 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Concerning Cats, My Own and Some Others by Helen M. Winslow Read for LibriVox.org by Patricia Oakley Dedication Editor of The Club Woman to The Pretty Lady Who never betrayed a secret, broke a promise, or proved an unfaithful friend Who had all the virtues and none of the failings of her sex. I dedicate this volume Concerning Cats. Chapter 1 Concerning The Pretty Lady She was such a pretty lady and gentle with all, so quiet and eminently ladylike in her behavior, and yet dignified and hotly reserved as a duchess. Still it is better, under certain circumstances, to be a cat than to be a duchess. And no duchess of the realm ever had more faithful retainers or half-so-abject subjects. Do not tell me that cats never love people, that only places have real hold upon their affections. The pretty lady was contented wherever I, her most humble slave, went with her. She migrated with me from boarding-house to Seashore Cottage, then to regular housekeeping, then to the mountains for a summer, and back home, a long day's journey on the railway, and her attitude was always, wheresoever thou goest I will go, and thy people shall be my people. I have known and loved and studied many cats, but my knowledge of her alone would convince me that cats love people in their dignified, reserved way, and when they feel that their love is not wasted, that they reason and that they seldom act from impulse. I do not remember that I was born with an inordinate fondness for cats, or that I cried for them as an infant. I do not know even that my childhood was marked by an overweening pride in them. This perhaps was because my cruel parents established a decree, rigid and unbending as the laws of the Meads and the Persians, that we must never have more than one cat at a time. Although this very law may argue that predilection, at an early age, for harboring everything feline which came in my way, which has since become at once a source of comfort and distraction, after a succession of feline dynasties, the kings and queens of which were handsome, ugly, sleek, forlorn, black, white, deaf, spotted, and otherwise marked, I remember fastening my affections securely upon one kitten, who grew up to be the ugliest, gauntest, and dingiest specimen I have ever 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 lornness would have discouraged even Mrs. Gummage. But I loved him, and judging from the disconsolent and long-continued wailing with which he reeled the house whenever I was away, my affection was not unrequited. But my real fraudum 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 malty's 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 seemed much surprised and disgusted that I had not devoured mine when she had finished her meal. After 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 that the mother would return to her former home, just over the fence. But no, for two weeks she refused all food and would not once enter the other house. Then I went out for her, and hearing my voice, she came in and sat down before me, literally scolding me for a quarter of an hour. I shall be laughed at. But actual tears stood in her lovely green eyes and ran down her aristocratic nose, attesting her grief and accusing me, louder than her wailing, of perfidy. I could not keep her. She would not return to her old home. I finally compromised by carrying her in a covered basket a mile and a half and bestowing her upon a friend who loves cats nearly as well as I. But although she was petted and praised and fed on the choicest of delicacies, she would not be resigned. After six weeks of mourning she disappeared and never was heard of more. Whether she sought a new and more constant mistress or whether, in her grief at my shameless abandonment of her, she went to some lonely pier and threw herself off the dock will never be known. But her reproachful gaze and tearful emerald eyes haunted me all winter. Many a restless night did I have to reproach myself for abandoning a creature who so truly loved me. And in many a dream did she return to heap shame and ignominy upon my repentant head. This experience determined me to cherish her daughter, whom, rather, I cherished as her son, until there were three little newborn 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 Bobby. 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 not an 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 maternal conversation with her progeny interfered seriously with my night's rest. If my friends used to notice a wild and haggard appearance of unrest about me at certain periods of the year, the reason stands here, confessed. I was ill when Black Bobby was two weeks old. The pretty lady waited until breakfast was over, and as I did not appear, came up and jumped on the bed where she manifested some curiosity as to my lack of active interest in the world's affairs. Now pussy, I said, putting out my hand and stroking her back. I'm sick this morning. When you were sick I went and got you a kitten. Can you get me one? This was all. My sister came in then and spoke to me, and the pretty lady left us at once. But in less than two minutes she came back with her cherished kitten in her mouth. Depositing him in my neck, she stood and looked at me as much as to say, There, you can take him awhile. He cured me, and I won't be selfish, and I will share him with you. I was ill for three days, and all that time the kitten was kept with me. When his mother wanted him, she kept him on the foot of the bed, where she nursed, and lapped, and scrubbed him until it seemed as if she must wear even his solid nerves completely out. But whenever she felt like going out, she brought him up and tucked him away in the hollow of my neck, with a little guttural noise that, interpreted, meant. There, now you take care of him awhile. I'm all tired out. Don't wake him up. But when the infant had dropped soundly asleep, she invariably came back and demanded him. And not only demanded, but dragged him forth from his lair by the nape of the neck, shrieking and protesting to the foot of the bed again, where he was obliged to go through another course of scrubbing and vigorous maternal attentions that actually kept his fur from growing as