Charles H. Ross

“ Of some Wicked Stories that have been told about Cats.
do not love a Cat,” says a popular author, often quoted; “his disposition is mean and suspicious. A friendship of years is cancelled in a moment by an accidental tread on the tail. He spits, twirls his tail of malignity, and shuns you, turning back as he goes off a staring vindictive face full of horrid oaths and unforgiveness, seeming to say, ‘Perdition catch you! I hate you for ever.’ But the Dog is my delight. ”

“ The same gentleman, writing of a favourite Cat, says, that if a hair of her mistress’s head were laid upon the animal’s back it would writhe as though in agony, and rolling on the floor, would strive to free herself from the object of her fears. The pointing of a finger at her side, at a distance of half a foot, would cause her fur to bristle up and throw her into a violent tremour.
It is difficult to account for the fondness of Cats for fish, as nature seems to have given them an appetite, which, with their great antipathy to water, they can rarely gratify unassisted. ”

“ Cross from sheer melancholy, reflecting, in their starved and persecuted maturity, on the fondness lavished over the days in which they were pet useless toys; as soon as they can deserve and may require kind treatment, they are as ill-used as if they were constant wives—rather unfair on ladies of their excessive genius. Could every Cat, like Whittington’s, catch fortunes for her master as well as mice, we should hear no more said against the species. Suppose they only fawn on us because we house and feed them, they have no nobler proofs of friendship with which to thank us ”

“ The Cat is a faithless domestic, and only kept through necessity to oppose to another domestic which incommodes us still more, and which we cannot drive away; for we pay no respect to those, who, being fond of all beasts, keep Cats for amusement. Though these animals are gentle and frolicksome when young, yet they, even then, possess an innate cunning and perverse disposition, which age increases, and which education only serves to conceal. ”

“ One of the party was directed to keep his eye fixed on the Cat, the others after a short delay slowly pulled the cords, which had the effect of partially raising the head of the corpse.
Instantly, at this apparent sign of life, the savage Cat sprang from its corner, and, with a low yell and a single bound, fastened upon the mangled neck of its victim.
At once the sad mystery was solved, the treacherous, ungrateful, cowardly, and revengeful murderer discovered! and all that remained to be done was to summon help to destroy the wild beast, and in due time to bury the good man in peace. ”

“ I need not tell a kind master or mistress to use every precaution when drowning a Cat’s kittens, to keep their mother in ignorance of the fact. It can easily be imagined that the poor creature will be in great distress if the slaughter be committed before her eyes; and I know of a case where the Cat having found her young ones which had been drowned and thrown carelessly in the corner of a yard, brought the bodies back to her nest, and mewing and licking them, seemed to use every endeavour to restore them to life. ”

“ Constantly bent upon theft and rapine, though in a domestic state, it is full of cunning and dissimulation: it conceals all its designs, seizes every opportunity of doing mischief, and then flies from punishment. It easily takes on the habits of society, but never its manners; for it has only the appearance of friendship and attachment. This disingenuity of character is betrayed by the obliquity of its movements and the ambiguity of its looks. In a word, the Cat is totally destitute of friendship. ”

“ We have seen many Cats very closely resembling the wild Cat, and one or two which could scarcely be distinguished from it. There is, perhaps, no other animal that so soon loses its cultivation and returns apparently to a state completely wild: the tasting of some wild and living food may tempt them to seek it again and to leave their civilized homes. They then prowl about in the same manner as their prey, couching in the long grass and brush-wood, and hiding themselves from all publicity. ”

“ When children’s minds are thus filled with absurd falsehoods, it is not to be wondered at if, when the child grows up into a man, the man should express himself somewhat in the words of this instructor of youth, who says, “I must confess, on my own part, an aversion to the feline race, which, with the best intentions, I am unable entirely to conquer. I have occasionally become rather fond of an individual Cat, but never encounter one, unexpectedly, without a feeling of repugnance; and, as I like, or feel an interest in, every other animal, I regard this peculiarity as hereditary.” ”

