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Title: Concerning Cats
       My Own and Some Others

Author: Helen M. Winslow

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</pre>

    <p>
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      &nbsp;
    </p>
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      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <h1>
      Concerning Cats
    </h1>
    <center>
      My Own and Some Others
    </center>
    <center>
      <b>By Helen M. Winslow</b>
    </center>
    <center>
      Editor of "The Club Woman"
    </center>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>

    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <center>
      <b>To the</b><br>
      <br>
      &nbsp; <b>"PRETTY LADY"</b><br>
      &nbsp;<br>
      WHO NEVER BETRAYED A SECRET, BROKE A PROMISE, OR<br>
      PROVED AN UNFAITHFUL FRIEND; WHO HAD<br>
      ALL THE VIRTUES AND NONE OF<br>
      THE FAILINGS OF HER SEX<br>
      <br>
      &nbsp; <b>I Dedicate this Volume</b>
    </center>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="TOC"><!-- TOC --></a>
    <h2>
      CONTENTS
    </h2>
    <p>
      CHAPTER
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#CH1">I. CONCERNING THE PRETTY LADY.</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#CH2">II. CONCERNING MY OTHER CATS.</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#CH3">III. CONCERNING OTHER PEOPLE'S CATS.</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#CH4">IV. CONCERNING STILL OTHER PEOPLE'S CATS.</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#CH5">V. CONCERNING SOME HISTORIC CATS.</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#CH6">VI. CONCERNING CATS IN ENGLAND.</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#CH7">VII. CONCERNING CAT CLUBS AND CAT SHOWS.</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#CH8">VIII. CONCERNING HIGH-BRED CATS IN
      AMERICA.</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#CH9">IX. CONCERNING CATS IN POETRY.</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#CH10">X. CONCERNING CAT ARTISTS.</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#CH11">XI. CONCERNING CAT HOSPITALS AND REFUGES.</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#CH12">XII. CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF CATS.</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#CH13">XIII. CONCERNING VARIETIES OF CATS.</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <a href="#CH14">XIV. CONCERNING CAT LANGUAGE.</a>
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <h3>
      <i>Concerning Cats</i>
    </h3>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="CH1"><!-- CH1 --></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER I
    </h2>
    <center>
      CONCERNING THE "PRETTY LADY"
    </center>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      I have known, and loved, and studied many cats, but my
      knowledge of her alone would convince me that cats love
      people&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "There, you can take him awhile. He cured me and I won't be
      selfish; I will share him with you."
    </p>
    <p>
      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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "There, now you take care of him awhile. I'm all tired out.
      Don't wake him up."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "Cut-cut-cut, ca-dah-cut!" and, taking his wives, withdrew
      toward the barn.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "Cut-cut-cut, ca-dah-cut! What ails that old cat, anyway?"
      And again he led his various wives barn-ward.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>Requiescat in pace</i>, 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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <center>
      "She was merely a cat,<br>
       But her Sublime Virtues place her on a level with<br>
       The Most Celebrated Mortals,<br>
       and<br>
       In Ancient Egypt<br>
       Altars would have been Erected to her<br>
       Memory."
    </center>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="CH2"><!-- CH2 --></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER II
    </h2>
    <center>
      CONCERNING MY OTHER CATS
    </center>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;and the blackest&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "There," said a friend who was sitting opposite, "he's fixed
      himself now. You'll keep him."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&#8212;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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "There, it takes <i>me</i> to do anything with this family."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "Girls, this is not right. Everything is all upset here and
      'a' the world's gang agley.' Why don't you fix it?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      One summer Thomas Erastus moved&#8212;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&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&#8212;yea,
      happier, for death and destruction await the unfortunate
      cricket where Thomas Erastus thrives.
    </p>
    <p>
      But don't say a cat can't or won't be moved. It's your own
      fault if he won't.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="CH3"><!-- CH3 --></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER III
    </h2>
    <center>
      CONCERNING OTHER PEOPLE'S CATS
    </center>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "As for my own cats,&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Lucifer's Mephistophelian aspect is increased not only by
      those feet, but by an arrow-pointed tail. He sucks his
      tail,&#8212;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,&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;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,&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;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&#8212;a little Inch-Cape
      Rock bell&#8212;but he left it to toll all winter in a tall
      tree near the drawing-room window.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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 <i>is</i> 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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;first one and
      then another&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      A writer in the <i>London Spectator</i> 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,&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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 Merim&eacute;e among the confirmed lovers
      of cats? I remember a delightful little paragraph out of one
      of his letters about <i>un vieux chat noir, parfaitement
      laid, mais plein d'&eacute;sprit et de discr&eacute;tion.