fast as the coats of lust devotedly cared for kitten's grow. When I was well enough to leave my room, she transferred him to my lower bureau drawer, and then to a vantage point behind an old lounge. But she never doubted, apparently, that it was the loan of that kitten that rescued me from an untimely grave. I have lost many an hour of much-needed sleep from my cat's habit of coming upstairs at 4 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 abrade me with any of these things. I flatter myself that I bear even this patiently. I remember to have often made sleepy but pleasant remarks to the faithful little friend whose affection for me and whose desire to behold my countenance was too great to permit her to wait till breakfast time. If I lay awake for hours afterwards, 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 that truly aesthetics soul that appreciates poetry and grace and all refined beauty who truly loves cats and thus meditating with closed eyes I courted slumber again throughout the breaking dawn while the cat purred in delight close at hand. The pretty lady was evidently of Angora or Coon descent as her fur was always longer and silkier than that of ordinary cats. She was fond of all the family. When we boarded in Boston we kept her in a front room, two flights from the ground. Whenever any of us came in the front door she knew it. No human being could have told sitting in a closed room in winter two flights up the identity of a person coming up the stairs 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, jumped down and be at the hall door ready to greet the incomer before she was halfway up the stairs. The cat never got down for the wrong person and she never neglected to meet any and every member of our family who might be entering. The irreverent scoffer may call it instinct or talk about the sense of smell. I call it sagacity. One summer we all went up to the farm in northern Vermont and decided to take her and her son, Mr. McGinty, with us. We put them both in a large market basket and tied the cover securely. On the train Mr. McGinty manifested a desire to get out and was allowed to do so, a stout cord having been secured to his collar first and the other end tied to the car seat. He had a delightful journey. Once used to the noise in 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 traveler would on an all-days journey by rail, except that he did not risk his eyesight by reading newspapers. But the pretty lady had not traveled for some years and did not enjoy the trip as well as formerly. On the contrary, she curled herself into a round, tight ball in one corner of the basket till the journey's end was reached. Once at the farm she seemed contented as long as I remained with her. There was plenty of milk and cream and she caught a great many mice. She was far too dainty to eat them, but she had an inherent pleasure in catching mice. Just like her more plebeian sisters, and she enjoyed presenting them to Mr. McGinty or me or some other worthy object of her solicitude. She was at first afraid of the big outdoors. The wide, wind-blown spaces, the broad, sunshiny sky, the silence and the roominess of it all were quite different from her suburban experiences. And the farm animals, too, were, in her opinion, curiously dangerous objects. Big Dan, the horse, was truly a horrible creature. The rooster was a new and suspicious species of biped, and the bleeding calves objects of her direst hatred. The pig in his pen possessed for her the most horrid fascination. Again and again would she steal out and place herself where she could see that dreadful, strange, pink, fat creature inside his own quarters. She would fix her round eyes widely upon him in blended fear and admiration. If the pig uttered the characteristic grunt of his race, the pretty lady at first ran swiftly away. But afterward she used to turn and gaze anxiously at us as if to say, Do you hear that? Isn't this a truly horrible creature? And in other ways evinced the same sort of surprise that a professor in the Peabody Museum might were the skeleton of the megatherian suddenly to accost him after the manner peculiar to its kind. It was funnier even to see Mr. McGinty on the morning after his arrival at the farm as he sallied forth and made acquaintance with other of God's creatures than humans and cats and the natural enemy of his kind, the dog. In his suburban home he had caught rats and captured on the sly many an English sparrow. When he first investigated his new quarters on the farm he discovered a beautiful flock of very large birds led by one truly gorgeous plumage. Ah! thought Mr. McGinty. This is a great and glorious country that can have such birds as these for the catching. Tame, too, I'll have one for breakfast. So he crouched down, tiger-like, and crept carefully along to a convenient distance and was preparing to spring when the large and gorgeous bird looked up from his worm and remarked, Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut! and taking his wives withdrew to the barn. Mr. McGinty drew back amazed. This is a queer bird, he seemed to say, saucy, too. However, I'll soon have him. And he crept more carefully than before up to a springing distance when again this most gorgeous bird drew up and exclaimed with a note of annoyance, Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, what ails that old cat anyway. And again he led his various wives barnward. Mr. McGinty drew up with a surprised air and apparently made a cursory study of the leading anatomical features of this strange bird. But he did not like to give up and soon crouched and prepared for another onslaught. This time Mr. Chanticleer allowed the cat to come up close to his flock when he turned and remarked in the most amicable manner, Cut, cut, cut, cut, which interpreted seemed to mean, Come now, that's all right. You're evidently new here, but you'd better take my advice and not fool with me. Anyhow, with this down went Mr. McGinty's hope of a bird breakfast to the bottom of the sea and he gave up the hunt. He soon made friends, however, with every animal on the place and so endeared himself to the owners that he lived out his days there with a hundred acres and more as his own happy hunting-ground. Not so the pretty