Persia is a handsome specimen of the fine blue chinchilla class. She is quiet, amiable, and shows her high breeding in her good manners and intelligence. Her tail is like a fox's brush, and her ruff gladdens the heart of every cat fancier that beholds her. She is an aristocratic little creature, and seems to feel that she comes of famous foreign ancestry. Mrs. Clarke makes great pets of her beautiful cats, and trains them to do many a cunning trick.

Another cat which has won several prizes, and took the silver bowl offered for the best cat and litter of kittens in the 1895 cat show of New York is Ellen Terry, a handsome orange and white, exhibited by Mrs. Fabius M. Clarke. At that show she had seven beautiful kittens, and they all reposed in a dainty white and yellow basket with the mother, delighting the hearts of all beholders. She now belongs to Mrs. Brian Brown, of Brooklyn. She is a well-bred animal, with a pretty face and fine feathering. One of the kittens who won the silver bowl in 1895 took the second prize for long-haired white female in New York, in March, 1896. She is a beautiful creature, known as Princess Dinazarde, and belongs to Mrs. James S.H. Umsted, of New York.

Sylvia is still in Mrs. Clarke's possession, and is a beautiful creature, dainty, refined, and very jealous of her mistress's affection. Mrs. Clarke also owns a real Manx cat, brought from the Isle of Man by Captain McKenzie. It acts like a monkey, climbing up on mantels and throwing down pictures and other small objects, in the regular monkey spirit of mischief. It has many queer attributes, and hops about like a rabbit. She also owns Sapho, who was bred by Ella Wheeler Wilcox from her Madame Ref and Mr. Stevens's Ajax, an uncommonly handsome white Angora.

The sire of Topso and Sylvia was Musjah, owned by Mr. Ferdinand Danton, a New York artist. He was a magnificent creature, imported from Algiers in 1894; a pure blue Persian of uncommon size and beautiful coloring. Musjah was valued at two hundred dollars, but has been stolen from Mr. Danton. Probably his present owner will not exhibit him at future cat shows.

Ajax is one of the finest white Angoras in this country. His owner, Mr. D.W. Stevens, of West-field, Mass., has refused five hundred dollars for him, and would not consider one thousand dollars as a fair exchange for the majestic creature. He was born in 1893, and is valued, not only for his fine points, but because he is a family pet, with a fine disposition and uncommon intelligence. At the New York show in 1895, and at several other shows, he has won first prizes.

One of his sons bids fair to be as fine a cat as Ajax. This is Sampson, bred by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from Madame Ref, and owned by Mrs. Brian Brown. Mr. Stevens has a number of other high-bred cats, one of whom is Raby, a reddish black female, with a red ruff. Another is Lady, who is pure white; and then there are Monkey and Midget, who are black and white Angoras. All of these cats are kept in a pen, half of which is within the barn, and the other half out of doors and enclosed by wire netting. Ajax roams over the house at will, and the others pass some of the time there, but the entire collection, sometimes numbering twenty-five, is too valuable to be given the freedom of all outdoors. Both Mr. and Mrs. Stevens are very fond of cats, and have made a study of them in sickness and health. Some years ago, a malicious raid was made on the pen, and every cat poisoned with the exception of Raby, whose life was saved only by frequent and generous doses of skunk's oil and milk.

At the first New York show, Miss Ethel Nesmith Anderson's Chico, an imported Persian, took the second prize, after Ajax, in the pure white, longhaired class. The third prize was won by Snow, another imported Angora, belonging to Mr. George A. Rawson, of Newton, Mass. Snow had already taken a prize at Crystal Palace. He is a magnificent animal. Mr. Rawson owns a number of beautiful cats, which are the pride of his family, and bring visitors from all parts of the country. His orange-colored, long-haired Dandy won first prizes at the Boston shows of 1896 and 1897 in the gelded class. He is beautifully marked, and has a disposition as "childlike and bland" as the most exacting owner could wish. Miss Puff is also owned by Mr. Rawson, and presents him with beautiful white Angora kittens every year. The group of ten white kittens, raised by him in 1896, gives some idea of the beauty of these kittens: although the picture was taken with a high wind blowing in their faces, causing one white beauty to conceal all marks of identification except an ear, and another to hide completely behind his playmates.

Mustapha was entered by Dr. Huidekoper in the first New York show, but not for competition. He was a magnificent brindled Persian gelded cat, six years old, who enjoyed the plaudits of the multitude just as well as though he had taken first prize. He was very fond of his master, but very shy with strangers when at home. He slept on the library desk, or a cushion next his master's bed whenever he could be alone with the doctor, but at other times preferred his own company or that of the cook.

Another cat that attracted a great deal of attention was Master Pettet's Tommy, a white Persian, imported in 1889 and valued at five hundred dollars, although no money consideration could induce his owners to part with him. He was brought from the interior of Persia, where he was captured in a wild state. He was kept caged for over a year, and would not be tamed; but at last he became domesticated, and is now one of the dearest pets imaginable. His fur is extremely long and soft, without a colored hair. His tail is broad and carried proudly aloft, curling over toward his back when walking. His face is full of intelligence: his ears well-tipped and feathered, and his ruff a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

King Max, a long-haired, black male, weighing thirteen pounds at the age of one year, and valued at one thousand dollars, took first prizes in Boston in January, 1897, '98, and '99. He is owned by Mrs. E.R. Taylor, of Medford, Mass., and attracts constant attention during shows. His fur is without a single white hair and is a finger deep; his ruff encircles his head like a great aureole. He is not only one of the most beautiful cats I have ever seen, but one of the best-natured: as his reputation for beauty spreads among visitors at the show, everybody wants to see him, and he has no chance at all for naps. Generally he is brought forward and taken from his cage a hundred times a day; but not once does he show the least sign of ill-temper, and even on the last day of the show he keeps up a continual low purr of content and happiness. Perhaps he knows how handsome he is.

Grover B., the Mascotte, is a Philadelphia cat who took the twenty-five dollar gold medal in 1895, at the New York show, as the heaviest white cat exhibited. He belongs to Mr. and Mrs. W.P. Buchanan, and weighs over twenty pounds. He is a thoroughbred, and is valued at one thousand dollars, having been brought from the Isle of Malta, and he wears a one-hundred-dollar gold collar. He is a remarkable cat, noted particularly for his intelligence and amiability. He is very dainty in his choice of food, and prefers to eat his dinners in his high chair at the table. He has a fascinating habit of feeding himself with his paws. He is very talkative just before meal-times, and is versed in all the feline arts of making one's self understood. He waits at the front door for his master every night, and will not leave him all the evening. He sleeps in a bed of his own, snugly wrapped up in blankets, and he is admired by all who know him, not more for his beauty than for his excellent deportment. He furnishes one more proof that a properly trained and well-cared-for cat has a large amount of common sense and appreciation.

Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett's tiger cat Dick attracted a great deal of attention at the first New York show. He weighs twenty-two pounds and is three feet long, with a girth of twenty-four inches; and he has attained some degree of prominence in her writings.

A trio of cats that were a centre of attraction at that first show belonged to Colonel Mann, of Town Topics. They were jet black, and rejoiced in the names of Taffy, The Laird, and Little Billee. They took a first prize, but two of them have since come to an untimely end. Colonel Mann is a devoted lover of animals, and has given a standing order that none of his employees shall, if they see a starving kitten on the street, leave it to suffer and die. Accordingly his office is a sort of refuge for unfortunate cats, and one may always see a number of happy-looking creatures there, who seem to appreciate the kindness which surrounds them. The office is in a fifth story overlooking Fifth Avenue: and the cats used to crawl out on the wide window-ledge in summer-time and enjoy the air and the view of Madison Square. But alas! The Laird and Little Billee came to their deaths by jumping from their high perch after sparrows and falling to the pavement below. Now there is a strong wire grating across the windows, and Taffy, a monstrous, shiny black fellow, is the leader in the "Town Topics Colony."