      Seulement il n'a eu que des gens vulgaires et manque
      d'usage.</i>"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      A great deal has been written about the New York <i>Sun's</i>
      famous cats. At my request, Mr. Dana furnished the following
      description of the interesting <i>Sun</i> family. I can only
      vouch for its veracity by quoting the famous phrase, "If you
      see it in the <i>Sun</i>, it is so."
    </p>
    <p>
      "<i>Sun</i> office cat (<i>Felis Domestica; var.
      Journalistica</i>). 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 <i>Sun</i> 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 <i>felis domestica</i>. 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "The progenitrix of the family arrived in the <i>Sun</i>
      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&#8212;immediately before, in fact&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Many hundreds of stories, some of them slanderous have been
      told about the various <i>Sun</i> 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."
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="CH4"><!-- CH4 --></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER IV
    </h2>
    <center>
      CONCERNING STILL OTHER PEOPLE'S CATS
    </center>
    <p>
      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 <i>gourmet</i>, 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,&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Moulton tells the following remarkable cat story:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      Thomas Bailey Aldrich says, "The only cat I ever had any
      experience with was the one I translated from the French of
      &Eacute;mile de La B&eacute;dolli&eacute;rre 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&#8212;<i>would
      you like cats?</i>" which is, indeed, something of a poser.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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, <i>sans peur et sans
      reproche</i>, at ten o'clock in the morning."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "As for curiosity, that vice which the Abb&eacute; 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,&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <pre>
  "'And all their harmless claws disclose,
  Like prickles of an early rose.'
</pre>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "I own that when Agrippina brought her first-born
      son&#8212;aged two days&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "'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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      What became of these most interesting cats, is only hinted
      at; Miss Repplier's sincere grief at their loss is evident in
      the following:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>Harper's Bazar</i>, 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!"
    </p>
    <p>
      "For when I play with my cat," says Montaigne, "how do I know
      whether she does not make a jest of me?"
    </p>
    <p>
      But Muff was a real nobleman among cats, and extraordinarily
      handsome. He was a great soft gray maltese with white paws
      and breast&#8212;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."
    </p>
    <p>
      As one of Miss Booth's intimate friends, Mrs. Spofford was
      much at her house and became early a devoted admirer of
      Muff's.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Edna Dean Proctor, the poet, is another admirer of fine
      cats. Her favorite, however, was the friend of her childhood
      called Beauty.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Fidelia Bridges, the artist, is another devoted cat
      lover, and at her home at Canaan, Ct., has had several
      interesting specimens.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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!"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Frances Willard was a cat-lover, too, and had a
      beautiful cat which is known to all her friends.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="CH5"><!-- CH5 --></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER V
    </h2>
    <center>
      CONCERNING SOME HISTORIC CATS
    </center>
    <p>
      It is quite common for writers on the cat to say, "The story
      of Th&eacute;ophile 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
      "M&eacute;nagerie 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <pre>
  "'O le plaisant projet d'un po&euml;te ignorant
  Que de tant de h&eacute;ros va choisir Childebrant!'
</pre>
    <p>
      "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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <pre>
  "Puis je te d&eacute;crirai ce tableau de Rembrandt
  Que me fait tant plaisir: et mon chat Childebrand,
  Sur mes genoux pose selon son habitude,
  Levant sur moi la t&ecirc;te avec inqui&eacute;tude,
  Suivra les mouvements de mon doigt qui dans l'air
  Esquisse mon r&eacute;cit pour le rendre plus clair.
</pre>
    <p>
      "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 Th&eacute;ophile, 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
      Th&eacute;ophile 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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      "This result attained, the next proceeding of Madame
      Th&eacute;ophile 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 G&eacute;r&ocirc;me'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 Th&eacute;ophile 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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 d&eacute;jeun&eacute;,
      Jacquot?'
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "'Et de quoi? Du r&ocirc;ti du roi?' continued the parrot.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Then might we, the observers, read in the physiognomy of
      Madame Th&eacute;ophile, 'This is not a bird, it is a
      gentleman; it talks.'
