Barn cat

“ This racking cough (ugh! ugh!) and this distressing cat-arrh, (snuff! snuff!) with which you see me afflicted were brought on by the hardships and exposure incident to the life of a barn-cat: midnight rambles, my dear (ugh!) , in frost and snow; days when not so much as a mouse's tail has passed my hungry jaws, and winter nights when my coat was too thin to keep out the cold. And all these sufferings, past and present, are in consequence of my being a barn-cat.'
"'Now, may the dogs get me, if I ever heard such a string of nonsense!' said Robber Grim. 'Don't believe a word she says. ”

“ You see the barn-cat and whisper to her to take her kittens out for an airing in front of the barn. Graywhisker will be sure to see them, and conclude that it’s safe for him to leave home, for he never goes out while she is in the barn. You watch from a distance, and when he is gone you give the barn-cat a sign and let her leave her kittens with the little gray kitten while you slip into the hole and she sits at the entrance. ”

“ There was a rat there, and it was going to get one of her little ducks, and she began to fight the rat, and the mother rat came out and helped fight the duck, and the boy drove them away, but afterwards the duck died and left the little ducks.
“But grandma had a barn cat. She was not a Tabby. She was only a black-and-white cat, but she was a very good cat. She never would touch a bird or a chicken, and she never would suck an egg. She did not like me. She would not let me come in her barn. I did not let her come in my barn. She was a good cat for not liking birds. ”

“ One day I wanted very much to taste of a little duck and I tried to get one, and I hurt its leg, and she clawed me and made me drop it, and grandma shamed me and I went back to the boy’s house and hid under a bed, and when I was almost starved I crawled out and the boy whipped me hard and carried me back to the grandma house, and into her barn, and showed me that barn cat with the little ducks, and lifted up his finger, and looked at me hard, and whipped me again and said: ‘Tabby Furpurr, don’t you see that barn cat staying with ducks and not eating any? And you even fly at birds! ”

“ Having plenty of exercise, and being able to find grass and herbs for themselves, barn-cats are usually normal, healthy creatures, and need little dieting or doctoring from their owners, but they should always have a good, warm place to sleep in.
The city house-cat leads such a semi-artificial life that she needs more care. Milk which has stood several hours and been skimmed is not an especially good food. ”

“ There was her darling in the box by the stove and crying helplessly for her. The mother cat gave a low mew, which the baby kitten heard and understood just as a human baby understands when its mother speaks soothingly to it.
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“Oh dear!” exclaimed the barn-cat, “if I could only get into that kitchen! I know what I’ll do. I’ll tell Mrs. Polly about it, and see what she advises; she’s very wise.”
So the barn-cat jumped down from the kitchen window and on the sill of the dining-room window, which stood open. Posy was in the room, and so was Mrs. Winton ”

“ She was naturally a good mouser, but when the weather grew cold, people shut up their barns, and every cat knows that the open-air mice who live around unused sheds are very poor eating. But she managed to get along until the kittens came, and then she became desperate enough to beg at back doors, and purr for a piece of meat. But some people cannot appreciate even the finest kind of a purr, and the Alley Cat’s purr was hoarse and miserable like herself.
“I once had a good soprano,” she told the friendly barn cat who brought her a second joint of rat. ”

“ I should say so. What is this generation of cats coming to, when a low creature reared in a barn—a paw-paw (pauper) cat, as I may say—dare lift her eyes to those so far above her?'
"'I have heard my mother say "a cat may look at a king,"' said Furry-Purry.
"'Go away, you low-born creature! How dare you quote your mother to me? Go away, this instant! I am ashamed to be seen talking with you! What if my friend Mrs. Silvercoat or Major Mouser should happen to pass! Begone, I say! scat!'
"'O Mrs. Tabitha,' said the poor little cat, 'don't send me away! I can't go back to that barn. ”