“ There is an idea that white Cats with blue eyes are always deaf, but a correspondent of Notes and Queries says, “I am myself possessed of a white Cat which, at the advanced age of upwards of seventeen years, still retains its hearing to great perfection, and is remarkably intelligent and devoted, more so than Cats are usually given credit for. Its affection for persons is, indeed, more like that of a dog than of a Cat. It is a half-bred Persian Cat, and its eyes are perfectly blue, with round pupils, not elongated, as those of Cats usually are. ”

“ Every animal has its own way of killing and eating its prey. The fox leaves the legs and hinder parts of a hare or rabbit; the weasel and stoat eat the brains, and nibble about the head, and suck the blood; crows and magpies peck at the eyes; the dog tears his prey to pieces indiscriminately; the Cat always turns the skin inside out like a glove.
Mr. Buckland relates the case of a gamekeeper who bought up all the Cats in the neighbouring town, cut off their heads, and nailed them up as trophies of veritable captures in the woods. ”

“ A hawk sailing by, saw them: swift as lightning it darted down on one of the kittens, and would have carried it off, but the mother, seeing its danger, sprang upon the common enemy, which, to defend itself, let fall the prize. The battle that followed was terrible, for the hawk, by the power of his wings, the sharpness of his talons, and the keenness of his beak, had for awhile the advantage, cruelly lacerating the poor Cat, and had actually deprived her of one eye in the conflict ”

“ Cat were, in a fortnight, as active, forward, and playful as kittens would have been; they had the use of their legs, basked and gambolled about; while the other three, nursed by the mother, were whining and rolling about like fat slugs. The Cat gave them her tail to play with, and they were always in motion; they soon ate meat, and long before the others they were fit to be removed. This was done, and the Cat became very inconsolable. She prowled about the house, and on the second day of tribulation, fell in with the little spaniel who was nursing the other puppies. ”

“ The monkeys of the neighbourhood have no greater enemy than the Ocelot, therefore it is only natural that, when they find him dead, they would be much rejoiced, and call together their friends and relations to see the pretty sight. The treacherous ocelot is, however, meanwhile keeping sharp watch through a tiny chink of his eyelids, and when the rejoicing is at its highest, up he jumps, and, before the monkey-revellers can recover from their fright, at least a couple will feel the fatal weight of his paw. ”

“ Morley’s Fairy Tales, there is a funny passage:—“‘I wonder,’ said a sparrow, ‘what the eagles are about, that they don’t fly away with the Cats? And now I think of it, a civil question cannot give offence.’ So the sparrow finished her breakfast, went to the eagle, and said:—
“‘May it please your royalty, I see you and your race fly away with the birds and the lambs that do no harm. But there is not a creature so malignant as a Cat; she prowls about our nests, eats up our young, and bites off our own heads. She feeds so daintily that she must be herself good eating. ”

“ Even a chimney on fire, or the presence of strange workmen in the house, will make it very restless and uneasy, and on such occasions it will sometimes not go to rest even during the night. Every animal is endowed with peculiar means of self-defence; and as the Cat cannot trust, like the hare, to speed, on the approach of danger, it watches its enemy, occasionally taking side glances, or looking round for a place of refuge. ”

“ I knew a lady who fed a pet kitten from her mouth, and it grew up extraordinarily affectionate and sagacious. But I have seen many cases where a Cat has conceived a strong affection towards a person who has never fed it, and scarcely ever noticed it.
I lately heard, on good authority, of a case of a lady, one of whose Cats came every morning to her bed-room door, at six o’clock precisely, making so much noise mewing, that it would awaken every one in the house, if she did not hasten to get up, open the door, and shake hands with it, after which ceremony it went quietly away. ”