    </p>
    <pre>
  "'Quand j'ai bu du vin clairet,
  Tout tourne, tout tourne an cabaret,'
</pre>
    <p>
      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
      Th&eacute;ophile 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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 Th&eacute;ophile would
      evince great pleasure. She was, however, made nervous by
      certain notes, and at the high <i>la</i> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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. Th&eacute;ophile 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.]
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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,'&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;"For without are
      dogs and sorcerers."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Pierre Loti has written a charming and most touching history
      of two of his cats&#8212;Moumette Blanche and Moumette
      Chinoise&#8212;which all true cat-lovers should make a point
      of reading.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>a
      la militaire</i> 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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="CH6"><!-- CH6 --></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER VI
    </h2>
    <center>
      CONCERNING CATS IN ENGLAND
    </center>
    <p>
      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)&#8212;as much as the price of a
      first-class race-horse.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is a pretty story&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <pre>
  "Return, return, Whittington;
  Thrice Lord Mayor of London."
</pre>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;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&#8212;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).
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="CH7"><!-- CH7 --></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER VII
    </h2>
    <center>
      CONCERNING CAT CLUBS AND CAT SHOWS
    </center>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The officers of the National Cat Club of England, since its
      reconstruction in March, 1898, are as follows:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>Presidents.</i>&#8212;Her Grace the Duchess of Bedford;
      Lord Marcus Beresford.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>Vice-presidents.</i>&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>President of Committee.</i>&#8212;Mr. Louis Wain.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>Committee</i>.&#8212;Lady Marcus Beresford; Mrs. Balding;
      Mr. Sidney Woodiwiss; Mr. Hawkins; Mrs. Blair Maconochie;
      Mrs. Vallance; Mr. Brackett; Mr. F. Gresham.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>Hon. Secretary and Hon. Treasurer</i>.&#8212;Mrs. Stennard
      Robinson.
    </p>
    <p>
      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):&#8212;
    </p>
    <hr>
    <p>
      No. 1593, Mimidatzi, L.F. Silver Tabby.
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Anna F. Gardner, Hamswell House, near Bath, shown as
      Mimi.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bred by Miss How, Bridgeyate, near Bristol. Born April, 1893.
      Alive.
    </p>
    <p>
      Sire, Blue Boy the Great of Islington, 1090 (Mrs H.B.
      Thompson).
    </p>
    <p>
      Dam, Boots of Bridgeyate, 1225 (Miss How).
    </p>
    <p>
      Prizes won&#8212;1st Bilton, 2nd, C.P. 1893, Kitten Class.
    </p>
    <hr>
    <p>
      No. 1225, Boots of Bridgeyate. L.F. Silver Tabby.
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss E. How, Bridgeyate House, Warmly, Bristol.
    </p>
    <p>
      Former owner, Mrs. Foote, 43 Palace Gardens, Kensington.
    </p>
    <p>
      Born March, 1892. Alive.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The more important rules of the English National Cat Club are
      given in condensed form as follows:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      The name is "The National Cat Club."
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>Objects</i>: 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>Stud Book</i>: The National Cat Club shall keep a stud
      book.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>Neuter Classes</i>.&#8212;For gelded cats.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>Kitten Classes</i>.&#8212;Single entries over three and
      under eight months.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>Kitten Brace</i>.&#8212;Kittens of any age.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>Brace</i>.&#8212;For two cats of any age.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>Team</i>.&#8212;For three or more cats, any age.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 "<i>toutes les liberties</i>," excepting that of
      wearing an entire tail, for in many districts it is the
      fashion to cut the caudal appendage short.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>charbonnier's</i> 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 <i>civet de
      chat</i> is as good, or better, than a <i>civet de
      lievre</i>.
    </p>
    <p>
      M. Fran&ccedil;ois Copp&eacute;e'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 &Eacute;mile Zola,
      Andr&eacute; Theuriet, and Catulle Mendes, also figured on
      the list. There is now an annual "Exposition Feline
      Internationale."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      The officers were as follows:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>President</i>.&#8212;Rush S. Huidekoper, 154 E. 57th St.,
      New York City.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>Vice-presidents</i>.&#8212;W.D. Mann, 208 Fifth Ave., New
      York City; Mrs. E.N. Barker, Newburgh, N.Y.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>Secretary-treasurer</i>.&#8212;James T. Hyde, 16 E. 23d
      St., New York City.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>Executive Committee</i>.&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>President.</i>&#8212;Mrs. Clinton Locke.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>1st Vice-president.</i>&#8212;Mrs W. Eames Colburn.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>2d Vice-president.</i>&#8212;Mrs. F.A. Howe.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>Corresponding Secretary.</i>&#8212;Mrs. Henry C. Clark.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>Recording Secretary</i>.&#8212;Miss Lucy Claire Johnstone.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>Treasurer</i>.&#8212;Mrs. Charles Hampton Lane.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Elwood H. Tolman.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. J.H. Pratt.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. Mattie Fisk Green.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs. F.A. Story.