“ The pleasant barn cat who had brought her the second joint of rat, came to tell his friend of a place that he had found down-town behind a restaurant, where many things could be had without asking. He was really a very kind cat, although he had but one hole in his nose, instead of two, owing to the partition having been torn through in a fight.
THE ALLEY CAT
But she could not move her kittens, and indeed had told him very little about them, fearing that he might not like children. ”

“ She learned that habit thousands of years ago when all cats were wild, and she never quite gets over it, no matter how tame she seems. She will try to hide her babies, too, On farms, where there are fine hiding places, mother cats will make a den under the barn floor, in the haymow, or in a hollow log up in the woods. If you try to follow her to find her kittens she will mislead you in the cleverest way. The mother lion carries her kittens by taking the loose skin at the back of the neck between her teeth, just as the house cat does. ”

“ They get their tails pulled and their ears pinched by horrid monsters with only two legs to walk on, and nights—beautiful moonlight nights when we barn-cats are roaming the alleys and singing on the roofs and having a good time generally—they are locked in cellars and garrets and made to watch rat-holes. ”

“ But I would rather have died than to have that cruel boy do so again. Only a cat can know what a cat can suffer from cruel boys. Dogs would not hurt us if people and cruel boys did not tell them to.
“One day I had some kittens of my own. We were in a good closet close by my own girl’s bed. Oh I was proud of my pretty little dears! I wanted people to come and see them. But when people came they said, ‘Why! why! why! The cat has kittens in the closet! Take the cat and kittens away from that closet!’
Carried Them to the Barn. ”

“ If this novel were a true picture of human life, it would show, relentlessly and bitterly, how nature overcame the mother and her children. As, however, it is a picture of cat life, the end is a happy one. Grey Puss is successful in the struggle and so are all her kittens. “The other farm cats’ kittens were born in barn and loft and were drowned litter after litter—but she would see that her kittens grew to be cats.” ”

“ The babies had themselves possessed kittens that they had loved and lost. Directly they were big enough they took to tree-climbing and bird-nesting, and finally stayed away altogether. It was in their blood,—the blood of ancient German cats, passed on through rows and rows of fathers and mothers who also had had stones thrown at them, and had climbed trees and eaten birds; and what is a poor cat to do? Rose, the black cat in the kitchen, had developed such strange and unpleasant habits of spitting and biting, and clawing, that it had been banished from the playroom. ”

“ Crawling along the top of a wall, or creeping up the stem of a tree, she strives to capture the unwary bird, who may afford her sport and amusement first, and a meal afterwards. Or, seated demurely in some corner of a room or near some tree, where mice frequent, she does not object to watch patiently, whilst minutes and hours pass away, in the hope of at last finding an opportunity to pounce upon her favourite victim. With all this no dog has any reason to interfere, and none has ever attempted to rival the cat in the pursuit of bird or mouse. ”

“ It took to killing as its [121] trade, like a fish to water. Its mother taught it nothing else. When her milk ran dry, she taught it how to flesh its baby fangs; and under her kind, encouraging, maternal eyes it grew up big and strong, and then it left its mother’s lair to feed itself and live alone.
There is something thrilling in the strangeness which such separation brings. The cat is a tender mother, but she soon forgets her children. A few months after parting, if this leopard and its mother met in the woods, they would glare at each other like strangers, without recognition. ”

“ He had times of relaxation into utter playfulness, delighting in a ball of yarn, catching sportively at stray ribbons when his mistress was at her toilet, and pursuing his own tail, with hilarity, for lack of anything better. He could amuse himself by the hour, and he did not care for children; perhaps something in his past was present to his memory. He had absolutely no bad habits, and his disposition was perfect. I never saw him exactly angry, though I have seen his tail grow to an enormous size when a strange cat appeared upon his lawn. ”

