Gordon Stables

“ It is cruel in many ways; there is the catching of her, the putting of her into the sack with the stone, and the march to the waterside, the cat knowing all the while what is to happen, and that her mistress ordered her death. Do not drown her. If there is any one you can really trust, that you are sure knows the difference between a gun and a washing-stick, by all means have her shot. It is over in a moment. The next best plan is to administer morphia. Don’t grudge her a good dose—five or even ten grains. Cats are wonderfully tenacious of life, but they can’t stand that. ”

“ I know every mouse’s hole in the house, and the places in the garden where I can hide to catch the sparrows, and the gaps in the hedge through which I can bolt when that Skye-terrier chases me, and the whitethorn bush beneath whose scented boughs I meet dear Tom in the moonlight. Oh! the thoughts of leaving Tom—no, I cannot, will not, leave the old house. Missus can hang herself if she likes. ”

“ Dear me, how often I have wondered how other poor cats who have neither kind master nor mistress manage to live. But, the poor creatures, they are so ignorant—badly-bred, you know. Why, only the other day the young master brought home a poor little cat, he had found starving in the street. Well, I never in all my life saw such an ill-mannered, rude little wretch, for no sooner had it got itself stuffed with the best fare in the house, than it made a deliberate attempt to steal the canary. ”

“ If well treated black and white cats are apt to turn a little indolent and lazy, and if improperly fed and housed, they degenerate into the most wretched-looking specimens of felinity you ever looked upon. All the bad in their character comes out, and their good qualities are forgotten. Their coat gets dry, and tear, and are cinder-holed; and, instead of the plump, round-faced, clerical-looking cat which used to adorn your parlour window, you have a thin, emaciated, long-nosed, pigeon-loft-hunting, flower-unscraping, dirty, disreputable dunghill cat. ”

“ That birds—who flit about all summer in coats so gay and jackets so gaudy, that even a hawk may mistake them for bouquets of flowers, and think them not worth eating—as soon as the breeding season is over, and the leaves and flowers fade and fall, are presented by nature with warmer but more homely suits of apparel, more akin in colour to the leafless hedgerows, or the brown of the rustling beech leaves, among which they seek shelter from the wintry blast. ”

“ The cats are fed morning and night, and regularly supplied with the best and sweetest milk which the town can afford. Indeed, altogether, the poor things appear quite as happy as they are at their own firesides. If it is a four-day show, they soon come to know and welcome with gloved hand, the girl attendants every time they pass. There is no head-splitting noise and din as there is in a dog-show. Peace and quiet and serenity reign everywhere in a cat-show. ”

“ It is sometimes rather a difficult thing finding suitable apartments when you are accompanied with pets. It takes considerable tact, I can assure you, to convince Mrs ’Arris, or whatever is the name of your intended landlady, that your Newfoundland is so clean that you never can see even a hair on the carpet; that your Pomeranian is an angel in canine form; that your Persian cat wouldn’t steal, if surrounded even by the most tempting viands; that your macaw doesn’t scream loud enough to give all the terrace “an ’eadache;” and that your white rats never escape and run all over the house. ”

“ Now, madam, you know I’m only a cat, a common dunghill cat, and have only common dunghill notions, but here are my sentiments. Religion is a beautiful thing when brought to bear on everyday life, and not put off and on with your moiré antique. But never you go away to church and forget to give pussy her breakfast.
And have your prayer-book in one hand if you like of a morning, but have a nice bit of fish or a saucer of milk for pussy in the other, and the beauty of the one hand will be reflected from the other, as the stars are mirrored in the ocean’s wave. ”

“ We now come to the Tabbies—the real old English cats—the playmates of our infant days and sharers of our oatmeal porridge. They are the commonest of all cats, and justly so, too, for there is hardly anything they don’t know, and nothing they can’t be taught, bar conic sections, perhaps, the Pons Asinorum, and a few trifles of that ilk. You will find a tabby cat wherever you go, and you will find her equally at home wherever she is—whether sitting on the footstool on the cosy hearthrug, singing duets with the tea-kettle; catching birds and rabbits in the woods, or mice in the barn ”

“ I never think, somehow, that a fireside has the same cheerful look of an evening unless there be a cat there, to sit on the footstool, and sing duets with the tea-kettle.
And I do not wonder at old women, whose friends have all long since gone before, and who have no one left to care for them, getting greatly attached to a faithful pussy; for people must have something to love. ”

