
+dissipated cats of that region indulge in a most disreputable revel in
+some country house, and that is why they look so forlorn and altogether
+undone by daylight.
+
+A canon enacted in England in 1127 forbade any abbess or nun to use more
+costly fur than that of lambs or cats, and it is proved that cat-fur was
+at that time commonly used for trimming dresses. The cat was, probably
+for that reason, an object of chase in royal forests, and a license is
+still in existence from Richard II to the Abbot of Peterborough, and
+dated 1239, granting liberty to hunt cats. This was probably the wild
+cat, however, which was not the same as the domestic.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1:
+
+These are among the laws supposedly enacted by Hoel Dha (Howell the
+Good) sometime between 915 and 948 A.D.
+
+The Vendotian Code XI.
+
+The worth of a cat and her teithi (qualities) this is:--
+
+1st. The worth of a kitten from the night it is kittened until it shall
+open its eyes, is one penny.
+
+2d. And from that time until it shall kill mice, two pence.
+
+3d. And after it shall kill mice, four legal pence; and so it shall
+always remain.
+
+4th. Her teithe are to see, to hear, to kill mice, and to have her claws.
+
+This is the "Dimentian Code." XXXII. Of Cats.
+
+1st. The worth of a cat that is killed or stolen. Its head to be put
+downward upon a clean, even floor, with its tail lifted upward and thus
+suspended, whilst wheat is poured about it until the top of its tail be
+covered and that is to be its worth. If the corn cannot be had, then a
+milch sheep with a lamb and its wool is its value, if it be a cat that
+guards the king's barn.
+
+2d. The worth of a common cat is four legal pence.
+
+3d. The teithi of a cat, and of every animal upon the milk of which
+people do not feed, is the third part of its worth or the worth of its
+litter.
+
+4th. Whosoever shall sell a cat (cath) is to answer that she devour not
+her kittens, and that she have ears, teeth, eyes, and nails, and be a
+good mouser.
+
+The "Gwentian Code" begins in the same way, but says:--
+
+3d. That it be perfect of ear, perfect of eye, perfect of teeth, perfect
+of tail, perfect of claw, and without marks of fire. And if the cat fall
+short in any of these particulars, a third of her price had to be
+refunded. As to the fire, in case her fur had been singed the rats could
+detect her by the odor, and her qualities as a mouser were thus injured.
+And then it goes on to say:--
+
+4th. That the teithi and the legal worth of a cat are coequal.
+
+5th. A pound is the worth of a pet animal of the king.
+
+6th. The pet animal of a breyer (brewer) is six score pence in value.
+
+7th. The pet animal of a taoog is a curt penny in value.
+
+In the 39th chapter, 53d section, we find that "there are three animals
+whose tails, eyes, and lives are of the same value--a calf, a filly for
+common work, and a cat, except the cat which shall watch the king's
+barn," in which case she was more valuable.
+
+Another old Welsh law says: "Three animals reach their worth in a year:
+a sheep, a cat, and a cur. This is a complement of the legal hamlet;
+nine buildings, one plough, one kiln, one churn, and one cat, one cock,
+one bull, and one herdsman."
+
+In order that there might be no mistake in regard to the cat, a rough
+sketch of Puss is given in the Mss. of the laws.]
+
+That cats, even in the Middle Ages, were thought much more highly of in
+Great Britain than on the Continent is proved by the fact that the laws
+there imposed a heavy fine on cat-killers, the fine being as much wheat
+as would serve to bury the cat when he was held up by the tip of the
+tail with his nose on the ground. So that pet cats stood a fairly good
+chance in those days.
+
+One of the good things remembered of Louis XIII is that he interceded as
+Dauphin with Henri IV for the lives of the cats about to be burned at
+the festival on St. John's Day.
+
+Nowadays, there is a current superstition that a black cat brings good
+luck to a house; but in the Middle Ages they believed that the devil
+borrowed the form of a black cat when he wanted to torment or get
+control of his victims. There are plenty of old traditions about cats
+having spoken to human beings, and been kicked, or struck, or burned by
+them in return; and invariably, these tales tell us, those who are so
+bespoken meet some one the next day with plain marks of the injury they
+had inflicted on the froward cat,--which was sure evidence of witchery
+and sorcery. Doubtless full many a human being has been put to death, in
+times past, on no stronger evidence of being a witch. Humanity did not
+come to the rescue of the cat and bring her out from the shadow of
+ignominy that hung over her in mediaeval times until 1618, when an
+interdict was issued in Flanders prohibiting the festive ceremony of
+throwing cats from the high tower of Ypres on Wednesdays of the second
+week in Lent. And from that time Pussy's fortunes began to look up.
