The Domestic Cat Part 10

The revenue from the imposition of even a small tax would be very large, and it would not only help to clear the country of a whole army corps of thieving, prowling, homeless cats, but give to the cats of respectable people a greater value in the eyes of the law, and a greater chance of taking their walks abroad without being molested.

We have a law to protect even our wild birds, why not one for the protection of my friend the harmless, useful cat?

In conclusion, let me a.s.sure lovers and owners of cats, that, as the law stands at present, the only way to keep their favourites alive, and free from danger, is to be kind to them, feed them well and teach them, as far as possible, to keep to the house at night.

We think that men who kill, and trap, and injure our cats are exceedingly cruel. And so they are, and I hope they will in time learn to be a shade more merciful. At the same time, don't forget that the temptation to take revenge upon a cat for vines destroyed, beautiful flowerbeds torn up, favourite rabbits murdered in their hutches, and valuable pigeons torn and eaten in their dovecots, is a very great temptation indeed. You see, reader, there are two sides to every question.

Pray think of the matter.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

p.u.s.s.y'S TRICKS AND MANNERS.

When I was a boy, it used to be a positive pain to me to have to enter a large library and choose a book. I used to wander round and round the well-filled shelves like a b.u.t.terfly floating over a clover-field. I didn't know where to alight. I would fain have begun at the beginning, and read the lot--but that was impracticable. Hence my difficulty. I am in a somewhat similar fix now. I have so many original anecdotes of cat life and customs that I don't know which to tell.

If I had s.p.a.ce at command you should have the whole lot, and I would arrange them into cla.s.ses according to their character; as it is, I must be content to present the reader with some account of a few of p.u.s.s.y's tricks and manners, deduced from these and from my own rather large experience of cat life.

Every child knows how fond cats are of hunting and catching mice, but no cat of any respectability would think of confining her attentions to mice alone. The very presence of a cat about a house will usually suffice to keep these destructive pests at bay; and if one should pop out of its hole, it knows, or ought to know, what to expect. But seldom will a high-bred cat condescend to eat a mouse. She will play with it as long as hope keeps up its little heart; when that fails it, p.u.s.s.y turns it over once or twice to see whether it is really dead or only shamming, and then walks disdainfully away. The next higher game is rats, but these she seldom cares to eat, only she kills them on the spot. She knows that rats have teeth and can use them, so she doesn't romp with them. I have known rats inflict such severe wounds upon a cat that they ultimately proved fatal.

Cats delight to spend a day in the woods, bird-catching. They rob the nests, too, when they find any, and cases have occurred of a cat paying visits to nests day after day until the young were hatched, then eating them. (I once had a blackbird's nest in the side of a bank at the roadside--a strange place for a blackbird to build. I often used to see a polecat close to, and I am convinced it knew of the nest, but it never robbed it until the young were hatched.)

Nearly all cats who live in the country hunt over the hills and the woods, and a great plague, too, gamekeepers find them. There is no animal which a cat may meet in the covers that she is not a match for.

Polecats and weasels have to own her sway, while rabbits and leverets fall an easy prey to her prowess.

Most cats, who are well treated by their owners, have a habit of bringing everything home which they catch. I have often seen a cat come trotting homewards, carrying in its mouth a rabbit well-nigh as big as herself.

Cats may therefore be called poachers; and it is curious, but true, that when a poor man owns a cat who poaches, and brings home the quarry, he usually winks at it.

I have dozens of well-authenticated anecdotes of cats who are very expert at fishing. I have, myself, watched a cat by the banks of a stream, until I have seen him dive into the water, and emerge almost immediately with a large trout in his mouth. Cats who fish, generally belong to millers, or are bred and reared somewhere near a river. They not only catch fish of all sorts, but even water-rats; often springing many feet off the bank after prey of this kind, and even diving under to secure it. In Scotland cats often attack and destroy large quant.i.ties of salmon in small streams, in the sp.a.w.ning season.

Cats are supposed to have an antipathy to water, and, as a rule, this is so. They are very cleanly animals, and it has often amused me to watch a p.u.s.s.y crossing a muddy street. How eagerly she looks out for the dry spots, how gingerly she picks her steps, and, when she does tread in a pool, with what an air of supreme disgust she stops and shakes the offending foot!