Dr. H.L. Hammond, of Killingly, Ct., makes a speciality of the rare Australian cats, and has taken numerous prizes with them at every cat show in this country, where they are universally admired. His Columbia is valued at six hundred dollars, and his Tricksey at five hundred dollars. They are, indeed, beautiful creatures, though somewhat unique in the cat world, as we see it. They are very sleek cats, with fur so short, glossy, and fine that it looks like the finest satin. Their heads are small and narrow, with noses that seem pointed when compared with other cats. They are very intelligent and affectionate little creatures, and make the loveliest of pets. Dr. and Mrs. Hammond are extremely fond of their unusual and valuable cat family,—and tell the most interesting tales of their antics and habits. His Columbia was an imported cat, and the doctor has reason to believe that she with her mate are originally from the Siamese cat imported from Siam to Australia. They are all very delicate as kittens, the mother rarely having more than one at a time. With two exceptions, these cats have never had more than two kittens at a litter. They are very partial to heat, but cannot stand cold weather. They have spells of sleeping when nothing has power to disturb them, but when they do wake up they have a "high time," running and playing. They are affectionate, being very fond of their owner, but rather shy with strangers. They are uncommonly intelligent, too, and are very teachable when young. They are such beautiful creatures, besides being rare in this part of the world, that it is altogether probable that they will be much sought after as pets.



CHAPTER IX

CONCERNING CATS IN POETRY

As far back as the ninth century, a poem on a cat was written, which has come down to us from the Arabic. Its author was Ibn Alalaf Alnaharwany, of Bagdad, who died in 318 A.H. or A.D. 930. He was one of the better known poets of the khalifate, and his work may still be found in the original. The following verses, which were translated by Dr. Carlyle, are confessedly a paraphrase rather than a strict translation; but, of course, the sense is the same. Commentators differ on the question as to whether the poet really meant anything more in this poem than to sing of the death of a pet, and some have tried to ascribe to it a hidden meaning which implies beautiful slaves, lovers, and assignations; just as the wise Browning student discovers meanings in that great poet's works of which he never dreamed. Nevertheless, we who love cats are fain to believe that this follower of Mahomet meant only to celebrate the merits—perhaps it would hardly do to call them virtues—of his beloved cat.

The lines are inscribed,—

ON A CAT

THAT WAS KILLED AS SHE WAS ATTEMPTING TO ROB A DOVE-HOUSE

BY IBN ALALAF ALNAHARWANY

Poor Puss is gone!—'tis Fate's decree— Yet I must still her loss deplore; For dearer than a child was she, And ne'er shall I behold her more!

With many a sad, presaging tear, This morn I saw her steal away, While she went on without a fear, Except that she should miss her prey.

I saw her to the dove-house climb, With cautious feet and slow she stept, Resolved to balance loss of time By eating faster than she crept.

Her subtle foes were on the watch, And marked her course, with fury fraught; And while she hoped the birds to catch, An arrow's point the huntress caught.

In fancy she had got them all, And drunk their blood and sucked their breath; Alas! she only got a fall, And only drank the draught of death.

Why, why was pigeon's flesh so nice, That thoughtless cats should love it thus? Hadst thou but lived on rats and mice, Thou hadst been living still, poor Puss!

Cursed be the taste, howe'er refined, That prompts us for such joys to wish; And cursed the dainty where we find Destruction lurking in the dish.

Among the poets, Pussy has always found plenty of friends. Her feline grace and softness has inspired some of the greatest, and, from Tasso and Petrarch down, her quiet and dignified demeanor have been celebrated in verse. Mr. Swinburne, within a few years, has written a charming poem which was published in the Athenaeum, and which places the writer among the select inner circle of true cat-lovers. He calls his verses—

TO A CAT

Stately, kindly, lordly friend, Condescend Here to sit by me, and turn Glorious eyes that smile and burn, Golden eyes, love's lustrous meed, On the golden page I read.

* * * * *

Dogs may fawn on all and some As they come: You a friend of loftier mind, Answer friends alone in kind. Just your foot upon my hand Softly bids it understand.

Thomas Gray's poem on the death of Robert Walpole's cat, which was drowned in a bowl of goldfish, was greatly prized by the latter; after the death of the poet the bowl was placed on a pedestal at Strawberry Hill, with a few lines from the poem as an inscription. In a letter dated March 1, 1747, accompanying it, Mr. Gray says:—

"As one ought to be particularly careful to avoid blunders in a compliment of condolence, it would be a sensible satisfaction to me (before I testify my sorrow and the sincere part I take in your misfortune) to know for certain who it is I lament. [Note the 'Who.'] I knew Zara and Selima (Selima was it, or Fatima?), or rather I knew them both together, for I cannot justly say which was which. Then, as to your handsome cat, the name you distinguish her by, I am no less at a loss, as well knowing one's handsome cat is always the cat one likes best; or if one be alive and the other dead, it is usually the latter that is the handsomest. Besides, if the point were never so clear, I hope you do not think me so ill bred or so imprudent as to forfeit all my interest in the survivor. Oh, no; I would rather seem to mistake and imagine, to be sure, it must be the tabby one that had met with this sad accident. Till this affair is a little better determined, you will excuse me if I do not cry, 'Tempus inane peto, requiem, spatiumque doloris.'"

He closes the letter by saying, "There's a poem for you; it is rather too long for an epitaph." And then the familiar—

"'Twas on a lofty vase's side, Where China's gayest art had dy'd The azure flowers that blow: Demurest of the tabby kind, The pensive Selima, reclined, Gazed on the lake below."

Wordsworth's "Kitten and the Falling Leaves," is in the high, moralizing style.

"That way look, my Infant, lo! What a pretty baby show. See the kitten on the wall, Sporting with the leaves that fall,

* * * * *

"But the kitten, how she starts, Crouches, stretches, paws, and darts First at one and then its fellow, Just as light and just as yellow: There are many now—now one, Now they stop, and there are none. What intentness of desire In her upward eye of fire! With a tiger-leap halfway Now she meets the coming prey, Lets it go as fast, and then Has it in her power again: Now she works with three or four. Like an Indian conjuror: Quick as he in feats of art, Far beyond in joy of heart. Were her antics played in the eye Of a thousand standers-by, Clapping hands with shout and stare, What would little Tabby care For the plaudits of the crowd? Over happy to be proud, Over wealthy in the treasure Of her own exceeding pleasure.

* * * * *

"Pleased by any random toy: By a kitten's busy joy, Or an infant's laughing eye Sharing in the ecstacy: I would fain like that or this Find my wisdom in my bliss: Keep the sprightly soul awake, And have faculties to take, Even from things by sorrow wrought, Matter for a jocund thought, Spite of care and spite of grief, To gambol with life's falling leaf."

Cowper's love for animals was well known. At one time, according to Lady Hesketh, he had besides two dogs, two goldfinches, and two canaries, five rabbits, three hares, two guinea-pigs, a squirrel, a magpie, a jay, and a starling. In addition he had, at least, one cat, for Lady Hesketh says, "One evening the cat giving one of the hares a sound box on the ear, the hare ran after her, and having caught her, punished her by drumming on her back with her two feet hard as drumsticks, till the creature would actually have been killed had not Mrs. Unwin rescued her." It might have been this very cat that was the inspiration of Cowper's poem, "To a Retired Cat," which had as a moral the familiar stanza:—

"Beware of too sublime a sense Of your own worth and consequence: The man who dreams himself so great And his importance of such weight, That all around, in all that's done, Must move and act for him alone, Will learn in school of tribulation The folly of his expectation."

Baudelaire wrote:—

"Come, beauty, rest upon my loving heart, But cease thy paws' sharp-nailed play, And let me peer into those eyes that dart Mixed agate and metallic ray."

* * * * *

"Grave scholars and mad lovers all admire And love, and each alike, at his full tide Those suave and puissant cats, the fireside's pride, Who like the sedentary life and glow of fire."

Goldsmith also wrote of the kitten:—

"Around in sympathetic mirth Its tricks the kitten tries: The cricket chirrups in the hearth, The crackling fagot flies."

Does this not suggest a charming glimpse of the poet's English home?

Keats was evidently not acquainted with the best and sleekest pet cat, and his "Sonnet to a Cat" does not indicate that he fully appreciated their higher qualities.

Mr. Whittier, our good Quaker poet, while not attempting an elaborate sonnet or stilted elegiac, shows a most appreciative spirit in the lines he wrote for a little girl who asked him one day, with tears in her eyes, to write an epitaph for her lost Bathsheba.

"Bathsheba: To whom none ever said scat, No worthier cat Ever sat on a mat Or caught a rat: Requies-cat."

Clinton Scollard, however, has given us an epitaph that many sympathizing admirers would gladly inscribe on the tombstones of their lost pets, if it were only the popular fashion to put tombstones over their graves. This is Mr. Scollard's tribute, the best ever written:—

GRIMALKIN

AN ELEGY ON PETER, AGED TWELVE

In vain the kindly call: in vain The plate for which thou once wast fain At morn and noon and daylight's wane, O King of mousers. No more I hear thee purr and purr As in the frolic days that were, When thou didst rub thy velvet fur Against my trousers.