lady. She went away on a short visit after a few weeks, leaving her behind. From the moment of my disappearance she was uneasy and unhappy. On the fifth day she disappeared. When I returned and found her not, I am not ashamed to say that I hunted and called her everywhere, nor even that I shed a few tears when days rolled into weeks and she did not appear. As I realized that she might be starving or have suffered tortures from some larger animal, there are many remarkable stories of cats who find their way home across almost impossible roads and enormous distances. There is a saying believed by many people, you can't lose a cat, which can be proved by hundreds of remarkable returns. But the pretty lady had absolutely no sense of locality. She had always lived indoors and had never been allowed to roam the neighborhood. It was five weeks before we found trace of her and then only by accident. My sister was passing a field of grain and caught a glimpse of a small creature which she at first thought to be a woodchuck. She turned and looked at it and called Pussy, Pussy. When, with a heartbreaking 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 farmhouse. When found she was only a shadow of herself and for the first and only time in her life we could count her ribs. She was wild with delight and clung to my sister's arms as though fearing to lose her and in all the fuss that was made over her return no human being could have showed more affection or more satisfaction at finding her old friends again. That she really was lost and had no sense of locality to guide her home was proven by her conduct after she returned to her Boston home. I had preceded my sister and was at the theater on the evening when she arrived with the pretty lady. The ladder was carried into the kitchen, taken from her basket and fed. Then instead of going around the house and settling herself in her old home she went into the front hall which she had left four months before and seated herself on the spot where she always watched and waited when I was out. When I came home at eleven I saw through the screen door her that was lost and is found. She had been waiting to welcome me for three mortal hours. I wish those people who believed 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 in treating 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 formally 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 baseboard and insisting that every closet door should be opened so that she might smell each closet through in the same way. When this was done she settled herself in one of her old nooks for a nap and allowed me to leave. But never again did she go out of sight of the house. For more than a year she would not go even into a neighbor's yard. And when she finally decided that it might be safe to crawl under the fences on to other territory she invariably turned about to sit facing the house as though living up to a firm determination never to lose sight of it again. This practice she kept up until the close of her last mortal sickness when she crawled into a dark place under a neighboring barn and said goodbye to earthly fears and worries forever. I wish all your sex had your gentle dignity and grace and beauty to say nothing of your faithfulness and affection. Like Mother Michael's Monmouth it may be said of you. She was merely a cat but her sublime virtues placed her on a level with the most celebrated mortals and in ancient Egypt altars would have been erected to her memory. End of chapter one. This recording is in the public domain. Chapter two concerning cats. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Concerning Cats. My Own and Some Others by Helen M. Winslow. Read for LibriVox.org by Patricia Oakley. Chapter two concerning my other cats. Oh what a lovely cat! Is a frequent expression from visitors or passersby at our house and from the pretty lady down through her various sons and daughters to the present family protector and head, Thomas Arrastus, and the Angora, Lady Betty, there have been some beautiful creatures. Mr. McGinty was a solid color Maltese with fur like a seal for closeness and softness and with the disposition of an angel. He used to be seized with sudden spasms of affection and run from one to another of the family, rubbing his soft cheeks against ours and kissing us repeatedly. This he did by taking gentle little affectionate nips with his teeth. I used to give him a certain caress which he took as an expression of affection. After leaving him at the farm I did not see him again for two years. Then on a short visit I asked for Mr. McGinty and was told that he was in a shed chamber. I found him asleep in a box of grain and took him out. He looked at me through sleepy eyes, turned himself over and stretched up for the old caress. As nobody ever gave him that but me I take this as conclusive proof that he not only knew me but remembered my one peculiarity. Then there was old pomp. Called old to distinguish him from the young pomp of today or Pampanita. He died of pneumonia at the age of three years but he was the handsomest black cat and the blackest I have ever seen. He had half a dozen white hairs under his chin but his blackness was literally like a raven's wing. Many handsom 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 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. Bobonette 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. Bobonette had another very pretty trick of playing with the tape measure. He used to bring it to us to 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 Bobonette would have none of them. On the contrary he repeatedly climbed on to the table to the work basket and hunted patiently for his tape measure even if it were hidden in a pocket. He kept up the search until he had unearthed it and he would invariably end by dragging forth that particular tape measure and bring it to us. I need not say that his intelligence was rewarded. Speaking of colors a friend has a cat that is devoted to blue. When she puts on a particularly pretty blue gown the cat hastens to get into her lap put her face down to the material purr and manifest the greatest delight but let the same lady put on a black dress and the cat will not come near her. Pomponette, 