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Louise L. Fergus.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="CH8"><!-- CH8 --></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER VIII
    </h2>
    <center>
      CONCERNING HIGH-BRED CATS IN AMERICA
    </center>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      One of Mrs Locke's treasures is a <i>bona fide</i> cat mummy,
      brought by Mrs. Locke from Egypt. It has been verified at the
      Gizeh Museum to be four thousand years old.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>Maine</i>, and
      Christobal have been shown in several cities of the Union
      since the war.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      A trio of cats that were a centre of attraction at that first
      show belonged to Colonel Mann, of <i>Town Topics</i>. 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 "<i>Town Topics</i> Colony."
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="CH9"><!-- CH9 --></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER IX
    </h2>
    <center>
      CONCERNING CATS IN POETRY
    </center>
    <p>
      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&#8212;perhaps it would hardly do to call them
      virtues&#8212;of his beloved cat.
    </p>
    <p>
      The lines are inscribed,&#8212;
    </p>
    <h3>
      ON A CAT
    </h3>
    <center>
      THAT WAS KILLED AS SHE WAS ATTEMPTING TO ROB A DOVE-HOUSE<br>
       BY IBN ALALAF ALNAHARWANY
    </center>
    <pre>
  Poor Puss is gone!&#8212;'tis Fate's decree&#8212;
    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.
</pre>
    <p>
      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 <i>Athenaeum</i>, and which places
      the writer among the select inner circle of true cat-lovers.
      He calls his verses&#8212;
    </p>
    <h3>
      TO A CAT
    </h3>
    <pre>
  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.
</pre>
    <p>
      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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.'"
    </p>
    <p>
      He closes the letter by saying, "There's a poem for you; it
      is rather too long for an epitaph." And then the
      familiar&#8212;
    </p>
    <pre>
  "'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."
</pre>
    <p>
      Wordsworth's "Kitten and the Falling Leaves," is in the high,
      moralizing style.
    </p>
    <pre>
  "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&#8212;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."
</pre>
    <p>
      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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <pre>
  "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."
</pre>
    <p>
      Baudelaire wrote:&#8212;
    </p>
    <pre>
  "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."
</pre>
    <p>
      Goldsmith also wrote of the kitten:&#8212;
    </p>
    <pre>
  "Around in sympathetic mirth
    Its tricks the kitten tries:
  The cricket chirrups in the hearth,
    The crackling fagot flies."
</pre>
    <p>
      Does this not suggest a charming glimpse of the poet's
      English home?
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <pre>
  "Bathsheba: To whom none ever said scat,
              No worthier cat
              Ever sat on a mat
              Or caught a rat:
<i>Requies-cat</i>."
</pre>
    <p>
      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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <h3>
      GRIMALKIN
    </h3>
    <center>
      AN ELEGY ON PETER, AGED TWELVE
    </center>
    <pre>
  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,
<i>In pace</i>, Peter.
</pre>
    <p>
      One only has to read this poem to feel that Mr. Scollard knew
      what it is to love a gentle, intelligent, affectionate
      cat&#8212;made so by kind treatment.
    </p>
    <p>
      To Fran&ccedil;ois Copp&eacute;e 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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <pre>
  "Chatte blanche, chatte sans tache,
  Je te demande dans ces vers
  Quel secret dort dans tes yeux verts,
  Quel sarcasme sous ta moustache?"
</pre>
    <p>
      Here is a version in verse of the famous "Kilkenny
      Cats":&#8212;
    </p>
    <pre>
  "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&#8212;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&#8212;it's the same that I've been telling."
</pre>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <h3>
      THE KILKENNY CATS
    </h3>
    <pre>
  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.
</pre>
    <p>
      This version comes from Ireland, and is doubtless the correct
      original.