How empty are the places where Thou erst wert frankly debonair, Nor dreamed a dream of feline care, A capering kitten. The sunny haunts where, grown a cat, You pondered this, considered that, The cushioned chair, the rug, the mat, By firelight smitten.

Although of few thou stoodst in dread, How well thou knew a friendly tread, And what upon thy back and head The stroking hand meant. A passing scent could keenly wake Thy eagerness for chop or steak, Yet, Puss, how rarely didst thou break The eighth commandment.

Though brief thy life, a little span Of days compared with that of man, The time allotted to thee ran In smoother metre. Now with the warm earth o'er thy breast, O wisest of thy kind and best, Forever mayst thou softly rest, In pace, Peter.

One only has to read this poem to feel that Mr. Scollard knew what it is to love a gentle, intelligent, affectionate cat—made so by kind treatment.

To Francois Coppee the cat is as sacred as it was to the Egyptians of old. The society of his feline pets is to him ever delightful and consoling, and it may have inspired him to write some of his most melodious verses. Nevertheless he is not the cat's poet. It was Charles Cros who wrote:—

"Chatte blanche, chatte sans tache, Je te demande dans ces vers Quel secret dort dans tes yeux verts, Quel sarcasme sous ta moustache?"

Here is a version in verse of the famous "Kilkenny Cats":—

"O'Flynn, she was an Irishman, as very well was known, And she lived down in Kilkenny, and she lived there all alone, With only six great large tom-cats that knowed their ways about; And everybody else besides she scrupulously shut out."

"Oh, very fond of cats was she, and whiskey, too, 'tis said, She didn't feed 'em very much, but she combed 'em well instead: As may be guessed, these large tom-cats did not get very sleek Upon a combing once a day and a 'haporth' once a week.

"Now, on one dreary winter's night O'Flynn she went to bed With a whiskey bottle under her arm, the whiskey in her head. The six great large tom-cats they all sat in a dismal row, And horridly glared their hazy eyes, their tails wagged to and fro.

"At last one grim graymalkin spoke, in accents dire to tell, And dreadful were the words which in his horrid whisper fell: And all the six large tom-cats in answer loud did squall, 'Let's kill her, and let's eat her, body, bones, and all.'

"Oh, horrible! Oh, terrible! Oh, deadly tale to tell! When the sun shone through the window-hole all seemed still and well: The cats they sat and licked their paws all in a merry ring. But nothing else in all the house looked like a living thing.

"Anon they quarrelled savagely—they spit, they swore, they hollered: At last these six great large tom-cats they one another swallered: And naught but one long tail was left in that once peaceful dwelling, And a very tough one, too, it was—it's the same that I've been telling."

By far more artistic is the version for which I am indebted to Miss Katharine Eleanor Conway, herself a poet of high order and a lover of cats.

THE KILKENNY CATS

There wanst was two cats in Kilkenny, Aitch thought there was one cat too many; So they quarrelled and fit, They scratched and they bit, Till, excepting their nails, And the tips of their tails, Instead of two cats, there wasn't any.

This version comes from Ireland, and is doubtless the correct original.

"Note," says Miss Conway, "the more than Greek delicacy with which the tragedy is told. No mutilation, no gore; just an effacement—prompt and absolute—'there wasn't any.' It would be hard to overpraise that fine touch."



CHAPTER X

CONCERNING CAT ARTISTS

While thousands of artists, first and last, have undertaken to paint cats, there are but few who have been able to do them justice. Artists who have possessed the technical skill requisite to such delicate work have rarely been willing to give to what they have regarded as unimportant subjects the necessary study; and those who have been willing to study cats seriously have possessed but seldom the skill requisite to paint them well.

Thomas Janvier, whose judgment on such matters is unquestioned, declares that not a dozen have succeeded in painting thoroughly good cat portraits, portraits so true to nature as to satisfy—if they could express their feelings in the premises—the cat subjects and their cat friends. Only four painters, he says, ever painted cats habitually and always well.

Two members of this small but highly distinguished company flourished about a century ago in widely separated parts of the world, and without either of them knowing that the other existed.

One was a Japanese artist, named Ho-Kou-Say, whose method of painting, of course, was quite unlike that to which we are accustomed in this western part of the world, but who had a wonderful faculty for making his queer little cat figures seem intensely alive.

The other was a Swiss artist, named Gottfried Mind, whose cat pictures are so perfect in their way that he came to be honorably known as "the Cat Raphael."

The other two members of the cat quartet are the French artist, Monsieur Louis Eugene Lambert, whose pictures are almost as well known in this country as they are in France; and the Dutch artist, Madame Henriette Ronner, whose delightful cat pictures are known even better, as she catches the softer and sweeter graces of the cat more truly than Lambert.

A thoroughly good picture of a cat is hard to paint, from a technical standpoint, because the artist must represent not only the soft surface of fur, but the underlying hard lines of muscle: and his studies must be made under conditions of cat perversity which are at times quite enough to drive him wild. If he is to represent the cat in repose, he must wait for her to take that position of her own accord; and then, just as his sketch is well under way, she is liable to rise, stretch herself, and walk off. If his picture is to represent action, he must wait for the cat to do what he wants her to do, and that many times before he can be quite sure that his drawing is correct. With these severe limitations upon cat painting, it is not surprising that very few good pictures of cats have been painted.

Gottfried Mind has left innumerable pen sketches to prove his intimate knowledge of the beauty and charm of the cat. He was born at Berne in 1768. He had a special taste for drawing animals even when very young, bears and cats being his favorite subjects. As he grew older he obtained a wonderful proficiency, and his cat pictures appeared with every variety of expression. Their silky coats, their graceful attitudes, their firm shape beneath the undulating fur, were treated so as to make Mind's cats seem alive.

It was Madame Lebrun who named him the "Raphael of Cats," and many a royal personage bought his pictures. He, like most cat painters, kept his cats constantly with him, knowing that only by persistent and never tiring study could he ever hope to master their infinite variety. His favorite mother cat kept closely at his side when he worked, or perhaps in his lap; while her kittens ran over him as fearlessly as they played with their mother's tail. When a terrible epidemic broke out among the cats of Berne in 1809, he hid his Minette safely from the police, but he never quite recovered from the horror of the massacre of the eight hundred that had to be sacrificed for the general safety of the people. He died in 1814, and in poverty, although a few years afterward his pictures brought extravagant prices.

Burbank, the English painter, has done some good things in cat pictures. The expression of the face and the peculiar light in the cat's eye made up the realism of Burbank's pictures, which were reproductions of sleek and handsome drawing-room pets, whose shining coats he brings out with remarkable precision.

The ill-fated Swiss artist Cornelius Wisscher's marvellous tom-cat has become typical.

Delacroix, the painter of tigers, was a man of highly nervous temperament, but his cat sketches bring out too strongly the tigerish element to be altogether successful.

Louis Eugene Lambert was a pupil of Delacroix. He was born in Paris, September 25, 1825, and the chief event of his youth was, perhaps, the great friendship which existed between him and Maurice Sands. Entomology was a fad with him for a time, but he finally took up his serious life-work in 1854, when he began illustrating for the Journal of Agriculture. In connection with his work, he began to study animals carefully, making dogs his specialty. In 1862 he illustrated an edition of La Fontaine, and in 1865 he obtained his first medal for a painting of dogs. In 1866 his painting of cats, "L'Horloge qui avance," won another medal, and brought his first fame as a cat painter. In 1874 he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. His "Envoi" in 1874, "Les Chats du Cardinal," and "Grandeur Decline" brought more medals. Although he has painted hosts of excellent dog pictures, cats are his favorites, on account, as he says, of "les formes fines et gracieux; mouvements, souple et subtil."

In the Luxembourg Gallery, Mr. Lambert's "Family of Cats" is considered one of the finest cat pictures in the world. In this painting the mother sits upon a table watching the antics of her four frivolous kittens. There is a wonderful smoothness of touch and refinement of treatment that have never yet been excelled. "After the Banquet" is another excellent example of the same smoothness of execution, with fulness of action instead of repose. And yet there is an undeniable lack of the softer attributes which should be evident in the faces of the group.

It is here that Madame Ronner excels all other cat painters, living or dead. She not only infuses a wonderful degree of life into her little figures, but reproduces the shades of expression, shifting and variable as the sands of the sea, as no other artist of the brush has done. Asleep or awake, her cats look exactly to the "felinarian" like cats with whom he or she is familiar. Curiosity, drowsiness, indifference, alertness, love, hate, anxiety, temper, innocence, cunning, fear, confidence, mischief, earnestness, dignity, helplessness,—they are all in Madame Ronner's cats' faces, just as we see them in our own cats.