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 cathood 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 the established rules of propriety. I understood abstracted four of 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. Pomponita the good has all the virtues of a good cat and absolutely no vices. He loves us all and loves all other cats as well. As for fighting he emulates the example of that veteran who boasts that during the war he might always be found where the shot and shell were the thickest under the ammunition wagon. Like most cats the decided streak of vanity my sister cut a wide fancy collar or rough of white paper one day and put it on Pomponita. At first he felt much abashed and found it almost impossible to walk with it but a few words of praise and encouragement changed all that. Oh what a pretty pomp he is now exclaimed one and another until he sat up coyly and cocked his head one side as if to say oh now do you really think I look pretty and after a few more assurances he got down and strutted as proudly as any peacock much to the discomforture of the kitten who wanted to play with him and now he will cross the yard any time to have one of those collars on. But Thomas Erastus is the prince of our cats today he weighs 17 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 him were just like that I picked him up and he crawled pathetically into my neck and cuddled down there said a friend who was sitting opposite he's fixed himself now you'll keep him no I shall not I said but I will feed him a few days and give him to my cousin inside half an hour however Thomas Erastus had assumed the paternal air toward us that soon made us fear to lose him living without Thomas now would be like a young girl's going out without a chaperone after that first half hour when he had been fed he chased every foreign cat off the premises and assumed the part of a watch dog to this day he will sit on the front porch or the window sill and growl if he sees a tramp or suspicious character approaching he always goes into the kitchen when the market man calls and orders his meat and in exactly five o'clock in the afternoon when the meat is cut up and distributed leads the feline portion of the family into the kitchen Thomas knows the time of day for six months he waked up one housekeeper at exactly seven o'clock in the morning never varying two minutes he did this by seating himself on her chest and gazing steadfastly in her face usually this waked her but if she did not yield promptly to that treatment he would poke her cheeks with the most velvety of paws until she awoke he has a habit now of going upstairs and sitting opposite the closed door of the young man who has to rise hours before the rest of us do and waiting until the door is open for him how he knows at what particular moment each member of the family will wake up and come forth as a mystery but he does how do cats tell the hour of the 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 they wake from their invariable naps at one and smell lunch they individually weedle someone into feeding them but this is only individually collectively they are fed at five they are the most methodical creatures in the world they go to bed regularly at night when the family does they are waiting in the kitchen for breakfast when the fire is started in the morning then they go out of doors and play or hunt or ruminate until ten o'clock when they come in seek their favorite resting places and sleep until four evidently from four to five is a play hour and the one who wakes first is expected to stir up the others but at exactly five no matter where they may have strayed to every one of the three five or seven as the number happened 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 Tom Panita is at his mistress's feet and Lady Betty the Angora bounds to her shoulder when their meat appears their table manners are quite irreproachable also it is considered quite unpardonable to snatch at another's piece of meat and a breach of the best cat etiquette to show impatience while another is being fed I do not pretend to say that this is entirely natural they are taught these things as kittens and since cats are as great sticklers for propriety and gentle manners as any human beings can be they never forget it doubtless this is easier because they are always well fed but Thomas Erastus or Jane would have to be on the verge of starvation I am sure before they would grab from one of the other cats and as for the pretty lady it was always necessary to see 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 the table where the chickens were being dressed and wait patiently for a tidbit I have seen her left alone in the room while on that table was a piece of raw steak but no temptation was ever great enough to make her touch any of these forbidden things she actually seemed to have a conscience only one thing on the dining table which she touched 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 play things 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 time 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 by further groans and admonitions seem to say child see this beautiful play thing I have brought you this is part of your education it is just as necessary for you to know how to play with this as to poke your paw under the closet door properly wake up now and play with it sometimes when the table was laid overnight we used to hear her anguish groans in the stillness of the night in the morning every napkin belonging to the family would be found in a different part of the house and perhaps a ring would be missing these periods however only lasted as long in each new kitten's training as the few weeks that she had amused herself with them at their age then she would drop the subject and napkins had no further interest than the man in the moon until another kitten arrived at the age when she considered them a necessary part of his education Professor Shaler in his interesting book on the intelligence of animals gives the cat only the merest mention intimating that he considers them below par in this respect and showing little real knowledge of them I wish he might have known the pretty lady once our little 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 