Tabby cat

“ The mother cat not merely has a far less helpless young creature to succour, but she has a far superior inherent or instinctive equipment; she knows the best food for her kitten, she does not give it 'the same as we had ourselves'—as the human mother tells the coroner—but her own breast invariably. None of us can teach her anything as to washing her kitten, or keeping it warm. She can even play with it and so educate it, in so far as it needs education. There are mothers in all classes of the community who should be ashamed to look a tabby cat in the face. ”

“ It is the same with our petted horse, which greets us with a glad neigh and loves to kiss our hand or face with its soft muzzle. Almost any animal that we make a pet of will repay us with its love and trust, though least of all the cat, which has kept half wild through centuries of taming. But of course we cannot say this of all cats; we must give Tabby credit for some of the spirit of affection under her smooth fur, though as a rule she loves places more than she does persons and is apt to be the most independent member of the household. ”

“ I have a small tabby cat, very comely and graceful. Being very fond of her kitten, she is always uneasy if she loses sight of it if only for a short time. For the last six weeks, the mother, failing to recall the truant back by her voice, even returns to the kitchen for the lower portion of a rabbit's fore-leg, which has served as a plaything for some time. With this in her mouth, she proceeds to search for her lost one, crying all the time, and, putting it down at her feet, repeats her entreaties, to which the kitten, allured by the sight of its plaything, generally responds. ”

“ One handsome tabby cat, named [Pg 30] by us children Roland the Brave, used to hold his place in front of the nursery fire, with the utmost patience and good-humour, in spite of kettles boiling over on him, nursery-maids treading on his paws and tail, and children teasing him in every possible way.”
“The tom-cat which I have at present,” says another, “keeps my children company in their walks, and is indeed more careful of them than the maid, who sometimes has forgotten her duty so far as to leave the perambulator to look after itself, while she is talking and laughing with a tall man in red. ”

“ Tabby cats—the soft, fattish kind, without any manlike qualities, that seemed to be by far the greater proportion of all the men one saw about in buses and in the streets and met in business; tabby cats—sloppy, old-womanish creatures. Cheshire cats—the kind that grinned out of vacuous minds and that never could speak to a woman without grinning; the unattached men at the boarding house invariably were of the Cheshire-cat cats. ”

“ The complexity of the tabby is really remarkable, and {73}for shape and variety of colouring it has no equal in any other tribe of cat. It has comprised in its nature all the really great qualities of the feline, and all its worst attributes. You can truthfully say of one of its specimens that it attaches itself to the individual, while of another in the same litter you will get an element of wildness. A third of the same parents will sober down to the house, but take only a passing notice of people. ”

“ Just as she was becoming quite reckless, almost prancing, with feet stepping at least half an inch from the floor, there suddenly yawned directly in front of the astounded kitten the six-inch chasm of the drinking dish! She toppled; her tail gave a single wild twirl; and she splashed heels over head into two inches of water!
Mrs. Tabby, who had been anxiously watching the unsteady promenade sprang to the basin at once and leaning down tried to pull Calico out by the nape of the neck. ”

“ The incident of the tabby cat's appearance with six kittens may have been a portent either of good or of evil. As you know, I am not a superstitious person. I smile at those whimsical fancies which figure so conspicuously in many people's lives, such as the howling of dogs, the flickering of a candle, the arrangement of the grounds in a cup, the cracking of a mirror, the sudden stopping of the clock, the crowing of hens, the chirping of crickets, the hooting of an owl, the fall of a family portrait, the spilling of salt, a dream of the toothache, etc., etc., etc. ”

“ In this case, the family had gone to the country for a month, leaving Tabby—as [Pg 342] affectionate a little cat as ever lived, and the constant pet and playmate of the young children—shut up in the house. The building was a new one; there were consequently no mice; so, when the family at length returned, almost the first thing that met their gaze was poor Tabby, lying stark and stiff on the parlour hearth. She was a perfect skeleton, while the sardonic grin on her mouth showed how much she must have suffered. Such a death, in that lonely house, almost makes one’s flesh creep to think of. ”