Madame Ronner is the daughter of Josephus Augustus Knip, a landscape painter of some celebrity sixty years ago, and from her father she received her first art education. She is now over seventy years old, and for nearly fifty years has made her home in Brussels. There, she and her happy cats, a big black Newfoundland dog named Priam, with a pert cockatoo named Coco, dwell together in a roomy house in its own grounds, back a little from the Charleroi Road. Madame Ronner has a good son to care for her, and she loves the animals, who are both her servants and her friends. Every day she spends three good hours of the morning in her studio, painting her delightful cat pictures with the energy of a young artist and the expert precision which we know so well. She was sixteen when she succeeded in painting a picture which was accepted and sold at a public exhibition at Dusseldorf. This was a study of a cat seated in a window and examining with great curiosity a bumblebee; while it would not compare with her later work, there must have been good quality in it, or it would not have got into a Dusseldorf picture exhibition at all. At any rate, it was the beginning of her successful career as an artist. From that time she managed to support herself and her father by painting pictures of animals. For many years, however, she confined herself to painting dogs. Her most famous picture, "The Friend of Man," belongs to this period—a pathetic group composed of a sorrowing old sand-seller looking down upon a dying dog still harnessed to the little sand-wagon, with the two other dogs standing by with wistful looks of sympathy. When this picture was exhibited, in 1860, Madame Ronner's fame was established permanently.

But it so happened that in the same year a friendly kitten came to live in her home, wandering in through the open doorway from no one knew where, and deciding, after sniffing about the place in cat fashion, to remain there for the remainder of its days. And it also happened that Madame Ronner was lured by this small stranger, who so coolly quartered himself upon her, to change the whole current of her artistic life, and to paint cats instead of dogs. Of course, this change could not be made in a moment; but after that the pictures which she painted to please herself were cat pictures, and as these were exhibited and her reputation as a cat painter became established, cat orders took the place of dog orders more and more, until at last her time was given wholly to cat painting. Her success in painting cat action has been due as much to her tireless patience as to her skill; a patience that gave her strength to spend hours upon hours in carefully watching the quick movements of the lithe little creatures, and in correcting again and again her rapidly made sketches.

Every cat-lover knows that a cat cannot be induced, either by reason or by affection, to act in accordance with any wishes save its own. Also that cats find malicious amusement in doing what they know they are not wanted to do, and that with an affectation of innocence that materially aggravates their deliberate offence.

But Madame Ronner, through her long experience, has evolved a way to get them to pose as models. Her plan is the simple one of keeping her models prisoners in a glass box, enclosed in a wire cage, while she is painting them. Inside the prison she cannot always command their actions, but her knowledge of cat character enables her to a certain extent to persuade them to take the pose which she requires. By placing a comfortable cushion in the cage she can tempt her model to lie down; some object of great interest, like a live mouse, for instance, exhibited just outside the cage is sure to create the eager look that she has shown so well on cat faces; and to induce her kittens to indulge in the leaps and bounds which she has succeeded so wonderfully in transferring to canvas, she keeps hanging from the top of the cage a most seductive "bob."

Madame Ronner's favorite models are "Jem" and "Monmouth," cats of rare sweetness of temper, whose conduct in all relations of life is above reproach. The name of "Monmouth," as many will recall, was made famous by the hero of Monsieur La Bedolierre's classic, "Mother Michel and her Cat," [Footnote: Translated into English by Thomas Bailey Aldrich.] and therefore has clustering about it traditions so glorious that its wearers in modern times must be upheld always by lofty hopes and high resolves. Doubtless Monmouth Ronner feels the responsibility entailed upon him by his name.

In the European galleries are several noted paintings in which the cat appears more or less unsuccessfully. Breughel and Teniers made their grotesque "Cat Concerts" famous, but one can scarcely see why, since the drawing is poor and there is no real insight into cat character evident. The sleeping cat, in Breughel's "Paradise Lost" in the Louvre, is better, being well drawn, but so small as to leave no chance for expression. Lebrun's "Sleep of the Infant Jesus," in the Louvre, has a slumbering cat under the stove, and in Barocci's "La Madonna del Gatto" the cat is the centre of interest. Holman Hunt's "The Awakening Conscience" and Murillo's Holy Family "del Pajarito" give the cat as a type of cruelty, but have failed egregiously in accuracy of form or expression. Paul Veronese's cat in "The Marriage at Cana" is fearfully and wonderfully made, and even Rembrandt failed when he tried to introduce a cat into his pictures.

Rosa Bonheur has been wise enough not to attempt cat pictures, knowing that special study, for which she had not the time or the inclination, is necessary to fit an artist to excel with the feline character. Landseer, too, after trying twice, once in 1819 with "The Cat Disturbed" and once in 1824 with "The Cat's Paw," gave up all attempts at dealing with Grimalkin. Indeed, most artists who have attempted it, have found that to be a wholly successful cat artist such whole-hearted devotion to the subject as Madame Ronner's is the invariable price of distinction.

Of late, however, more artists are found who are willing to pay this price, who are giving time and study not only to the subtle shadings of the delicate fur, but to the varying facial expression and sinuous movements of the cat. Margaret Stocks, of Munich, for example, is rapidly coming to the front as a cat painter, and some predict for her (she is still a young woman) a future equal to Madame Ronner's. Gambier Bolton's "Day Dreams" shows admirably the quality and "tumbled-ness" of an Angora kitten's fur, while the expression and drawing are equally good. Miss Cecilia Beaux's "Brighton Cats" is famous, and every student of cats recognizes its truthfulness at once.

Angora and Persian kittens find another loving and faithful student in J. Adam, whose paintings have been photographed and reproduced in this country times without number. "Puss in Boots" is another foreign picture which has been photographed and sold extensively in this country. "Little Milksop" by the same artist, Mr. Frank Paton, gives fairly faithful drawing and expression of two kittens who have broken a milk pitcher and are eagerly lapping up the contents.

In the Munich Gallery there is a painting by Claus Meyer, "Bose Zungen," which has become quite noted. His three old cats and three young cats show three gossiping old crones by the side of whom are three small and awkward kittens.

Of course, there are no artists whose painting of the cat is to be compared with Madame Ronner's. Mr. J.L. Dolph, of New York City, has painted hundreds of cat pieces which have found a ready sale, and Mr. Sid L. Brackett, of Boston, is doing very creditable work. A successful cat painter of the younger school is Mr. N.N. Bickford, of New York, whose "Peek-a-Boo" hangs in a Chicago gallery side by side with cats of Madame Ronner and Monsieur Lambert. "Miss Kitty's Birthday" shows that he has genuine understanding of cat character, and is mastering the subtleties of long white fur.

Mr. Bickford is a pupil of Jules Lefebvre Boulanger and Miralles. It was by chance that he became a painter of cats. Mademoiselle Marie Engle, the prima-donna, owned a beautiful white Angora cat which she prized very highly, and as her engagements abroad compelled her to part with the cat for a short time, she left Mizzi with the artist until her return. One day Mr. Bickford thought he would try painting the white, silken fur of Mizzi: the result not only surprised him but also his artist friends, who said, "Lambert himself could not have done better."

Upon Miss Engle's return, seeing what an inspiration her cat had been, she gave her to Mr. Bickford, and it is needless to add that he has become deeply attached to his beautiful model. Mizzi is a pure white Angora, with beautiful blue eyes, and silky fur. She won first prize at the National Cat Show of 1895, but no longer attends cat shows, on account of her engagements as professional model.

Ben Austrian, who has made a success in painting other animals, has done a cat picture of considerable merit. The subject was Tix, a beautiful tiger-gray, belonging to Mr. Mahlon W. Newton, of Philadelphia. The cat is noted, not only in Philadelphia, but among travelling men, as he resides at a hotel, and is quite a prominent member of the office force. He weighs fifteen pounds and is of a very affectionate nature, following his master to the park and about the establishment like a dog. During the day he lives in the office, lying on the counter or the key-rack, but at night he retires with his master at eleven or twelve o'clock, sleeping in his own basket in the bathroom, and waking his master promptly at seven every morning. Tix's picture hangs in the office of his hotel, and is becoming as famous as the cat.

Elizabeth Bonsall is a young American artist who has exhibited some good cat pictures, and whose work promises to make her famous some day, if she does not "weary in well-doing"; and Mr. Jean Paul Selinger's "Kittens" are quite well known.