commoners 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, Buffy and Orange Pico names that explained 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 deemed so necessary toward the proper training of kittens and poor Jane as ladies made 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 nursemaid and yet there are people who pronounce cats stupid one evening I returned from the theater 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 carousels on the part of infants and protested with mild wails against their joyful caperings finally Orange Pico 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 gambled 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 be thought 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 them all teased Jane was ushered into the closet and soon sent it out the skirt then she too sat on her haunches and gave a long careful sniff turned round and uttered one Prrrrt and took the angora off with her Jane had discovered that there was no element of danger in the closet and had imparted her knowledge to the finely strung angora in an instant and so taking her back to bed she bathed her brow with gentle lappings until Lady Betty sank off to quiet sleep soothed and comforted it is not easy to study a cat they are like sensitive plants and shut themselves instinctively away from the human being who does not care for them they know when a man or a woman loves them almost before they come into the human presence and it is almost useless for the unsympathetic person to try to study a cat but the thousands who do love cats know that they are the most individual animals in the world dogs are much alike in their love for mankind their obedience, faithfulness and in different degrees their sagacity but there is as much individuality in cats as in people dogs and horses are our slaves cats never this does not prove them without affection as some people seem to think on the contrary it proves their peculiar and characteristic dignity and self respect women, poets and especially artists like cats delicate natures only can realize their sensitive nervous systems the pretty lady's mother talked almost incessantly when she was in the house one of her habits was to get into the window seat outside and demand to be let in if she was not waited upon immediately she would when the door was finally opened stop when halfway in and scold vigorously the tones of her voice and the expression of her face were so exactly like those of a scolding vixenish woman that she caused many a hearty laugh by her tirades Thomas Erastus however, seldom utters a sound and at the rare intervals when he condescends to pur he can only be heard by holding one's ear close to his great soft sides but he still 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 weedled her into feeding him were it not that his great 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 someone to open and let him in Thomas has a real 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 Arastas 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 Em 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 Em opened her window and let him onto the sloping roof of the L from which he could descend through a gnarled old apple tree meanwhile I left the back door and went on with my preparations for the night about ten minutes later I went and called the cats again it was a moonlight night and I saw six delinquent cats coming in a flock across the open field behind the house all marshaled by Mr. Thomas he evidently hunted them up and called them in himself then he sat on the back porch and waited until the last kit was safely in before he stalked gravely in with an air which said as plainly as words there it takes me to do anything with this family none of my cats would think of responding to the call of kitty kitty or puss puss they are early taught their names and answer to them neither would one answer to the name of another except in occasional instances where jealousy prompts them to do so we have to be most careful when we go out of an evening not to let Thomas arrest us 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 nearby 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 theater when we alight from the cars he is nowhere to be seen but before we have gone many steps Thomas Arastus is behind or beside us proudly escorting his mistress's 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 shoe him back or catch him the prance is along just out of reach but tantalizingly close when we get aboard our car we know he is safe in some corner gazing sadly after us and that no danger can drive him home until we reappear both Thomas and Pampanita 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 the 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 up wood or doing such work she used then to follow us uneasily about and look up earnestly into our faces as if to say girls this is not right everything is all upset here and the world's gone a-glay why don't you fix it she was the politest creature too that was the reason of her name in her youth she was christened Pansy then Cleopatra Susan Lady Jane Gray 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 van dyke 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 they fixed a dainty meal in a saucer and placed it in the chair beside her when she ate it in the same well-bred way she did everything Thomas Orastus hurt his foot one day rather he got it hurt during a metutinal combat at which he was forced being the head of the family to be present although he is far above the midnight carousels of his kind Thomas Orastus 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 sulked across the yard but let Thomas Orastus 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 patience suffering that the mistress's heart would melt and Thomas Orastus would find himself being born 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 Orastus has all the innocent guile of a successful politician he could manage things slicker than the political bosses and he would one summer Thomas Orastus moved an event of considerable importance in his placid existence he had to travel a short distance on the steam cars and worse he needs must endure the indignity