“ Black Tom will give you a paw, but you may take it or leave it, just as suits you; and if you annoy him too much, he will very quickly cast his gloves and make you laugh with the wrong side of your mouth, as the saying is. And it is quite astonishing, too, what a beautiful deep and cleanly-cut wound—I speak feelingly, as a surgeon—Tom can make on the fleshy portion of your hand, or down the side of your nose. For black Tom, and all the race of black cats, seem to have made up their minds ages ago not to stand any nonsense from man or beast. ”

“ It is one of the many popular fallacies current in this enlightened land of ours, that there is in the cat a certain number of bad qualities—a certain spice of the devil, so to speak—that never can be bred out. This is simply absurd, for there is no animal that lives and breathes on God’s fair earth but is susceptible of improvement, both physically and morally; for, remember, a cat, little as you may think of her, has a mind and a soul, as well as you have. ”

“ You see it is just like this—when you once get a cat to love you, you, and you only, will become the study of her whole life. She soon finds out what pleases you, and what vexes you, and also what you love, and, whether that be dog or child, she will love it too, to please you.
Cats will often, very often—just like dogs—lead those they love to places where something or some creature is in danger. ”

“ But I can point you out scores of men who are good sportsmen, fearless huntsmen, and fond of every manly sport—ay, and men, too, who are at home on the stormiest ocean, and never pale when fired upon in anger—who can both pride and prize a favourite cat. At Exeter, not long since, out of thirty-nine owners of cats, all were men except nine, and of these nine seven were married, and the two others were young ladies, while the owner of the first-prize cat was a gallant soldier. ”

“ If we have to, and must, put the lower animals to death, in order that we—the higher animals—may live, we ought to do so as humanely as possible; and never, on any account, should we torture animals for mere sport. Hence I object to cock-fighting, pigeon or sparrow-shooting, and ratting—all mean and cowardly employments, and quite unfitted for men above the rank of the commonest navvy. I see no harm in deer-stalking in Scotland, where the deer are as wild as the hare or coney; but I do see very great cruelty in what is called stag-hunting in England. ”

“ 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 pussy 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. ”

“ At nearly all the cat-shows which I have visited of late, I have been invariably impressed with this one idea: here, in these shows, we see pussy as she is in the present day—the live mouse-trap, the barn cat, at best the fireside favourite—but, at all events, the animal, of all our domestic animals, that is least cared for, and the only animal we possess, whose improvement in condition and species we have never cared to study. What this animal—the domestic cat—can become, the perfection to which she may attain through judicious selection and careful breeding, it is for future years to show. ”

“ I speak of the cat as I have found it, and I doubt not there are many exceptions.
Merits.—They are excellent and patient mousers, and the best of hunters. They are likewise good mothers. They are as game as a bull and terrier—in fact they seem to fear nothing on four legs; and when they do take off the gloves to fight, I pity the animal they tackle, for what the tortoiseshell lacks in weight, she makes up for amply in courage. They are very wise and sagacious, and faithful to the death to those who own them. ”

“ 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 pussy to a nicety. ”

“ For many a long year it was almost universally believed that there never was any such thing as a tortoiseshell male or Tom cat, or ever could be; and many an anxious search has many an old maid had over her newly-born litter of kits, to see if she would be fortunate enough to find the much-to-be-desired anomaly. For, bear in mind, a belief used to be pretty current that 300 pounds—or was it 500 pounds?—would be paid over some counter, by some fool or fools unknown, to anyone who should be able to put the possibility of the existence of a tortoiseshell Tom beyond dispute—by producing one. ”

“ It is very remarkable—and most students of feline nature must have had an opportunity of observing this—the great difference in the temperament, constitution, and nature of cats, which colour alone, apparently, has the power of truly indicating; and this is nowhere more easily seen than in the peculiar characteristics of the pure black pussy and the all-white one. The black cat, on the one hand, is bold, and free, and fierce; the white, far from brave, more fond of petting and society, and as gentle as a little white mouse. The black cat is full of life and daring ”

“ So the little things are all in despair, when past comes a bee. Now bees, and butterflies too, for all they have got so many eyes, are rather short-sighted, but even a bee cannot help seeing that gorgeous display of orange, white, and blue, so he pops at once into the bosom of a blue crocus, and is made as welcome as the flowers in May. ”