Cats swim well, nevertheless. I have seen a cat take the water as coolly as an Irish spaniel, swim the river, hunt in the woods for some time, and then swim back again with a bird in her mouth. And, to save their kittens from drowning, almost any cat will swim a long distance.

I have known a cat whose favourite fish was the eel, and he always managed to catch one somehow.

Cats are very fanciful at times, and very self-opinionated. If a cat takes a fancy to a particular house, or part of the house, it is difficult to dislodge her.

"In the year 1852," a lady writes me, "my mother was living with a family in the Albany Road, Camberwell, who had a large tabby Tom cat.

This cat had formed a strong attachment to a kitten who belonged to the lady next door. In 1853, the family removed to the Ashby Road, Lower Road, Islington, and the cat was _packed in a hamper_, and sent with the furniture.

"It was kept in confinement the first day and night, and let out the next morning. Tabby had his feet b.u.t.tered, to keep him employed, as they said it was a good thing to keep him busy. The next day he had disappeared, no one knew whither, though search was made for him everywhere.

"A few days after, the lady from Camberwell wrote to say that Tabby had put in an appearance there, and resumed the charge of his kitten. He was sent back by the carrier to his proper owner, and every means was tried to induce him to stop; but he returned the second time to the kitten, and so they let him remain, because they knew he would be well taken care of. The wonderment of this was: _which bridge did he go over in pa.s.sing through busy London_?"

It is really wonderful how a cat can often find its way, long distances across a country which he never before may have traversed.

"A few days ago," says another correspondent, "a lady who lives in Newport told me that, at one time, her house was quite overrun with mice; and, having procured the loan of a cat which was considered a good mouser, she tied it into a basket, and then placed it in a concealed part of the pony carriage. On her arrival at the `Cliff' the prisoner was released; but even the prospect of a delicious feast of mice could not obliterate its thoughts of `home, sweet home;' and, after about an hour's stay, it set off, and, ere long, arrived at its former abode-- distant three miles!"

Some months ago, a half-bred Persian tabby, came to my place, and has since then stuck to it with all the persistency of Edgar Allan Poe's raven. He is a cat that seems to have nothing to recommend him; if he would come into the house, and behave like a civilised being, I would never grudge him his daily dole. But he prefers to live a half-pagan existence, out among the bushes, and take his nap of a night in the coal-house; and Bridget says he is an awful thief, and that she can't leave the kitchen-door open one moment for fear of him. I've often asked that cat to take his departure, but, as plain as cat can speak, that cat says "never more."

By way of experiment I have caught him several times--no easy task, I a.s.sure you--and _sent him_, securely packed in a hamper, distances of three, four, and five miles to friends who have set him free. And he always came back. His last journey was at Christmas-time--may Heaven forgive me this sin!--to the house of a parson _whom I did not know_, and I stuck some pheasants' feathers too just under the lid. I don't know what the parson thought, but Tom came back next day, not looking a single bit put out, and--I am willing to sell him to anyone who may have need of his services.

I know a cat who caught two sparrows at once, and when retreating, a third sparrow pursued and attacked him. This one p.u.s.s.y also killed, with his paw. That was funny!

Cats know certain days of the week, such as Sunday for instance, and they also know certain hours of each day. I don't mean to say they look at the clock, but, if a favourite master or mistress is in the habit of coming home every day, say at 4 p.m., there you will often find that every day at 4 p.m. p.u.s.s.y will trot down the road to meet her and wait till she comes.

Cats make good husbands, gentle fathers, and the most tender and loving of mothers. A cat will fight for her kittens, starve or _steal_ for them. Oh! I daresay you imagine that stealing wouldn't be likely to lie very heavily on a cat's conscience. Now listen to this--which the printer will kindly put in italics--_all experience goes to prove that well-fed, properly cared-for cats, are not thieves, but the reverse_.

Cats have their kittens in queer places, at times. A lady's best Sunday bonnet, or master's wig, or a set of ermine furs, just suits p.u.s.s.y to a nicety. My cat once kittened in my c.o.c.ked hat. It is a positive fact, madam, and so far from thinking she had done anything to offend me, she held up one of her brats for me to admire. But the queerest place for a cat to kitten in, that ever I knew, was a tree. The cat scrambled up the tree and brought forth her young in the nest of a wood-pigeon! I didn't hear how the kittens got down again though, but I have every reason to believe the story. Probably, when the kittens opened their eyes they commenced playing with their mother's tail, and went topsy-turvy to the ground. Well, _facilis descensus Averni_, and you know cats always fall on their feet. I knew a man who kicked his own cat out of his pigeon loft, three storeys high. He told me it didn't seem to hurt her a bit, but rather increased her appet.i.te.