“ So there was silence in the barn, except for Mrs. Buff's voice and the soft sound of pleased purring which the kittens made as they listened to the enchanting tale.
"Mrs. Tabby White seems to have been as clever a cat as ever went rat-catching in a pair of soft-soled shoes. She always knew just where a mouse would peep out of the wainscot, and she had her soft-sharp paw on him before he had time to know that he was not alone in the room. ”

“ I bet that's why he used his middle name. I'd rather be nicknamed 'Manx cat' than to be called 'lean cat,' wouldn't you? 'Skinny, scrawny Tabby Catt'—that's what they call me, Tom. My name might as well have been 'Lynne.'"
"Never mind, Puss. When we get moved to Silver Bow, people won't know about that rhyme."
"Maybe they will think up something worse yet. It was bad enough to have the children [40] of Conroy sing, 'Once there was a little kitty,' and then the folks at Dover used to say, 'Pussy cat, Pussy cat, where have you been?' It gets worse every place we go." ”

“ In fact, it would be something like the hearth in his Adirondack bungalow, a comfortable, homey affair of rough bricks, with an inglenook. And the cat would be an old-fashioned tabby cat such as one reads of in old-fashioned stories. ”

“ Sick as a Cat.—Cats are subject to sickness or vomiting for the purpose of throwing up indigestible matter, such as the fur of mice, feathers of birds, which would otherwise collect and form balls internally. For this reason they eat grass, which produces the desired effect; hence arises the phrase "as sick as a cat."
Tabby.—"An old maid; either from Tabitha, a formal antiquated name, or else from a tabby cat; old maids, by the rude, weak-minded, and vulgar, being often compared to cats. ”

“ The light tabby Persian, matched with a female Abyssinian, would give unexpected surprises, so with the dark blue Archangel; a well-ticked blue would not only be a novelty, but an elegant colour hitherto unseen. A deep red tabby might result in a whole colour, bright red, or a yellow tint. I have seen a cat nearly black [107] ticked with white, which had yellow eyes. It was truly a splendid and very beautiful animal, of a most recherché colour. Matched with a silver-gray tabby, a silver-gray tick is generally the sequence. A yellow-white will possibly prove excellent. ”

“ It multiplies as fast as our common Cats.”
A wild Cat is said to have been killed in Cumberland (my authority gives no date) which measured above five feet in length from the nose to the end of the tail.
Mr. Timbs relates how, in 1850, he saw, at No. 175, Oxford Street, a beautifully-marked tabby Cat weighing 253⁄4 lbs., and measuring 27 inches round the body, and 37 inches from the tip of the tail to the end of the nose; height to top of shoulders 111⁄2 inches: he was then seven years old.
The tame Cat’s tail ends in a point; the wild Cat’s in a tuft. ”

“ One of Miss Braddon's heroines says: "It is so nice to see a favorite horse looking over the door of his loose-box, with a big tabby-cat sitting on the window-ledge beside him." The big tabby would probably prefer being on horseback, for puss takes very kindly to the stable, and the horse takes as kindly to puss. A cat belonging to the royal stables at Windsor made herself so agreeable to one of the horses there that, rather than put her to any inconvenience, he would take his night's rest standing. ”

“ All arrangements were gone through and I was well pleased with the outlook excepting for the lack of a cat. Now, it may seem strange that an ordinary household pet like a cat should in any way be considered, but really, friends, I was somewhat disappointed in not finding Tabby.
Ever since the Persian kitten of pedigreed fame entered into my life, I have had a natural antipathy for the felines. La Page’s excuses for not having a cat were apparently sound logic. “A cat is like a woman,” he said. “She purrs when petted, and scratches and spits venom when things go wrong. ”