+
+To-day, travellers on the edge of the Pyrenees know a little old man,
+Martre Tolosan, who makes and sells replicas of the original models of
+cats found among the Roman remains at a small town near Toulouse. These
+are made in blue and white earthenware and each one is numbered. Mine,
+bought by a friend in 1895, is marked 5000. They are not exact models of
+our cats of to-day, to be sure, but they express all the snug content
+and inscrutable calm of our modern pets.
+
+The Chinese reproduce cats in their ceramics in white, turquoise blue,
+and old violet. One that once belonged to Madame de Mazarin sold for
+eight hundred livres. In Japan, cats are reproduced in common ware,
+daubed with paint, but the Chinese make them of finer ware, enamelling
+the commoner kinds of porcelain and using the cat in conventional forms
+as flower-vases and lamps.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+CONCERNING VARIETIES OF CATS
+
+
+Few people realize how many kinds of cats there are. The fashionable
+world begins to discuss cats technically and understand their various
+points of excellence. The "lord mayor's chain," the "Dutch rabbit
+markings," and similar features are understood by more cat fanciers than
+a few years ago; but, until within that time, it is doubtful if the
+number of people who knew the difference between the Angora and the
+Persian in this country amounted to a hundred. It is but a few years
+since the craze for the Angora cat started. These cats have been
+fashionable pets in England for some years back, and now America begins
+to understand their value and the principles of breeding them. Today,
+there are as handsome, well-bred animals in the United States as can be
+found abroad. The demand for high-bred animals with a pedigree is
+greatly increasing, and society people are beginning to understand the
+fine points of the thoroughbred.
+
+The Angora cat, as its name indicates, comes from Angora in Western
+Asia, the province that is celebrated for its goats with long hair of
+fine quality. In fact, the hair under the Angora cat's body often
+resembles the finest of the Angora goatskins. Angora cats are favorites
+with the Turks and Armenians, and exist in many colors, especially since
+they have been more carefully bred. They vary in form, color, and
+disposition, and also in the quality of their hair. The standard calls
+for a small head, with not too long a nose, large eyes that should
+harmonize in color with the fur, small, pointed ears with a tuft of hair
+at the apex, and a very full, fluffy mane around the neck. This mane is
+known as the "lord mayor's chain." The body is longer than that of the
+ordinary cat in proportion to its size, and is extremely graceful, and
+covered with long, silky hair, which is crinkly like that of the Angora
+goat. This hair should be as fine as possible, and not woolly. The legs
+are of a moderate length, but look short on account of the length of
+hair on the body. Little tufts of hair growing between the toes indicate
+high breeding. The Angora cat, in good condition, is one of the most
+beautiful and elegant creatures in the world, and few can resist its
+charm. The tail is long and like an ostrich plume. It is usually
+carried, when the cat is in good spirits, straight up, with the end
+waving over toward one side. The tail of the Angora serves as a
+barometer of its bodily and mental condition. If the cat is ill or
+frightened, the tail droops, and sometimes trails on the ground; but
+when she is in good spirits, playing about the house or grounds, it
+waves like a great plume, and is exceedingly handsome. The suppleness of
+the Angora's tail is also a mark of fine breeding. A highbred Angora
+will allow its tail to be doubled or twisted without apparent notice of
+the performance.
+
+The Angora does not reach its prime until about two years. Before that
+time its head and body are not sufficiently developed to give the full
+beauty and grace of the animal. As a rule, the Angora is of good
+disposition, although the females are apt to be exceedingly nervous.
+They are sociable and docile, although fond of roaming about, especially
+if allowed to run loose. As a rule, they do not possess the keen
+intelligence of the ordinary short-haired family cat, but their great
+beauty and their cleanly and affectionate habits make them favorites
+with fashionable people. The proper breeding of the Angora cat is a
+regular science. Of the colors of the Angoras, the blue or maltese is a
+favorite, and rather common, especially when mixed with white.
+
+The white Angora is extraordinarily beautiful, and brings a high price
+when it has blue eyes and all its points are equally good. The orange,
+or yellow, and the black with amber eyes are also prize winners. There
+are the tigers also, the brown tabby, and the orange and white. Mixed
+colors are more common than solid ones; the tortoise-shell cat of three
+colors and well mottled being considered particularly desirable.