“ It had been hunting in the river bank close by and caught a rabbit, or perhaps a musk-rat, and the warmth had attracted it into the circle of the little camp. It was a cat. A wild cat, of course, one of the great strong specimens that the trappers called catamounts, and quite possibly mate to the one that had bitten Andrew Lindsay. It carried its prey with head held rather high, as a household cat carries a mouse, and it stepped with the same wonderfully cautious delicacy, the big bushy tail drooping. ”

“ The common, ownerless cats of the farm and the country, of the back-garden and the tiles of town, the persecuted poacher, and the perturber of our midnight hours, no better represents the well-bred puss or pasht of the hearthrug than the pariah cur of Eastern cities represents the domestic dog. There are breeds of cats as there are of dogs. Many of these breeds are as beautiful and valuable in their way as the finest breeds of dogs. But those who take to cat-fancying must remember that—as in any animal-fancying—beauty and intelligence can only become markedly developed by taking pains. ”

“ These creatures breed at least four or five times a year; and you seldom find fewer than seven little baby-mice in each nest. The mischief these creatures sometimes work in grass fields, and in fields of newly-sown grain, is almost incalculable. Whole acres have been known to be destroyed in a single night. Cats are the greatest enemies these creatures have: they destroy them young and old, by the dozen, for mere sport—they seldom care to eat them.
In-doors, again, what would the baker, the miller, the draper, the grocer, or even the bookseller do, without his cat? ”

“ Its fur, he saw, was standing ridgewise upon its back; the ears were flattened back somewhat; the tail was switching sharply. The cat, of course, had wakened him with a purpose, and the instant he realized this, he set it upon the arm of the chair and sprang up with a quick turn to face the empty room behind him. By some curious instinct, his arms of their own accord assumed an attitude of defence in front of him, as though to ward off something that threatened his safety. Yet nothing was visible. Only shapes of fog hung about rather heavily in the air, moving slightly to and fro. ”

“ All day long they play with their kitten in all sorts of ways.
Sometimes Will has her for a circus cat; then kitty must jump over a stick, chase a toy mouse, and show off all her tricks. Next, Ellie will take her turn, and rig kitty out in her doll's clothes, and put her to sleep in the doll's bed.
Before poor kit has had her nap out, likely as not Baby will seize her to have a ride in his cart.
Then away she goes, down the walk, bump, bump! Baby's cart has no springs, you must know.
The folks in the house say, "O, that poor kitten! What a life it does lead!" ”

“ She climbs with her claws. She catches things with them—mice, rats, or any thing that you hold out for her to run after. She strikes with her paws, just as angry children and men sometimes do with their hands. When the cat moves her kittens from one place to another, she takes them up with her teeth by the nape of the neck. There is no other way in which she can do it. She can not walk on her hind feet and carry them with her fore paws. It seems as if it would hurt a kitten to carry it in the way that she does, but it does not.
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“ Domestic cats often run away to the woods and subsist on their own hunting; but these are not to be taken for the real wild cat. The female of the latter is the smaller of the two, and retires into the fissures of rocks, or takes possession of some large bird's nest, when she is about to have young ones. They are found all through Germany, Russia, Hungary, and the North of Asia, where their fur is much more valued than it is here, probably on account of the length and quality of the hair.
Our house cats are, by most naturalists, supposed not to have descended from the above wild species. ”

“ She has long since banished from the fields the numerous other cats from the village and the neighbouring farms. The mere sight of such a sleek, milk-fattened house-cat, who hunts and kills only for the sport of the thing rouses a furious hatred in her breast. ”

“ Don’t forget the flower-pot saucer; and remember that, if the cats you wish to take prizes with, belong to any of the finer breeds, they must be parlour cats, and not kitchen-bred brutes.
If you want your cats to grow large, let their food be nourishing but not stimulating; boiled cow’s or sheep’s lights they can eat their stomachs full of; but avoid beef, it is too gross and heating, and don’t patronise the cat’s-meat man.
Kittens and growing cats, in order to grow large, must have plenty of exercise and fun. Leaping exercise is best. Teach them to jump through a hoop, and keep them at it. ”