of travelling that distance in a covered basket but his dignity would not suffer him to do more than send forth one or two mournful wails of protest after being kept in his new house for a couple of days he was allowed to go out and become familiar with his surroundings not without fear and trepidation on the part of his doting mistress that he might make a bold strike for his former home but Thomas Orastus felt he had a mission to perform for his race he would disprove that mistaken theory that a cat no matter how kindly he is treated cares more for places than for people consequently he would not dream of going back to his old haunts no he sat down in the front yard and took a long look at his surroundings the neighbouring lots, a field of grass a waving cornfield 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 realise what had happened so after looking well about him he made a series of tours of investigation first he took a beeline for the farthest end of the nearest vacant lot then he chose the cornfield then the beautiful broad grounds of the neighbour below then across the street but between each of these little journeys he took a beeline 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 yay, happier for death and destruction await the unfortunate cricket where Thomas Arastus thrives but don't say a cat can't or won't be moved it's your own fault if he won't End of Chapter 2 This recording is in the public domain Concerning Cats by Helen M. Winslow This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Reading by Kristina Concerning Cats by Helen M. Winslow Chapter 3 Concerning Other People's Cats Every observing reader of Mrs. Harriet Prescott's Pofford 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 hounded her every footstep she says of honour in the Composite Five A sleepy, snowy creature like some half-animated ostrich bloom 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-coloured imp whose bounds and springs and feathery tail-lushings not only did infinite damage among the Venetian and resident knick-knackery but among Mr. Chipperley's nerves In her beautiful old-fashioned home at Newbury Port, Massachusetts she has two beloved cats but I will not attempt to improve on her own account of them As for my own cats their name has been Legion although a few remain preeminent There was Miss Spot who came to us already named preferring our domicile to the neighboring one she had Her only son was so black that he was known as Ink Spot but her only daughter was so altogether ideal and black too that she was known as Beauty Spot Beauty Spot led a sorrowful life and was fortunately born closed in black or her mourning would have been expensive as she was always in a bereaved condition her drowned offspring making a shawl in the Merrimack although she had always plenty left She soloised herself with music she would never sit in anyone'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 juice harp I suppose to get at the sound She always went to walk with us and followed us wherever we went about the island Lucifer and Phosphor have been our cats for the last ten years Lucifer entirely black Phosphor as yellow as saffron a real golden fleece My sister lived in town and going away for the summer left her cat in a neighbour's care and the neighbour moved away meanwhile and left the cat to shift for herself She went down to the Apothecaries two blocks away or more there she had a family of kittens but apparently came up to reconnoiter for on my sister's return she appeared with one kitten and laid it down at Kate's feet ran off and in time came with another which she left also and so on until she had brought up the whole household Lucifer was one of them He was as black as an imp and as mischievous as one His bounds have always been tremendous from the floor to the high mantle or to the top of a tall buffet close under the ceiling and these bounds of his together with the way he has of gazing into space with his soulful and enormous yellow eyes have led to a thousand tales as to his nightly journeys 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 a lightning on the North Pole one night coming down from the stars The reason he slumps through the nebula is an account of his big feet He has six toes like the foot in George Augustus' cellar drawing and when he walks on the top of the pieza you would think it was a burglar Lucifer's Mephistophelian aspect is increased not only by those feet but by an arrow-pointed tail He sucks his tail, alas and alas in vain have he prepared it and pepper-sourced it and dipped it in Worcestershire sauce and in aloes and done it up in curled papers and glued on it the fingers of old gloves At last he gave it up in despair and I took him and put his tail in his mouth and told him to take his pleasure and that is the reason I suppose that he attaches himself particularly to me He is very near-sighted with those magnificent orbs for he will jump into anyone'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 for 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 a floor-abraised 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 to be the wrong sort of person in a china shop However it is conceded in the family that Phosphor is not a cat merely he is a person and Lucifer is a spirit Lucifer's thought impures 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 they start to 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 excellence is always inclined one to say she of him Thoughts a little live yellow ball was made only for him to play with and he coughed and tossed him around for all he was worth licked him all over 20 times a day I wonder if he knows what he's been doing during those early years Phosphor never watched 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 making you feel that he has a sort of lofty contempt of 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 fireballs above it Phosphor is however a mighty hunter mice rats by the score chipmunks all his games that comes to his net He has cleaned out whole colonies of cat birds for their insolence and eaten every golden robin on the island It used to be very pretty to see them when they were little as El-Madi, the peacock spread his great tail dart and spring upon