“ Thus the yokel, being told that Pussy's ablutions foretold rain, passed, by an easy mental process, to the conviction that they brought rain; and so—eager for the harvesting—killed his cat, as the simplest method of escaping showers. The sailor's wife, in her uncertainty as to whether the fast rising wind was the cause or the effect of Tabby's nervous clawing at bed curtain and table leg, deemed it but common prudence to drown the animal which might otherwise drown her good man at sea. It is not wise nor well to herald calamity. The part of Cassandra is ever an ungrateful one to play. ”

“ Cat at once cuddled down close beside her. Suddenly spying her sisters again, she made a fresh start only to be stopped by a well-directed slap from her mother's swift paw. "M'you, M'you!" snapped Mrs. Cat. "You just sit still for a while. I've had worry enough for one day, and I will not help you out again."
"I don't want you to," sniffed Calico, rubbing her still smarting nose thoughtfully.
Tabby sighed, as the kitten made yet another start for her sisters, but wisely let her go.
"Did you ever?" she groaned; "but then, kittens will be kittens!" ”

“ The mummies of the cats I have seen in no case had any hair left, so that it was impossible to determine what colour they were. The imported cats are of stouter build than the English and less marked. These bred with an English tabby often give a result of nearly black, the back band extending very much down the sides, and the brown ticks almost disappearing, producing a rich and beautiful colouring.
I find there is yet another tint or colour of the tabby proper which I have not mentioned, that is to say, a cat marked with light wavy lines, and an exceedingly pretty one it is. It is very rare ”

“ This is hard lines, not only to poor tabby, but also to tabby’s master or mistress; and it has often been questioned whether a keeper has the right to destroy another person’s cat. It has been alleged that, though the cat is a poacher, yet that you would not kill a poacher, but only secure him, and that a cat-trap would be sufficient for the purpose; so that the tabby’s master might redeem his property, if he thought fit, by paying a fine for the damage done. ”

“ As for the hair, cats are divided into two classes, the long-haired and the short-haired, the Persian and Angora being notable for the length of their hair. Most common among our cats is the soot-colored or gray, known as the "tabby," which has black stripes going round its legs, neck, and tail, and also down its sides. These show a return to the wild-cat in color, though tabby is as tame as her rivals.
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The cat is not lacking in brain power nor in affection, for in many cases it shows warm love for its mistress. There are various anecdotes of cat logic, of which a few may be told. ”

“ They first ate up all his oats, his grass, and turnips, so that only potatoes could be grown on the place. By-and-by they took to eating the stems of even those as soon as they appeared above ground, so that all the poor man’s live stock was reduced to one in number, namely, a big tabby cat. This cat throve upon the foe. She also took a few youthful prisoners, whom she brought home to play with and amuse a fine family of kittens, which she had in the cottage garret. These young rabbits lived and grew, and burrowed and made nests in the thatch. ”

“ Taffy is the handsomest tiger cat I have ever seen, and as he has the crook in his tail, he belongs to the Tabby breed. Taffy is very large, usually weighing fourteen pounds, but he has a very small head, and very small, finely shaped paws. The under parts of them look like black velvet. In color he is jet black and the other fur very much like a raccoon's, light tan at the ends shading into yellow, then into drab. As the sun strikes him every hair seems full of light and he is one mass of iridescent colors. ”

“ Only Aunt Tabby, Slyboots and I sat on the fence.
239“Oh! this is awful!” I said. “Never in Boston, where cats are supposed to have such powerful voices, have I heard such yelling and caterwauling.”
“They had better look out,” remarked Aunt Tabby, “or the dogs will hear them. They are too near the house for such a racket.”
“Will any one come out alive?” I gasped. “Oh! this is terrible! Surely half will be crippled for life,” and I gazed in fascinated terror at the big, whirling, moving, hairy bunch of cat figures leaping, vaulting, yelling and spitting like furies. ”

“ Cats then, like old maids, are fifty times worse than they are painted, and the reason why people don’t like them is because they don’t understand them. I have at this moment a large and beautiful tabby, and I positively rejoice that that cat is so fierce to everyone but me, because before I got her she was subjected to the most barbarous treatment, neither fed, nor housed, nor watered, and I believe I was the first person from whom she ever got a word of kindness. ”