    </p>
    <p>
      "Note," says Miss Conway, "the more than Greek delicacy with
      which the tragedy is told. No mutilation, no gore; just an
      effacement&#8212;prompt and absolute&#8212;'there wasn't
      any.' It would be hard to overpraise that fine touch."
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="CH10"><!-- CH10 --></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER X
    </h2>
    <center>
      CONCERNING CAT ARTISTS
    </center>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;if they could express their
      feelings in the premises&#8212;the cat subjects and their cat
      friends. Only four painters, he says, ever painted cats
      habitually and always well.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The ill-fated Swiss artist Cornelius Wisscher's marvellous
      tom-cat has become typical.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>Journal of Agriculture</i>. 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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&#8212;they are all in Madame Ronner's cats'
      faces, just as we see them in our own cats.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Bickford is a pupil of Jules Lef&egrave;bvre 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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 <i>St.
      Nicholas</i> 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 <i>St. Nicholas</i> and the
      <i>Wide-Awake</i> 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."
    </p>
    <p>
      Who does not know Louis Wain's cats?&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The double-page picture of the "Cat's Christmas Dance" in the
      <i>London Illustrated News</i> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Wain announces a discovery in relation to cats which
      corroborates a theory of my own, adopted from long
      observation and experience.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "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 Hal&eacute;vy, 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."
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="CH11"><!-- CH11 --></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XI
    </h2>
    <center>
      CONCERNING CAT HOSPITALS AND REFUGES
    </center>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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
      <i>home</i> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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, "<i>which are so generally
      misunderstood and grossly ill-treated</i>." 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 Asni&egrave;res, 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      This is the way they do it in Cairo even now, according to
      Monsieur Prisse d'Avennes, the distinguished
      Egyptologist:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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"?
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="CH12"><!-- CH12 --></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XII
    </h2>
    <center>
      CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF CATS
    </center>
    <p>
      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&#8212;<i>Felidae</i>.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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?"
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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]
    </p>
    <p>
      [Footnote 1:
    </p>
    <p>
      These are among the laws supposedly enacted by Hoel Dha
      (Howell the Good) sometime between 915 and 948 A.D.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Vendotian Code XI.
    </p>
    <p>
      The worth of a cat and her teithi (qualities) this is:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      1st. The worth of a kitten from the night it is kittened
      until it shall open its eyes, is one penny.
    </p>
    <p>
      2d. And from that time until it shall kill mice, two pence.
    </p>
    <p>
      3d. And after it shall kill mice, four legal pence; and so it
      shall always remain.
    </p>
    <p>
      4th. Her teithe are to see, to hear, to kill mice, and to
      have her claws.
    </p>
    <p>
      This is the "Dimentian Code." XXXII. Of Cats.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      2d. The worth of a common cat is four legal pence.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The "Gwentian Code" begins in the same way, but says:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      4th. That the teithi and the legal worth of a cat are
      coequal.
    </p>
    <p>
      5th. A pound is the worth of a pet animal of the king.
    </p>
    <p>
      6th. The pet animal of a breyer (brewer) is six score pence
      in value.
    </p>
    <p>
      7th. The pet animal of a taoog is a curt penny in value.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the 39th chapter, 53d section, we find that "there are
      three animals whose tails, eyes, and lives are of the same
      value&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.]
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="CH13"><!-- CH13 --></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XIII
    </h2>
    <center>
      CONCERNING VARIETIES OF CATS
    </center>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The solid gray cat is very rare. It is, in fact, a tabby
      without the black stripes or spots.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p><a name="CH14"><!-- CH14 --></a>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XIV
    </h2>
    <center>
      CONCERNING CAT LANGUAGE
    </center>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;or her wisdom?
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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, <i>m, n, g, h, v</i>,
      and <i>f</i>. 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."
    </p>
    <p>
      Abb&eacute; 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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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 L&eacute;on 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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, <i>emotions</i>;" and "17th, a power of
      expressing feelings by sounds or gestures which may affect
      other individuals,&#8212;<i>emotional language</i>."
    </p>
    <p>
      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&#8212;which neither the cat, nor the bird, nor the
      beast has&#8212;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&#8212;not consciousness, but "con-sentience."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      There is&#8212;or was&#8212;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&#8212;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:&#8212;
    </p>
    <p>
      "I wish you would go up and see H. She is suffering terribly,
      and I don't know what to do for her."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>
    <p>
      &nbsp;
    </p>







<pre>





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