it and go whirling round with it as El-Madi fairly frantic with the little demons that had hold of him when skipping and springing round and round But also so fierce a fighter so inhospitable to every other cat Phosphor is the most affectionate little soul He is still very playful so so large and last summer to see him bounding on the grass playing with his tail turning somersaults all by himself was quite worthwhile 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 and went away for five months once before Lucifer was more than a year old He got into no one's lap while I was gone But the moment I sat down on my return he jumped into mine saluted me and curled himself down for a nap showing the plainest recognition Now when one comes back Phosphor is wild with joy always in a well bred way He will get into your arms and on your shoulder 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 the curls into heaps of joy unfairly stands on his head sometimes He is the most responsive creature always ready for a caress and his wild great umber eyes beam love if ever love had manifestation His beauty is really extraordinary his tale a real wonder Lucifer, I grieve to say looks very most eaten Phosphor wore a bell for a short time once a little inkscape rock bell but he left it to tall all winter in a tall tree near the drawing room window A charm of cats is that they seem to live in a world of their own just as much as if it were a real dimension of space and speaking of a fourth dimension I am living in the expectation that the new discoveries in the matter of radiant energy will presently be revealing to all our senses that fact that there is no death We had some barn kittens once that lived in the hen house ate with the hens and quarreled with them for any tidbit they curled up in the egg boxes and didn't move when the hens came to lay and evidently had no idea that they were not hens Oh, there is no end to the cat situation it began with the old fellow who put his hand under the cat to lift her up and she urged her back higher and higher until he found it was the serpent as god and it won't end with you and me I don't know but she is the serpent as god 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 free masonry of cats I always said they were possessed of spirits and they use white magic to bring their friends together Mrs. Pofford's barn kittens bring to mind an incident related by Mrs. Wood the beautiful wife of professor CJ Wood of the Harvard Medical School at their summer place on Bozards Bay she has 15 cats mostly angora, persians and cones with several dogs these cats follow her all about the place in a regular troupe and the very handsome troupe 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 Gib that is particularly friendly with the cats there are plenty of hens on the farm and one spring a couple of bandtumps 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 Gib would take 7 or 8 of those cats up there to see the fluffy little things Dog and cats would see themselves around the barntump and her brod and watch them by the hour never offering to touch the chickens except when the little things were tired and went for a nap under their mother's wings and then some cat first one and then another would softly poke its paw under the hen and stir up the family making them all run out in consternation and keeping things lively once more the cats didn't dream of catching the chickens only wanting evidently that they should ameliorate joy and keep moving on a writer in the london spectator tells of a favorite bandtump hen with which the house cat has long been accustomed to play this bandtump has increased and multiplied and keeps her family in a coop on the ground into which rats easily enter at bedtime however Pussy takes up her residence there and bandtump 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 workbasket takes it on the floor and plays with it as long as he likes and then jumps up and puts the reel back into its place again just as our bobbinette used to get his tape measure although the latter never was known to put it away Miss Sarah Orn Dovet is a cat lover too and the dear old country woman down in Maine with whom one gets acquainted through her books usually keep a cat also says she I look back over so long a line of family cats from a certain poor spotty who died an awful death in a fit on the flagstones under the library window when I was less than 5 years old to a lawless fluffy yellow and white cone 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 fun companions until he died of far too early old age and left me to make my country walks alone Polly the enemy was the best mother of all quite the best business cat we ever had was 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 under 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 omnia switching of her tail she seemed to be measuring one's incompetence as a mouse catcher in these moments or to be saying to herself what a clumsy stupid person how little she knows and how I should like to scratch her and hear her squeak I sometimes felt as if I were a larger sort of helpless mouse in these moments but sometimes Polly would be more friendly and even jump into our laps when it was a pleasure to pat her hard little head with its exquisitely soft dark tortoise shell fur no matter if she almost always turned and caught the caressing hand with teeth and claws when she was tired of its touch you would always be ready to pat her next time there was such a fascination about her that any attention on her part gave a thrill of pride and pleasure every guest and stranger admired her and tried to win her favor while we of the household hid our wounds and delighted in her cleverness and beauty Polly was but a small cat to have a mind she looked quite round and kittenish as she sat before the fire in a rare moment of leisure Polly was stacked 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 hurled her head high to look over the grass and as if she were threading the jungle she lost her tail to unfro and one turn 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 the cellar window an apple of the ladder set 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 pores would scurry away upon some errand