“ To administer the poison yourself is by no means a wise course, as probably you may give too much or too little, and in either case defeat your object. I know for a fact, that two medical students once barbarously practising experiments with poison on an unhappy Cat, twice poisoned the animal, as they supposed, and once actually buried it, of course not very deeply, after which it recovered again, and crawled into the house, rather to their alarm, as you may suppose, as on the second occasion it happened in the dead of night. ”

“ It was once upon a time the trick of a countryman to bring a Cat to market in a bag, and substitute it for a sucking pig in another bag, which he sold to the unwary when he got the chance. If the trick was discovered prematurely, it was called letting the cat out of the bag—if not—he that made the bad bargain was said to have bought a pig in a poke. To turn the Cat in the pan, according to Bacon, is when that which a man says to another he says it as if another had said it to him. ”

“ They are for the most part nocturnal in their habits, being guided to their prey by their peculiar power of vision, by their scent, and by their hearing, which is superior to that of most other animals. Naturally, they are strictly carnivorous, not hunting down their prey by a protracted chase, like the wolf and dog, but by lying in wait, or by moving stealthily with their supple joints and cushioned feet till within spring of their victims, on which they dart with a growl, as if the muscular effort of the moment were painful even to themselves. ”

“ A Cat on the safe side of an area railing will sit down and coolly watch a dog barking furiously at it.
“Its care and solicitude for its offspring are excessive and touching. If attacked while rearing them, it will not run away, but stand and defend them against any odds; like the hare in similar circumstances, the Cat evinces immense power and courage, no matter how formidable the enemy may be. Of course the females of all animals possess more or less of this quality.”
Cats have a much better time of it in France than here. ”

“ Some of them hurried to the spot, where they found the Cat swinging on the bell-rope. She had learnt from experience that there never was any dinner without a bell ringing; and by force of reasoning, no doubt, had come to the conclusion that the dinner would be sure to come if she only rang loud enough.
But that story is not half so wonderful as another, about an Angora Cat belonging to a Carthusian monastery at Paris. This ingenious animal discovered that, when a certain bell rang, the cook left the kitchen to answer it, leaving the monks’ dinners, portioned out in plates, unprotected. ”

“ If the thunder came on by day, Pret would climb on her mistress’s knees, put her paws round her neck and hide her face between them with deliberation.
She disliked music of all kinds, but bore a special antipathy to barrel organs; probably because the costume of the organ-grinder was as unpleasing to her eyes, as his doleful sounds were to her ears. But her indignation reached the highest bounds at the sight of a Greenwich pensioner accoutred in those grotesque habiliments with which the crippled defenders of their country are forced to invest their battered frames. ”

“ The slightest contact of these whiskers with any surrounding object is thus felt most distinctly by the animal, although the hairs are of themselves insensible. They stand out on each side in the lion, as well as in the common Cat; so that, from point to point, they are equal in width to the animal’s body. If we imagine, therefore, a lion stealing through a covert of wood in an imperfect light, we shall at once see the use of these long hairs. ”

“ One day, once upon a time, or thereabouts, the witch-finder of a certain Swiss town—himself secretly a wizard—was taking his afternoon’s walk, when he came across a Tom Cat, looking very thin and miserable. This Cat had once been the chief favourite of a rich old lady, who had trained him up in luxurious living. ”

“ Seizing the animal by the back of the neck, the Cat, by a sudden wriggle, threw himself on his back, and at once transferred the custody of the rat from his mouth to his fore-paws, holding it neatly behind the shoulders, while with his hind talons he cruelly assailed the unlucky animal’s loins and ribs till it ceased to struggle. ”

“ Nor is the soft foot, with its skilfully sheathed and ever sharp claws, without a moral too; for whilst there is nothing [Pg 43] commendable in anything approaching to spite, passion, or revenge, a character that is all softness is certainly defective. The velvety paw is very well, but it will be the better appreciated when it is known that it carries within it something that is not soft, and which can make itself felt, and sharply felt, on occasion. A cat rolled up into a ball, or crouched with its paws folded underneath it, seems an emblem of repose and contentment. ”