The good cat illustrator is even more rare than the cat painters. Thousands of readers recall those wonderfully lifelike cats and kittens which were a feature of the St. Nicholas a few years ago, accompanied by "nonsense rhymes" or "jingles." They were the work of Joseph G. Francis, of Brookline, Mass., and brought him no little fame. He was, and is still, a broker on State Street, Boston, and in his busy life these inimitable cat sketches were but an incident. Mr. Francis is a devoted admirer of all cats, and had for many years loved and studied one cat in particular. It was by accident that he discovered his own possibilities in the line of cat drawing, as he began making little pen-and-ink sketches for his own amusement and then for that of his friends. The latter persuaded him to send some of these drawings to the St. Nicholas and the Wide-Awake magazines, and, rather to his surprise, they were promptly accepted, and the "Francis cats" became famous. Mr. Francis does but little artistic work, nowadays, more important business keeping him well occupied; besides, he says, he "is not in the mood for it."

Who does not know Louis Wain's cats?—that prince of English illustrators. Mr. Wain's home, when not in London, is at Bendigo Lodge, Westgate, Kent. He began his artistic career at nineteen, after a training in the best London schools. He was not a hard worker over his books, but his fondness for nature led him to an artist's career. American Indian stories were his delight, and accounts of the wandering outdoor life of our aborigines were instrumental in developing his powers of observation regarding the details of nature. Always fond of dumb animals, he began life by making sketches for sporting papers at agricultural shows all over England. It was his own cat "Peter" who first suggested to Louis Wain the fanciful cat creations which have made his name famous. Watching Peter's antics one evening, he was tempted to do a small study of kittens, which was promptly accepted by a magazine editor in London. Then he trained Peter to become a model and the starting-point of his success. Peter has done more to wipe out of England the contempt in which the cat was formerly held there, than any other feline in the world. He has done his race a service in raising their status from neglected, forlorn creatures on the one hand, or the pampered, overfed object of old maids' affections on the other, to a dignified place in the English house.

The double-page picture of the "Cat's Christmas Dance" in the London Illustrated News of December 6, 1890, contains a hundred and fifty cats, with as many varying facial expressions and attitudes. It occupied eleven working days of Mr. Wain's time, but it caught the public fancy and made a tremendous hit all over the world. Louis Wain's cats immediately became famous, and he has had more orders than he can fill ever since. He works eight hours a day, and then lays aside his brush to study physical science, or write a humorous story. He has written and illustrated a comic book, and spent a great deal of time over a more serious one.

Among the best known of his cat pictures, after the "Christmas Party," is his "Cats' Rights Meeting," which not even the most ardent suffragist can study without laughter. From a desk an ardent tabby is expounding, loud and long, on the rights of her kind. In front of her is a double row of felines, sitting with folded arms, and listening with absorbed attention. The expressions of these cats' faces, some ardent, some indignant, some placid, but all interested, form a ridiculous contrast to a row of "Toms" in the rear, who evidently disagree with the lecturer, and are prepared to hiss at her more "advanced" ideas. "Returning Thanks" is nearly as amusing, with its thirteen cats seated at table over their wine, while one offers thanks, and the remainder wear varying expressions of devotion, indifference, or irreverence. "Bringing Home the Yule Log" gives twenty-one cats, and as many individual expressions of joy or discomfort; and the "Snowball Match" shows a scene almost as hilarious as the "Christmas Dance."

Mr. Wain believes there is a great future for black and white work if a man is careful to keep abreast of the times. "A man should first of all create his public and draw upon his own fund of originality to sustain it," he says, "taking care not to pander to the degenerate tendencies which would prevent his work from elevating the finer instincts of the people." Says a recent visitor to the Wain household: "I wonder if Peter realizes that he has done more good than most human beings, who are endowed not only with sense but with brains? if in the firelight, he sees the faces of many a suffering child whose hours of pain have been shortened by the recital of his tricks, and the pictures of himself arrayed in white cravat, or gayly disporting himself on a 'see-saw'? I feel inclined to wake him up, and whisper how, one cold winter's night, I met a party of five little children, hatless and bootless, hurrying along an East-end slum, and saying encouragingly to the youngest, who was crying with cold and hunger, 'Come along: we'll get there soon.' I followed them down the lighted street till they paused in front of a barber's shop, and I heard their voices change to a shout of merriment: for in the window was a crumpled Christmas supplement, and Peter, in a frolicsome mood, was represented entertaining at a large cats' tea-party. Hunger, and cold, and misery were all dispelled. Who would not be a cat of Louis Wain's, capable of creating ten minutes' sunshine in a childish heart?"

Mr. Wain announces a discovery in relation to cats which corroborates a theory of my own, adopted from long observation and experience.

"I have found," he says, "as a result of many years of inquiry and study, that people who keep cats and are in the habit of petting them, do not suffer from those petty ailments which all flesh is heir to. Rheumatism and nervous complaints are uncommon with them, and Pussy's lovers are of the sweetest temperament. I have often felt the benefit, after a long spell of mental effort, of having my cats sitting across my shoulders, or of half an hour's chat with Peter."

This is a frequent experience of my own. Nothing is more restful and soothing after a busy day than sitting with my hands buried in the soft sides of one of my cats.

"Do you know," said one of my neighbors, recently, "when I am troubled with insomnia, lately, I get up and get Bingo from his bed, and take him to mine. I can go to sleep with my hands on him."

There is a powerful magnetic influence which emanates from a sleepy or even a quiet cat, that many an invalid has experienced without realizing it. If physicians were to investigate this feature of the cat's electrical and magnetic influence, in place of anatomical research after death, or the horrible practice of vivisection, they might be doing a real service to humanity.

Mr. Wain's success as an illustrator brought him great prominence in the National Cat Club of England, and he has been for a number of years its president, doing much to raise the condition and quality of cats and the status of the club. He has a number of beautiful and high-bred cats at Bendigo Lodge.

With regard to the painting of cats Champfleury said, "The lines are so delicate, the eyes are distinguished by such remarkable qualities, the movements are due to such sudden impulses, that to succeed in the portrayal of such a subject, one must be feline one's self." And Mr. Spielman gives the following advice to those who would paint cats:—

"You must love them, as Mahomet and Chesterfield loved them: be as fond of their company as Wolsley and Richelieu, Mazarin and Colbert, who retained them even during their most impressive audiences: as Petrarch, and Dr. Johnson, and Canon Liddon, and Ludovic Halevy, who wrote with them at their elbow: and Tasso and Gray, who celebrated them in verse: as sympathetic as Carlyle, whom Mrs. Allingham painted in the company of his beloved 'Tib' in the garden at Chelsea, or as Whittington, the hero of our milk-and-water days: think of El Daher Beybars, who fed all feline comers, or 'La Belle Stewart,' Duchess of Richmond, who, in the words of the poet, 'endowed a college' for her little friends: you must be as approbative of their character, their amenableness to education, their inconstancy, not to say indifference and their general lack of principle, as Madame de Custine: and as appreciative of their daintiness and grace as Alfred de Musset. Then, and not till then, can you consider yourself sentimentally equipped for studying the art of cat painting."



CHAPTER XI

CONCERNING CAT HOSPITALS AND REFUGES

At comparatively frequent intervals we read of some woman, historic or modern, who has left an annuity (as the Duchess of Richmond, "La Belle Stewart") for the care of her pet cats; now and then a man provides for them in his will, as Lord Chesterfield, for instance, who left a permanent pension for his cats and their descendants. But I find only one who has endowed a home for them and given it sufficient means to support the strays and waifs who reach its shelter.

Early in the eighties, Captain Nathan Appleton, of Boston (a brother of the poet Longfellow's wife, and of Thomas Appleton, the celebrated wit), returned from a stay in London with a new idea, that of founding some sort of a refuge, or hospital, for sick or stray cats and dogs. He had visited Battersea, and been deeply impressed with the need of a shelter for small and friendless domestic animals.

At Battersea there is an institution similar to the one the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in New York have at East 120th Street, where stray animals may be sent and kept for a few days awaiting the possible appearance of a claimant or owner; at the end of which time the animals are placed in the "lethal chamber," where they die instantly and painlessly by asphyxiation. In Boston, the Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals have no such refuge or pound, but in place of it keep one or two men whose business it is to go wherever sent and "mercifully put to death" the superfluous, maimed, or sick animals that shall be given them.