+
+The Persian cat differs from the Angora in the quality of its fur,
+although the ordinary observer sees little difference between them. All
+the long-haired cats originated from the Indian Bengalese, Thibetan,
+and other wild cats of Asia and Russia. The Persian cat of very great
+value is all black, with a very fluffy frill, or lord mayor's chain, and
+orange eyes. Next to him comes a light slate or blue Persian, with
+yellow eyes. The fur of the Persian cat is much more woolly than that of
+the Angora, and sometimes in hot weather mats badly. The difference
+between a Persian and an Angora can usually be told by an amateur, by
+drawing the tail between the thumb and first finger. The Angora's tail
+comes out thin, silky, and narrow, although it immediately "fluffs" up.
+The Persian's tail does not compress itself readily into a small space.
+The Persian cat's head is larger, its ears are less pointed, although it
+should have the tuft at the end and the long hair inside. It is usually
+larger in body and apparently stronger made, although slender and
+elegant in appearance, with small bones and graceful in movement. The
+colors vary, as with the Angora, except that the tortoise-shell and the
+dark-marked tabby do not so frequently appear. The temper is usually
+less reliable and the intelligence less keen than the Angora.
+
+The Russian long-haired pet is much less common even than the Persian
+and Angora. It is fond of cold weather, and its fur is denser,
+indicating that it has been used to colder regions. Many of the cats
+that we see are crosses of Angora and Persian, or Angora and Russian, so
+that it is extremely difficult for the amateur to know a thoroughbred
+cat which has not been mixed with other varieties.
+
+There is also a fine short-haired cat coming from Russia, usually
+self-colored. Mrs. Frederick Monroe, of Chicago, owns a very handsome
+blue and white one.
+
+In Pegu, Siam, and Burmah, there is a race of cats known as the Malay
+cat, with tails only half the ordinary length and often contorted into a
+sort of a knot that cannot be straightened, after the fashion of the pug
+dog or ordinary pig.
+
+There is another cat known as the Mombas, a native of the west coast of
+Africa and covered with stiff, bristling hair. Paraguay cats are only
+one-quarter as big as our ordinary cat, and are found along the western
+coast of South America, even as far north as Mexico.
+
+The royal cat of Siam is a short-haired cat, yet widely different from
+other short-haired varieties. They are extremely pretty, with blue or
+amber-colored eyes by day which grow brilliant at night. These cats also
+frequently have the kink in the tail, and sometimes a strong animal
+odor, although this is not disagreeable. The head is rather longer than
+the ordinary cat's, tapering off sharply toward the muzzle, the forehead
+flat and receding, and the eyes more slanting toward the nose than the
+American cat's. The form should be slender, graceful, and delicately
+made; the body long; the tail very thin and rather short; the legs short
+and slender, and the feet oval. The body is of a bright, uniform color,
+and the legs, feet, and tail are usually black.
+
+The Manx cat is considered by many people as a natural curiosity. It
+differs from the ordinary domestic cat but little, except in the absence
+of a tail, or even an apology for one. The hind legs are thicker and
+rather longer than the ordinary cat's, and it runs more like a hare. It
+is not a graceful object when seen from behind, but it is an
+affectionate, home-loving creature with considerable intelligence. The
+Manx cat came from the Isle of Man originally, and is a distinct breed.
+So-called Manx cats have tails from one to a few inches long, but these
+are crosses of the Manx and the ordinary cat. In the Crimea is found
+another kind of cat which has no tail. The cats known as the "celebrated
+orange cats of Venice," are probably descendants of the old Egyptian
+cat, and are of varying shades of yellow, sometimes deepening into a
+sandy color which is almost red. There are obscure stripes on the body,
+which become more distinct on the limbs. The tail is more or less ringed
+toward its termination.
+
+There has been a newspaper paragraph floating about stating that a prize
+of several thousand dollars had been offered in England for a male
+tortoise-shell cat. This is probably not true, as a Mr. Smith exhibited
+a tortoise-shell he-cat at the Crystal Palace Show of 1871. Several
+tortoise-shell and white toms have been exhibited since, and one of
+these has taken nine first prizes at the Crystal Palace Show; but the
+tortoise-shell he-cat is extremely rare. The real tortoise-shell is not
+a striped tiger nor a tabby. It has three colors usually, black, yellow,
+and red or brown; but these appear in patches rather than stripes. It is
+said that the tortoise-shell cat is common in Egypt and the south of
+Europe. It comes from a different stock than the ordinary short-haired
+cat, the texture of the hair being different, as well as the color. The
+tortoise-shell and white cat is much more common, and is the product of
+a cross between a tortoise shell and a solid color cat. In this case the
+hair is usually coarser and the tail thicker than in the ordinary cat.