that must have been like one of the border frays of old she used to treat Joe the dog with sad cruelty giving him a sharp blow on his honest nose that made him meekly stand back and see her add his supper to her own a child visitor once rightly complained that Polly had pins in her toes and nobody knew this better than would 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 vengished so 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 vlogging 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 puppyhood for chasing the neighbors 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 petted and consoled after such a housemate as Polly Joe had great amends in our next cat Yellow Johnny an 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 mule whenever he had anything to say and looking up into your face with all his heart expressed these affectations of speech were most amusing especially in so large a person as Yellow Danny he was much beloved by me and by all his family especially poor Joe who must sometimes have had the worst of dreams about old Polly and her sharp unsparing claws Miss Mary E. Wilkins is also a great admirer of cats I adore cats she says I don't love them as well as dogs because my own nature is more after the lines of a dog's but I adore them no matter how tired or wretched I am a pussycat sitting in a doorway can divert my mind cats love one so much more than they will allow but they have so much wisdom they keep it to themselves Miss Wilkins Augustus was moved with her from Bratileboro after her father's death and when she went to Randolph Massachusetts to live he had been the pet of the family for a long time and came to an untimely end I hope, says Miss Wilkins people's unintentional cruelty will not be remembered against them since living in Randolph she has had two lowly yellow and white cats Punch and Judy the latter was shot by a neighbor but Punch the right-hand cat with the angelic expression still survives I'm quite sure says his mistress he loves me better than anybody else although he's 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 Louis Imogengini is famous for her love and good comradeship with dogs especially her setters and son Bernards but she is too thoroughly a poet not to be captivated by the grace and beauty of a cat I love the unsubmissive race she says and have had much edification out of the charming friendships between our son Bernards and our cats Enny Clark, 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 Scott 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 patented little frozen body once Christmas near the barn do you remember Arnold Scholar Gypsy? our Scott was his feline equivalent have you counted in Prosper Marimi among the confirmed lovers of cats? I remember a delightful little paragraph out of one of his letters about Mrs. ADT 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. Poffords but in Therope Troup's experiment there is an amusing cat story which, she declares got so much mixed up with the girl's story that nobody ever knew which was which and the incident is true in every particular except the finding of a will or codical or something at the end which is attached for purposes of fiction a great deal has been written about the New York Sun's famous cats at my request Mr. Dana furnished the following description of the interesting Sun family I can only watch for its veracity by quoting the famous phrase if you see it in the Sun it is so journalistic 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 layer is in the Sun building its habits are nocturnal and it feeds on discarded copy and anything else of the pseudo-literary nature upon which it compounds in dual times it can subsist upon a meager diet of telegraphic priorities 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 felistomastica 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 of a large unable-bodied railroad accident and a full page of miscellaneous news and then close the nether garments of a managing editor and call attention to an appetite still in good working order the progenetics of the family arrived in the Sun office many years ago and installed herself in a comfortable corner and within a few short months she had noticeably raised the literary tone of the paper as a large and vociferous family of kittens these kittens were veined on reports from country correspondents and the sight of the six children and the mother cat sitting in a semi-circle was one which attracted visitors from all parts of the nation just before her death immediately before in fact the mother cat developed a literary taste of her own and drank the contents of an ink bottle she was buried with literary owners one of her progeny was advanced to the duties and owners 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 plot upon the discussion 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 reign's law and the maternal instinct she died of an overdose of chloroform and her place was taken by one of the rescued kittens it is the son of this kitten who is the present proud incumbent of the office ground to cathood he is a creditable specimen of his family with barrel eyes beautiful strapped fur showing fine mudlings of musselage and ink a graceful and aspiring tail an appetite for copy and surpassed 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 her was 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 rolly cling catch sung by the snake editor before the muddled instincts could crawl into a crack the mutilator was upon them and had bolted everyone then with a look of reproach at the snake editor he drew three perpendicular red lines across the gentleman's features with his claws and departed in high scorn nor could he ever say after to the inner office where the serpent shark was laying for him with the space measure since that time he has lived in the room occupied by the reporters and news editors many hundreds of stories some of them slanderers have been told about the various son of his cats but we have admitted here none of these false tales the short sketch given her is beyond suspicion in all its details as can be watched for by many men of high position who ought to know better end of the chapter 3 concerning other people's cats