Captain Appleton's idea, however, was something entirely different from this. These creatures, he argued, have a right to their lives and the pursuit of happiness after their own fashion, and he proposed to help them to enjoy that right. He appealed to a few sympathetic friends and gave two or three acres of land from his own estate, near "Nonantum Hill," where the Apostle Eliot preached to the Indians, and where his iodine springs are located. He had raised a thousand or two dollars and planned a structure of some kind to shelter stray dogs and cats, when the good angel that attends our household pets guided him to the lawyer who had charge of the estates of Miss Ellen M. Gifford, of New Haven, Ct. "I think I can help you," said the lawyer. But he would say nothing more at that time. A few weeks later, Captain Appleton was sent for. Miss Gifford had become deeply interested in the project, and after making more inquiries, gave the proposed home some twenty-five thousand dollars, adding to this amount afterward and providing for the institution in her will. It has already had over one hundred thousand dollars from Miss Gifford's estates, and it is so well endowed and well managed that it is self-supporting.

The Ellen M. Gifford Sheltering Home for Animals is situated near the Brookline edge of the Brighton district in Boston. In fact, the residential portion of aristocratic Brookline is so fast creeping up to it that the whole six acres of the institution will doubtless soon be disposed of at a very handsome profit, while the dogs and cats will retire to a more remote district to "live on the interest of their money."

The main building is a small but handsome brick affair, facing on Lake Street. This is the home of the superintendent, and contains, besides, the offices of the establishment. Over the office is a tablet with this inscription, taken from a letter of Miss Gifford's about the time the home was opened:—

"If only the waifs, the strays, the sick, the abused, would be sure to get entrance to the home, and anybody could feel at liberty to bring in a starved or ill-treated animal and have it cared for without pay, my object would be obtained. March 27, 1884."

The superintendent is a lover of animals as well as a good business manager, and his work is in line with the sentence just quoted. Any one wanting a cat or a dog, and who can promise it a good home, may apply there. But Mr. Perkins does not take the word of a stranger at random. He investigates their circumstances and character, and never gives away an animal unless he can be reasonably sure of its going to a good home. For instance, he once received an application from one man for six cats. The wholesale element in the order made him slightly suspicious, and he immediately drove to Boston, where he found that his would-be customer owned a big granary overrun with mice. He sent the six cats, and two weeks later went to see how they were getting on, when he found them living happily in a big grain-loft, fat and contented as the most devoted Sultan of Egypt could have asked. None but street cats and stray dogs, homeless waifs, ill-treated and half starved, are received at this home. Occasionally, some family desiring to get rid of the animal they have petted for months, perhaps years, will send it over to the Sheltering Home. But if Mr. Perkins can find where it came from he promptly returns it, for even this place, capable of comfortably housing a hundred cats and as many dogs, cannot accommodate all the unfortunates that are picked up in the streets of Boston. The accommodations, too, while they are comfortable and even luxurious for the poor creatures that have hitherto slept on ash-barrels and stone flaggings, are unfit for household pets that have slept on cushions, soft rugs, and milady's bed.

There is a dog-house and a cat-house, sufficiently far apart that the occupants of one need not be disturbed by those of the other. In the dog-house there are rows of pens on each side of the middle aisle, in which from one to four or five dogs, according to size, are kept when indoors. These are of all sorts, colors, dispositions, and sizes, ranging from pugs to St. Bernards, terriers to mastiffs. There are few purely bred dogs, although there are many intelligent and really handsome ones. The dogs are allowed to run in the big yard that opens out from their house at certain hours of the day; but the cats' yards are open to them all day and night. All yards and runs are enclosed with wire netting, and the cat-house has partitions of the same. All around the sides of the cat-house are shelves or bunks, which are kept supplied with clean hay, for their beds. Here one may see cats of every color and assorted sizes, contentedly curled up in their nests, while their companions sit blinking in the sun, or run out in the yards. Cooked meat, crackers and milk, and dishes of fresh water are kept where they can get at them. The cats all look plump and well fed, and, indeed, the ordinary street cat must feel that his lines have fallen in pleasant places.

Not so, however, with pet cats who may be housed there. They miss the companionship of people, and the household belongings to which they have been accustomed. Sometimes it is really pathetic to see one of these cast-off pets climb up the wire netting and plainly beg the visitor to take him away from that strange place, and give him such a home as he has been used to. In the superintendent's house there is usually a good cat or two of this sort, as he is apt to test a well-bred cat before giving him away.

Somewhat similar, and even older than the Ellen Gifford Sheltering Home, is the Morris Refuge of Philadelphia. This institution, whose motto is "The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works," was first established in May, 1874, by Miss Elizabeth Morris and other ladies who took an interest in the protection of suffering animals. It does not limit its tender mercies to cats and dogs, but cares for every suffering animal. It differs from the Ellen Gifford Home chiefly in the fact that, while the latter is a home for stray cats and dogs, the Morris Refuge has for its object the care for and disposal of suffering animals of all sorts. In a word, it brings relief to most of these unfortunate creatures by means of a swift and painless death.

It was first known as the City Refuge, although it was never maintained by the city. In January, 1889, it was reorganized and incorporated as the "Morris Refuge for Homeless and Suffering Animals." It is supported by private contributions, and is under the supervision of Miss Morris and a corps of kind-hearted ladies of Philadelphia. A wagon is kept at the home to respond to calls, and visits any residence where suffering animals may need attention. The agent of the society lives at the refuge with his family, and receives animals at any time. When notice is received of an animal hurt or suffering, he sends after it. Chloroform is invariably taken along, in order that, if expedient, the creature may be put out of its agony at once. This refuge is at 1242 Lombard Street, and there is a temporary home where dogs are boarded at 923 South 11th Street.

In 1895, out of 23,067 animals coming under the care of the association, 19,672 were cats. In 1896, there were 24,037 animals relieved and disposed of, while the superintendent answered 230 police calls. Good homes are found for both dogs and cats, but not until the agent is sure that they will be kindly treated.

In Miss Morris's eighth annual report she says: "Looking back to the formation of the first society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, we find since that time a gradual awakening to the duties man owes to those below him in the scale of animal creation. The titles of those societies and their objects, as defined by their charters, show that at first it was considered sufficient to protect animals from cruel treatment: very few people gave thought to the care of those that were without homes. Now many are beginning to think of the evil of being overrun with numbers of homeless creatures, whose sufferings appeal to the sympathies of the humane, and whose noise and depredations provoke the cruelty of the hard-hearted: hence the efforts that are being made in different cities to establish refuges. A request has lately been received from Montreal asking for our reports, as it is proposed to found a home for animals in that city, and information is being collected in relation to such institutions."

Lady Marcus Beresford has succeeded in establishing and endowing a home for cats in Englefield Green, Windsor Park. She has made a specialty of Angoras, and her collection is famous. Queen Victoria and her daughters take a deep interest, not alone in finely bred cats, but in poor and homeless waifs as well. Her Royal Highness, in fact, took pains to write the London S.P.C.A. some years ago, saying she would be very glad to have them do something for the safety and protection of cats, "which are so generally misunderstood and grossly ill-treated." She herself sets a good example in this respect, and when her courts remove from one royal residence to another, her cats are taken with her.

There is a movement in Paris, too, to provide for sick and homeless cats as well as dogs. Two English ladies have founded a hospital near Asnieres, where ailing pets can be tended in illness, or boarded for about ten cents a day; and very well cared for their pensioners are. There is also a charity ward where pauper patients are received and tended carefully, and afterward sold or given away to reliable people. Oddly, this sort of charity was begun by Mademoiselle Claude Bernard, the daughter of the great scientist who, it is said, tortured more living creatures to death than any other. Vivisection became a passion with him, but Mademoiselle Bernard is atoning for her father's cruelty by a singular devotion to animals, and none are turned from her gates.

This is the way they do it in Cairo even now, according to Monsieur Prisse d'Avennes, the distinguished Egyptologist:—

"The Sultan, El Daher Beybars, who reigned in Egypt and Syria toward 658 of the Hegira (1260 A.D.) and is compared by William of Tripoli to Nero in wickedness, and to Caesar in bravery, had a peculiar affection for cats. At his death, he left a garden, 'Gheyt-el-Quoltah' (the cats' orchard), situated near his mosque outside Cairo, for the support of homeless cats. Subsequently the field was sold and resold several times by the administrator and purchasers. In consequence of a series of dilapidations it now produces a nominal rent of fifteen piastres a year, which with certain other legacies is appropriated to the maintenance of cats. The Kadi, who is the official administrator of all pious and charitable bequests, ordains that at the hour of afternoon prayer, between noon and sunset, a daily distribution of animals' entrails and refuse meat from the butchers' stalls, chopped up together, shall be made to the cats of the neighborhood. This takes place in the outer court of the 'Mehkemeh,' or tribunal, and a curious spectacle may then be seen. At this hour all the terraces near the Mehkemeh are crowded with cats: they come jumping from house to house across the narrow Cairo streets, hurrying for their share: they slide down walls and glide into the court, where they dispute, with great tenacity and much growling, the scanty meal so sadly out of proportion to the number of guests. The old ones clear the food in a moment: the young ones and the newcomers, too timid to fight for their chance, must content themselves with licking the ground. Those wanting to get rid of cats take them there and deposit them. I have seen whole baskets of kittens deposited in the court, greatly to the annoyance of the neighbors."