+
+Among cat fanciers there is a distinctive variety known as the
+tortoise-shell tabby. As the tabby cat is one of the varieties of
+striped or spotted cats having markings, broad or narrow, of bands of
+black on a dark tan or gray ground, the tortoise-shell cat would have
+both stripes and patches of color.
+
+Of the tabbies, there are brown tabbies, silver tabbies, and red
+tabbies. It is said that the red tabby she-cat is as scarce as the
+tortoise-shell he-cat. The ordinary observer considers the brown tabby
+with white markings as much the handsomest of the tabbies. But fanciers
+and judges do not agree with him, the cats having narrow bands and spots
+being the ones to take prizes. The word "tabby," according to Harrison
+Weir, was derived from a kind of taffeta or ribbed silk which used to be
+called tabby silk. Other authorities state that tabby cats got their
+name from Atab, a street in Bagdad; but as this street was famous for
+its watered silks perhaps the same reason holds. The tortoise-shell used
+to be called, in England, the Calimanco. In America, it is sometimes
+called the calico cat.
+
+The red tabby is of a deep reddish or yellow brown, with a well-ringed
+tail, orange or yellow eyes, and pink cushions to the feet. The brown
+tabby is orange brown, with black lips, brown whiskers, black feet,
+black pads, long tail, greenish orange eyes, and red nose bordered with
+black. The spotted tabby must have no bands at all. It must be brown,
+red, or yellow, with black spots. In the brown tabby the feet and pads
+are black; in the yellow and red, the feet and pads are pink. The
+spotted cat sometimes resembles a leopard, while the banded tabby
+resembles more the tiger. Some of the spotted tabbies are extremely
+handsome, and came originally from a cross between the ordinary cat and
+the wild cat.
+
+"Self-colored cats" are entirely of one color, which may vary in
+different cats, but must never be mixed in the same cat, nor even shaded
+into a lighter tone on the animal; and whether this color be black,
+blue, red, or yellow, the self-colored cat should have a rich deep tint.
+Of course the short-haired white cat is the handsomest of all. One of
+the peculiarities of this white cat is that it is apt to be deaf. The
+most valuable white cats, whether long or short haired, have blue eyes.
+Sometimes they have one blue eye and one green or yellow, which gives a
+comical effect, and detracts from their value. By the way, cross-eyed
+cats are not unknown. The best white cats have a yellowish white tint
+instead of grayish white, as the latter have a coarser quality of fur.
+
+The jet-black cat is thought by many to be the most desirable. The true
+black cat should have a uniform, intensely black coat, velvety and
+extremely glossy; the eyes should be round and full, and of a brilliant
+amber; the nose and pads of the feet should be jet-black, and the tail
+long and tapering. It is difficult to find a black cat without a white
+hair, as usually there are a few under the chin or on the belly.
+
+The blue cat is the one ordinarily known in this country as the dark
+maltese. There is a tradition that it came from the Island of Malta.
+Many people do not consider it a distinct breed, but think it a
+light-colored variety of the black cat. It is known sometimes as the
+Archangel, sometimes as the Russian blue, the Spanish blue, the
+Chartreuse blue, but more commonly in this country as the maltese. When
+it is of a deep bluish color, or of the soft silver-gray maltese without
+stripes, it is extremely handsome. The most desirable are the bluish
+lilac-colored ones, with soft fur like sealskin. The nose and pads of
+the feet are dark, and the eyes are orange yellow. The maltese and white
+cat when well marked is extremely handsome, and there is no prettier
+kitten than the maltese and white.
+
+The black and white, yellow and white, blue and white, and in fact, any
+self-colored and white cat is a mixture of the other breeds. If well
+marked they are extremely handsome and are usually bright and
+intelligent.
+
+The solid gray cat is very rare. It is, in fact, a tabby without the
+black stripes or spots.
+
+In Australia, New Zealand, and New Guinea there used to be no cat of any
+kind. The Siamese cat has been imported to Australia, and some
+authorities claim that the cats known in this country as Australian cats
+are of Siamese origin. Madagascar is a catless region.