“ The Dunghill Cat. I’m the dunghill cat—that is what I am. Nobody owns me, and I owe allegiance to nobody. Nobody feeds me; nobody puts a saucer on the ground and says, “Here, pussy, there’s a drop of milk for you, my pet.” Nobody ever gave me a bit of fish in my life, and nobody, so far as I can remember, ever called me pet names or spoke kindly to me. ”

“ For myself, I really cannot see that it would either assist us in breeding better cats, or render us a bit more humane in our treatment of the pretty animal, to be assured that she was first imported into this country from Egypt or Persia in the year one thousand and ever so much before Christ, or that the father of all the cats was a Scottish wild cat, captured and tamed by some old Highland witch-wife a thousand years before the birth of Noah’s grandfather. What matters it to us whether the pussy that purrs on our footstool is a polecat bred bigger, or a Polar bear bred less? ”

“ All my animals love me. My fishes know me, and come to be fed; my birds flutter their wings with affectionate excitement when I approach their cage; my white rats run to me when I call; my cat certainly never rushes up the chimney when I enter the room ”

“ That was a sickening sight enough, but skinning alive a poor harmless cat must be many times worse. I wish I could say that it was only the lowest class of ruffians that ill-treat poor cats to the death, but—and I know this for certain—there are men who pass as gentlemen, who night after night set traps for cats that stray into their gardens, and kill them in the cruellest manner; and some of these fellows, too, keep neither poultry, pigeons, nor rabbits, and haven’t a flower in their gardens worthy of the name, only they hate cats. ”

“ There is a certain independence about his every movement, and an assumption of dignity, as he saunters about the house, gazes at the fire of a winter’s evening, or rolls himself in the sunniest spot of the garden in summer, that are both amusing and delightful. ”

“ Often and often, on the return of the family, the unhappy cat is found lying in the empty hall, dead or dying, and wasted away to a mere handful of bones and skin—this in itself testifying to the sufferings she must have undergone for the want of food and water. Such gross carelessness ought to be made penal. I do not know whether the Society has ever yet prosecuted anyone for thus cruelly starving a cat, but I should think it would have little difficulty in obtaining a conviction. ”

“ Cats are not afraid of snakes; but snakes, even the dreaded cobra, will invariably give pussy a wide berth.
Cats are fond of fish, absurdly so, and if you offer them even the gold-fish, they won’t feel offended. It is only out of respect for the owner thereof that they don’t devour the canary. They prefer canary living, with the feathers on. It tickles their palates and makes them laugh.
Chickens are dainties in a cat’s cuisine; they also rather like a nice plump partridge, and won’t refuse to suck an egg when occasion offers. ”

“ A lady beside a lion on the lawn would, I think, make a prettier picture than one by the side of a peacock, and a tame Bengalese tiger would be a pet worthy to crouch at the foot of a throne. To be sure, little bits of mistakes would occur at times; instead of the pussy of the period bolting away with the canary, nothing less would satisfy the pet than a nice fat baby, and then those extraordinary people the cat—exterminators would be louder in their denunciations than ever.
If we dissect the cat, we will find that the skeleton of one breed of pussy would pretty nearly pass for that of another ”

“ Merits.—Their hunting proclivities. Their fondness for children is sometimes quite remarkable. I have known many instances of Brown Tom Tabbies, so fierce that scarce any one dare lay a finger on them unscathed, but a little child of four years of age could do anything with them, lug them about anyhow, and even carry them head down, over its shoulder by the tail. They are, moreover, nice, loving, kind-hearted pets, and exceedingly fond of their master and mistress. They are the cats of all cats to make a family circle look cosy and complete around the fire of a winter’s night. ”

“ It isn’t always a woman’s fault if she can’t get married: many, whose early affections have been blighted, would not marry if they could, for haven’t they got a posy somewhere, a locket with a face, a lock of hair, and a faded ribbon which erst was bonny blue—relics of lost love, around which cling sweetest memories of the past? ”

“ These are the cats who make night hideous with their howling, who tear up beautiful flowerbeds, rob pigeon-lofts, murder valuable rabbits, and, in a general way, do all they can to bring into disrepute the whole feline race. I declare to you honestly, there is as much difference between one of these night-prowlers and a well-cared-for cat, as there is between one of the lean and mangy curs who do scavengers’ duty in Cairo, and a champion Scottish Collie.
Some men will tell you that it is unmanly to love or care for a cat ”