There are similar customs in Italy and Switzerland. In Geneva cats prowl about the streets like dogs at Constantinople. The people charge themselves with their maintenance, and feed the cats who come to their doors at the same hour every day for their meals.

In Florence, a cloister near St. Lorenzo's Church serves as a refuge for cats. It is an ancient and curious institution, but I am unable to find whether it is maintained by the city or by private charities. There are specimens of all colors, sizes, and kinds, and any one who wants a cat has but to go there and ask for it. On the other hand, the owner of a cat who is unable or unwilling to keep it may take it there, where it is fed and well treated.

In Rome, they have a commendable system of caring for their cats. At a certain hour butchers' men drive through the city, with carts well stocked with cat's meat. They utter a peculiar cry which the cats recognize, and come hurrying out of the houses for their allowances, which are paid for by the owners at a certain rate per month.

In Boston, during the summer of 1895, a firm of butchers took subscriptions from philanthropic citizens, and raised enough to defray the expenses of feeding the cats on the Back Bay,—where, in spite of the fact that the citizens are all wealthy and supposedly humane, there are more starving cats than elsewhere in the city. But the experiment has not been repeated.

Hospitals for sick animals are no new thing, but a really comfortable home for cats is an enterprise in which many a woman who now asks despondently what she can do in this overcrowded world to earn a living, might find pleasant and profitable.

A most worthy charity is that of the Animal Rescue League in Boston, which was started by Mrs. Anna Harris Smith in 1899. She put a call in the newspapers, asking those who were interested in the subject to attend a meeting and form a league for the protection and care of lost or deserted pets. The response was immediate and generous. The Animal Rescue League was formed with several hundred members, and in a short time the house at 68 Carver Street was rented, and a man and his wife put in charge. Here are brought both cats and dogs from all parts of Boston and the suburbs, where they are sure of kind treatment and care. If they are diseased they are immediately put out of existence by means of the lethal chamber; otherwise they are kept for a few days in order that they may be claimed by their owners if lost, or have homes found for them whenever it is possible. During the first year over two thousand cats were cared for, and several hundred dogs. This home is maintained by voluntary contributions and by the annual dues of subscribers. These are one dollar a year for associate members and five dollars for active members. It is an excellent charity, and one that may well be emulated in other cities.

There are several cat asylums and refuges in the Far West, and certainly a few more such institutions as the Sheltering Home at Brighton, Mass., or the Morris Refuge would be a credit to a country. How better than by applying it to our cats can we demonstrate the truth of Solomon's maxim, "A merciful man is merciful to his beast"?



CHAPTER XII

CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF CATS

If any of my readers hunger and thirst for information concerning the descent of the cat through marsupial ancestors and mesozoic mammals to the generalized placental or monodelphous carnivora of to-day, let them consult St. George Mivart, who gives altogether the most comprehensive and exhaustive scientific study to the cat ever published, and whose book on the cat is an excellent work for the earnest beginner in the study of biological science. He says no more complete example can be found of a perfectly organized living being than that supplied by the highest mammalian family—Felidae.

"On the whole," he sums up, "it seems probable that the mammalia, and therefore the cat, descends from some highly developed, somewhat reptile-like batrachian of which no trace has been found."

Away back in the eighth century of the Hegira, an Arab naturalist gives this account of the creation of the cat: "When, as the Arab relates, Noah made a couple of each animal to enter the ark, his companions and family asked, 'What security can you give us and the other animals, so long as the lion dwells with us on this narrow vessel?' Then Noah betook himself to prayer, and entreated the Lord God. Immediately fever came down from heaven and seized upon the king of beasts." This was the origin of fever. But constituents in Noah's time, as now, were ungrateful; and no sooner was the lion disposed of, than the mouse was discovered to be an object of suspicion. They complained that there would be no safety for provisions or clothing. "And so Noah renewed his supplication to the Most High, the lion sneezed, and a cat ran out of his nostrils. From that time the mouse has been timid and has hidden in holes."

In the Egyptian gallery of the British Museum there is an excellent painting of a tabby cat assisting a man to capture birds. Hieroglyphic inscriptions as far back as 1684 B.C. mention the cat, and there is at Leyden a tablet of the eighteenth or nineteenth dynasty with a cat seated under a chair. A temple at Beni-Hassan is dedicated to Pasht or Bubastis, the goddess of cats, which is as old as Thothmes IV of the eighteenth dynasty, 1500 B.C.; and the cat appears in written rituals of that dynasty. Herodotus tells of the almost superstitious reverence which dwellers along the Nile felt for the cat, and gravely states that when one died a natural death in any house, the inmates shaved their eyebrows as a token of grief; also, that in case of a fire the first thing they saved was the household cat. Fortunate pussies!

It is thought that cats were introduced into Greece from Egypt, although Professor Rolleston, of Cambridge University, believes the Grecian pet cat to have been the white-breasted marten. Yet why should he? Is not a soft, white-breasted maltese or tabby as attractive? The idea that cats were domesticated in Western Europe by the Crusaders is thought to be erroneous; but pet cats were often found in nunneries in the Middle Ages, and Pope Gregory the Great, toward the end of the sixth century, had a pet cat of which he was very fond.

An old writer says, "A favorite cat sometimes accompanied the Egyptians on these occasions [of sport], and the artist of that day intends to show us by the exactness with which he represents her seizing her prey, that cats were trained to hunt and carry water-fowl." There are old Egyptian paintings representing sporting scenes along the Nile, where the cats plunge into the water of the marshes to retrieve and carry game; while plenty of mural paintings show them sitting under the arm-chair of the mistress of the house. Modern naturalists, however, claim a radical difference between those old Egyptian retrieving cats and our water-hating pussies. There are no records of cats between that period in Egypt, about 1630 B.C., and 260 B.C., when they seem to have become acclimated in Greece and Rome. There is in the Bordeaux Museum an ancient picture of a young girl holding a cat, on a tomb of the Gallo-Roman Epoch, and cats appeared in the heraldry of that date; but writers of those ages speak rather slightingly of them. Then for centuries the cat was looked upon as a diabolic creature, fit company for witches.

"Why," says Balthazar Bekker in the seventeenth century, "is a cat always found among the belongings of witches, when according to the Sacred Book, and Apocalypse in particular, it is the dog, not a feline animal, that consorts with the sorcerers?"

In Russia even yet the common people believe that black cats become devils at the end of seven years, and in many parts of Southern Europe they are still supposed to be serving apprenticeship as witches. In Sicily the peasants are sure that if a black cat lives with seven masters, the soul of the seventh will surely accompany him back to the dominion of Hades. In Brittany there is a dreadful tale of cats that dance with unholy glee around the crucifix while their King is being put to death. Cats figure in Norwegian folk-lore, too, as witches and picturesque incumbents of ghost-haunted houses and nocturnal revels. And even to-day there is a legend in Westminster to the effect that the dissipated cats of that region indulge in a most disreputable revel in some country house, and that is why they look so forlorn and altogether undone by daylight.

A canon enacted in England in 1127 forbade any abbess or nun to use more costly fur than that of lambs or cats, and it is proved that cat-fur was at that time commonly used for trimming dresses. The cat was, probably for that reason, an object of chase in royal forests, and a license is still in existence from Richard II to the Abbot of Peterborough, and dated 1239, granting liberty to hunt cats. This was probably the wild cat, however, which was not the same as the domestic.[1]

[Footnote 1:

These are among the laws supposedly enacted by Hoel Dha (Howell the Good) sometime between 915 and 948 A.D.

The Vendotian Code XI.

The worth of a cat and her teithi (qualities) this is:—

1st. The worth of a kitten from the night it is kittened until it shall open its eyes, is one penny.

2d. And from that time until it shall kill mice, two pence.

3d. And after it shall kill mice, four legal pence; and so it shall always remain.