+
+There is in this country a variety known as the "coon cat," which is
+handsome, especially in the solid black. Its native home is in Maine,
+and it is thought by many to have originated with the ordinary cat and
+the raccoon. It grows somewhat larger than the ordinary cat, with thick,
+woolly fur and an extremely bushy tail. It is fond of outdoor life, and
+when kept as a pet must be allowed to run out of doors or it is apt to
+become so savage and disagreeable that nothing can be done with it. When
+it is allowed its freedom, however, it becomes affectionate,
+intelligent, and is usually a handsome cat.
+
+The term "Dutch rabbit markings" refers to the white markings on the cat
+of two or three colors. Evidently, the cats themselves understand the
+value of Dutch rabbit markings, as one which has them is invariably
+proud of them. A cat that has white mittens, for instance, is often
+inordinately vain, and keeps them in the most immaculate state of
+cleanliness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+CONCERNING CAT LANGUAGE
+
+
+Montaigne it was who said: "We have some intelligence of their senses:
+so have also the beasts of ours in much the same measure. They flatter
+us, menace us, need us, and we them. It is manifestly evident that there
+is among them a full and entire communication, and that they understand
+each other."
+
+That this applies to cats is certainly true. Did you ever notice how a
+mother cat talks to her children, and simply by the utterances of her
+voice induces them to abandon their play and go with her, sometimes with
+the greatest reluctance, to some place that suited her whim--or her
+wisdom?
+
+Dupont de Nemours, a naturalist of the eighteenth century, made himself
+ridiculous in the eyes of his compatriots by seeking to penetrate the
+mysteries of animal language. "Those who utter sounds," he affirmed,
+"attach significance to them; their fellows do the same, and those
+sounds originally inspired by passion and repeated under similar
+recurrent circumstances, become the abiding expressions of the passions
+that gave rise to them."
+
+Fortified by this theory he devoted a couple of years to the study of
+crow language, and made himself ridiculous in the eyes of his
+adversaries by attempting to translate a nightingale's song.
+
+Chateaubriand was much interested in Dupont de Nemours's researches into
+the language of cats. "Its claws," says the latter, "and the power of
+climbing trees which its claws give it, furnish the cat with resources
+of experience and ideas denied the dog. The cat, also, has the advantage
+of a language which has the same vowels as pronounced by the dog,
+and with six consonants in addition, _m, n, g, h, v_, and _f_.
+Consequently the cat has a greater number of words. These two causes,
+the finer structure of its paws, and the larger scope of oral language,
+endow the solitary cat with greater cunning and skill as a hunter than
+the dog."
+
+Abbe Galiani also says: "For centuries cats have been reared, but I do
+not find they have ever been really studied. I have a male and a female
+cat. I have cut them off from all communication with cats outside the
+house, and closely observe their proceedings. During their courtship
+they never once miowed: the miow, therefore, is not the language of
+love, but rather the call of the absent. Another positive discovery I
+have made is that the voice of the male is entirely different from that
+of the female, as it should be. I am sure there are more than twenty
+different inflections in the language of cats, and there is really a
+'tongue' for they always employ the same sound to express the same
+thing."
+
+I heartily concur with him, and in addition have often noticed the wide
+difference between the voice and manner of expression of the gelded cat
+and the ordinary tom. The former has a thin, high voice with much
+smaller vocabulary. As a rule, the gelded cat does not "mew" to make
+known his wants, but employs his voice for conversational purposes. A
+mother cat "talks" much more than any other, and more when she has small
+kittens than at other times.
+
+Cat language has been reduced to etymology in several tongues. In Arabia
+their speech is called naoua; in Chinese, ming; in Greek, larungizein;
+in Sanscrit, madj, vid, bid; in German, miauen; in French miauler; and
+in English, mew or "miaouw."
+
+Perhaps, if Professor Garner had turned his attention to cat language
+instead of monkeys we would know more about it. But a French professor,
+Alphonse Leon Grimaldi, of Paris, claims that cats can talk as readily
+as human beings, and that he has learned their language so as to be able
+to converse with them to some extent. Grimaldi goes even further: he not
+only says that he knows such a language, but he states definitely that
+there are about six hundred words in it, that it is more like modern
+Chinese than anything else, and to prove this contention, gives a small
+vocabulary.
+
+Most of us would prefer to accept St. George Mivart's conclusions, that
+the difference between all animals and human beings is that while they
+have some means of communication, or language, we only have the gift of
+speech. Among the eighteen distinct active powers which he attributes to
+the cat, he quotes: "16th, powers of pleasurable or painful excitement
+on the occurrence of sense-perceptions with imaginations,
+_emotions_;" and "17th, a power of expressing feelings by sounds or
+gestures which may affect other individuals,--_emotional
+language_."