Whether cats have nine lives or not, they take a great deal of killing.

I knew a cat that was drowned four times, and came home again as unconcernedly as if nothing very unusual had happened. However, drowning in the end seemed to get rather irksome to this p.u.s.s.y, and after the fourth immersion, he ran away to the woods, and didn't come back to be drowned any more.

Many cases I know of parties having started off with puss in a bag to drown her, and having stopped to talk to a friend on the way back found, on their return, the cat sitting by the fire drying herself! I have many instances of cats having been thrown from bridges and other high places, with the intention of killing them, but without fatal effect.

Cats have been buried alive for days and recovered after being dug up.

A cat of my acquaintance was sent to live at a mill. This seemed to please p.u.s.s.y very much. You see there were plenty of mice in the mill, and plenty of rats and fish in the mill-lead, so the cat made herself at home. But in course of time p.u.s.s.y became the mother of two kittens, and then the longing for her old home came back with a force too powerful to be resisted. She determined, therefore, to return to her former residence, and she did so, carrying her kittens one by one. The distance she had to travel was two miles, and the night she chose was a dark and stormy one.

There were two cats who dwelt at the self-same house and had kittens at the self-same time. All the kittens were drowned with the exception of two, one being left with each mother. And now comes the curious part of the business. These two mother-cats came to an amicable understanding, that whenever the one was abroad the other should suckle and attend to both babies, and this treaty was carried out to the letter.

Cats are not only fond of human beings, but often get greatly attached to other domestic animals, especially to the family dog. I know at this moment a cat whose constant companion is a Dandy Dinmont; and a rough one he is too, for, although he sleeps in p.u.s.s.y's arms every night, he thinks nothing of pulling her all round the lawn by the tail at any time, the cat herself seeming to enjoy the fun!

Rabbits and cats often a.s.sociate together on the most friendly terms, even accompanying each other in long excursions, the cat on these occasions electing herself protector of her feebler friend against predatory dogs and other cats.

A cat belonging to a friend of mine used to be constantly at war with the dog, until one day, with a blow of her ungloved paw, she blinded the poor animal in one eye. No mother could have been kinder to her child than p.u.s.s.y was to this dog, after she saw what she had done. That she bitterly repented the rash act is evident, for she watched beside him night and day, until he grew well again; and now, they are the fastest friends in the world, and the cat is the first to welcome the dog home when he returns from a walk.

As a proof of how cruel it is to take _all_ a cat's kittens away from her, I may state that, thus bereaved, a cat will take to nursing even chickens, or she will suckle puppies, hedgehogs, or rats.

It is a funny thing that many cats can't bear music. Some will run out of the room if they hear a fiddle played, and others will growl and attack the musician.

Cats can be easily taught to follow one in a country walk just like a dog, and on these occasions they come much better to the sound of whistling than to any other call.

A well-bred cat will always teach its kittens habits of cleanliness, how to watch for and catch mice, and also how to catch minnows in a shallow stream.

I have already said that cats, as a rule, when well treated, are not thieves, but the very reverse. But when a cat does take to thieving for a livelihood, she becomes quite a swell at it--shows how clever she is.

Cats are considered in some parts of England to be of some value as an article of diet. I have never to my knowledge eaten cat, so I cannot give the reader any idea what they taste like.

It is ridiculous to suppose, as some do, that a cat's breath has any effect upon a baby either for good or for evil. Neither will a cat bring blood from a child's temple by licking it with its rough tongue.

An ugly old woman isn't necessarily a witch because she keeps a black cat. Neither is a black cat a devil.

They say that witches sail over the sea in riddles accompanied by their black cats, and that they have rather a jolly time of it upon the whole, having plenty to eat, and plenty to drink--flagons of wine, in fact.

Don't you believe it, reader.

Cats are not afraid of snakes; but snakes, even the dreaded cobra, will invariably give p.u.s.s.y a wide berth.