+
+Again he says: "The cat has a language of sounds and gestures to express
+its feelings and emotions. So have we. But we have further--which
+neither the cat, nor the bird, nor the beast has--a language and
+gestures to express our thoughts." The sum of his conclusions seems to
+be that while the cat has a most highly developed nervous system, and
+much of what is known as "animal intelligence," it is not a human
+intelligence--not consciousness, but "con-sentience."
+
+Elsewhere St. George Mivart doubts if a cat distinguishes odors as such.
+Perhaps a cat starts for the kitchen the instant he smells meat because
+of the mental association of the scent with the gratification of hunger;
+but why, pray tell, do some cats evince such delight in delicate
+perfumes? Our own Pomp the First, for instance, had a most demonstrative
+fondness for violets, and liked the scent of all flowers. One winter I
+used to bring home a bunch of Parma or Russian violets every day or two,
+and put them in a small glass bowl of water. It soon became necessary to
+put them on the highest shelf in the room, and even then Pompey would
+find them. Often have I placed them on the piano, and a few minutes
+later seen him enter the room, lift his nose, give a few sniffs, and
+then go straight to the piano, bury his nose in the violets, and hold it
+there in perfect ecstacy. And usually, wherever they were placed, the
+bunch was found the next morning on the floor, where Pompey had carried
+the violets, and holding them between his paws for a time, had surfeited
+himself with their delicious fragrance.
+
+Still, I am not prepared to say that Pompey had any word for violets, or
+for anything else that ministered to his delight. It was enough for him
+to be happy; and he had better ways of expressing it.
+
+Cats do have the power of making people understand what they want done,
+but so far as my knowledge of them goes, some of the most intelligent
+ones "talk" the least. Thomas Erastus, whose intelligence sometimes
+amounts to a knowledge that seems almost uncanny, seldom utters a sound.
+
+There is--or was--a black cat belonging to the city jail of a
+Californian town, named "Inspector Byrnes," because of his remarkable
+assistance to the police force. When, one night, a prisoner in the jail
+had stuffed the cracks to his cell with straw, and turned on the gas in
+an attempt to commit suicide, "Inspector Byrnes" hurried off and
+notified the night keeper that something was wrong, and induced him to
+go to the cell in time to save the prisoner's life. He once notified the
+police when a fire broke out on the premises, and at another time made
+such a fuss that they followed him--to discover a woman trying to hang
+herself. Again, some of the prisoners plotted to escape, and the cat
+crawled through the hole they had filed and called the warden's
+attention to it. In fact, there was no doubt that "Inspector Byrnes"
+considered himself assistant warden at the jail, and he did not waste
+much time in talk either.
+
+The Pretty Lady had ways of her own to make us know when things were
+wrong in the household, although she used to utter a great many sounds,
+either of pleasure or perturbation, which we came to understand. I
+remember one morning, when my sister was ill upstairs, that I had
+breakfasted and sat down to read my morning's mail, when the Pretty Lady
+came, uttering sounds that denoted dissatisfaction with matters
+somewhere. I was busy, and at first paid no attention to her; but she
+grew more persistent, so that I finally laid down my letters and asked:
+"What is it, Puss? Haven't you had breakfast enough?" I went out to the
+kitchen, and she followed, all the time protesting articulately. She
+would not touch the meat I offered, but evidently wanted something
+entirely different. Just then my sister came down and said:--
+
+"I wish you would go up and see H. She is suffering terribly, and I
+don't know what to do for her."
+
+At that the Pretty Lady led the way into the hall and up the stairs,
+pausing at every third step to make sure I was following, and leading me
+straight to my sister. Then she settled herself calmly on the foot-board
+and closed her eyes, as though the whole affair was no concern of hers.
+Afterward, my sister said that when the pain became almost unendurable,
+so that she tossed about and groaned, the Pretty Lady came close to her
+face and talked to her, just as she did to her kittens when they were in
+distress, showing plainly that she sympathized with and would help her.
+When she found it impossible to do this, she hurried down to me. And
+then having got me actually up to my sister's bedside, she threw off her
+own burden of anxiety and settled into her usual calm content.
+
+"My Goliath is at the helm now," she expressed by her attitude, "and the
+world is sure to go right a little longer while I take a nap."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Concerning Cats, by Helen M. Winslow
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