4th. Her teithe are to see, to hear, to kill mice, and to have her claws.

This is the "Dimentian Code." XXXII. Of Cats.

1st. The worth of a cat that is killed or stolen. Its head to be put downward upon a clean, even floor, with its tail lifted upward and thus suspended, whilst wheat is poured about it until the top of its tail be covered and that is to be its worth. If the corn cannot be had, then a milch sheep with a lamb and its wool is its value, if it be a cat that guards the king's barn.

2d. The worth of a common cat is four legal pence.

3d. The teithi of a cat, and of every animal upon the milk of which people do not feed, is the third part of its worth or the worth of its litter.

4th. Whosoever shall sell a cat (cath) is to answer that she devour not her kittens, and that she have ears, teeth, eyes, and nails, and be a good mouser.

The "Gwentian Code" begins in the same way, but says:—

3d. That it be perfect of ear, perfect of eye, perfect of teeth, perfect of tail, perfect of claw, and without marks of fire. And if the cat fall short in any of these particulars, a third of her price had to be refunded. As to the fire, in case her fur had been singed the rats could detect her by the odor, and her qualities as a mouser were thus injured. And then it goes on to say:—

4th. That the teithi and the legal worth of a cat are coequal.

5th. A pound is the worth of a pet animal of the king.

6th. The pet animal of a breyer (brewer) is six score pence in value.

7th. The pet animal of a taoog is a curt penny in value.

In the 39th chapter, 53d section, we find that "there are three animals whose tails, eyes, and lives are of the same value—a calf, a filly for common work, and a cat, except the cat which shall watch the king's barn," in which case she was more valuable.

Another old Welsh law says: "Three animals reach their worth in a year: a sheep, a cat, and a cur. This is a complement of the legal hamlet; nine buildings, one plough, one kiln, one churn, and one cat, one cock, one bull, and one herdsman."

In order that there might be no mistake in regard to the cat, a rough sketch of Puss is given in the Mss. of the laws.]

That cats, even in the Middle Ages, were thought much more highly of in Great Britain than on the Continent is proved by the fact that the laws there imposed a heavy fine on cat-killers, the fine being as much wheat as would serve to bury the cat when he was held up by the tip of the tail with his nose on the ground. So that pet cats stood a fairly good chance in those days.

One of the good things remembered of Louis XIII is that he interceded as Dauphin with Henri IV for the lives of the cats about to be burned at the festival on St. John's Day.

Nowadays, there is a current superstition that a black cat brings good luck to a house; but in the Middle Ages they believed that the devil borrowed the form of a black cat when he wanted to torment or get control of his victims. There are plenty of old traditions about cats having spoken to human beings, and been kicked, or struck, or burned by them in return; and invariably, these tales tell us, those who are so bespoken meet some one the next day with plain marks of the injury they had inflicted on the froward cat,—which was sure evidence of witchery and sorcery. Doubtless full many a human being has been put to death, in times past, on no stronger evidence of being a witch. Humanity did not come to the rescue of the cat and bring her out from the shadow of ignominy that hung over her in mediaeval times until 1618, when an interdict was issued in Flanders prohibiting the festive ceremony of throwing cats from the high tower of Ypres on Wednesdays of the second week in Lent. And from that time Pussy's fortunes began to look up.

To-day, travellers on the edge of the Pyrenees know a little old man, Martre Tolosan, who makes and sells replicas of the original models of cats found among the Roman remains at a small town near Toulouse. These are made in blue and white earthenware and each one is numbered. Mine, bought by a friend in 1895, is marked 5000. They are not exact models of our cats of to-day, to be sure, but they express all the snug content and inscrutable calm of our modern pets.

The Chinese reproduce cats in their ceramics in white, turquoise blue, and old violet. One that once belonged to Madame de Mazarin sold for eight hundred livres. In Japan, cats are reproduced in common ware, daubed with paint, but the Chinese make them of finer ware, enamelling the commoner kinds of porcelain and using the cat in conventional forms as flower-vases and lamps.



CHAPTER XIII

CONCERNING VARIETIES OF CATS

Few people realize how many kinds of cats there are. The fashionable world begins to discuss cats technically and understand their various points of excellence. The "lord mayor's chain," the "Dutch rabbit markings," and similar features are understood by more cat fanciers than a few years ago; but, until within that time, it is doubtful if the number of people who knew the difference between the Angora and the Persian in this country amounted to a hundred. It is but a few years since the craze for the Angora cat started. These cats have been fashionable pets in England for some years back, and now America begins to understand their value and the principles of breeding them. Today, there are as handsome, well-bred animals in the United States as can be found abroad. The demand for high-bred animals with a pedigree is greatly increasing, and society people are beginning to understand the fine points of the thoroughbred.

The Angora cat, as its name indicates, comes from Angora in Western Asia, the province that is celebrated for its goats with long hair of fine quality. In fact, the hair under the Angora cat's body often resembles the finest of the Angora goatskins. Angora cats are favorites with the Turks and Armenians, and exist in many colors, especially since they have been more carefully bred. They vary in form, color, and disposition, and also in the quality of their hair. The standard calls for a small head, with not too long a nose, large eyes that should harmonize in color with the fur, small, pointed ears with a tuft of hair at the apex, and a very full, fluffy mane around the neck. This mane is known as the "lord mayor's chain." The body is longer than that of the ordinary cat in proportion to its size, and is extremely graceful, and covered with long, silky hair, which is crinkly like that of the Angora goat. This hair should be as fine as possible, and not woolly. The legs are of a moderate length, but look short on account of the length of hair on the body. Little tufts of hair growing between the toes indicate high breeding. The Angora cat, in good condition, is one of the most beautiful and elegant creatures in the world, and few can resist its charm. The tail is long and like an ostrich plume. It is usually carried, when the cat is in good spirits, straight up, with the end waving over toward one side. The tail of the Angora serves as a barometer of its bodily and mental condition. If the cat is ill or frightened, the tail droops, and sometimes trails on the ground; but when she is in good spirits, playing about the house or grounds, it waves like a great plume, and is exceedingly handsome. The suppleness of the Angora's tail is also a mark of fine breeding. A highbred Angora will allow its tail to be doubled or twisted without apparent notice of the performance.

The Angora does not reach its prime until about two years. Before that time its head and body are not sufficiently developed to give the full beauty and grace of the animal. As a rule, the Angora is of good disposition, although the females are apt to be exceedingly nervous. They are sociable and docile, although fond of roaming about, especially if allowed to run loose. As a rule, they do not possess the keen intelligence of the ordinary short-haired family cat, but their great beauty and their cleanly and affectionate habits make them favorites with fashionable people. The proper breeding of the Angora cat is a regular science. Of the colors of the Angoras, the blue or maltese is a favorite, and rather common, especially when mixed with white.

The white Angora is extraordinarily beautiful, and brings a high price when it has blue eyes and all its points are equally good. The orange, or yellow, and the black with amber eyes are also prize winners. There are the tigers also, the brown tabby, and the orange and white. Mixed colors are more common than solid ones; the tortoise-shell cat of three colors and well mottled being considered particularly desirable.

The Persian cat differs from the Angora in the quality of its fur, although the ordinary observer sees little difference between them. All the long-haired cats originated from the Indian Bengalese, Thibetan, and other wild cats of Asia and Russia. The Persian cat of very great value is all black, with a very fluffy frill, or lord mayor's chain, and orange eyes. Next to him comes a light slate or blue Persian, with yellow eyes. The fur of the Persian cat is much more woolly than that of the Angora, and sometimes in hot weather mats badly. The difference between a Persian and an Angora can usually be told by an amateur, by drawing the tail between the thumb and first finger. The Angora's tail comes out thin, silky, and narrow, although it immediately "fluffs" up. The Persian's tail does not compress itself readily into a small space. The Persian cat's head is larger, its ears are less pointed, although it should have the tuft at the end and the long hair inside. It is usually larger in body and apparently stronger made, although slender and elegant in appearance, with small bones and graceful in movement. The colors vary, as with the Angora, except that the tortoise-shell and the dark-marked tabby do not so frequently appear. The temper is usually less reliable and the intelligence less keen than the Angora.

The Russian long-haired pet is much less common even than the Persian and Angora. It is fond of cold weather, and its fur is denser, indicating that it has been used to colder regions. Many of the cats that we see are crosses of Angora and Persian, or Angora and Russian, so that it is extremely difficult for the amateur to know a thoroughbred cat which has not been mixed with other varieties.

There is also a fine short-haired cat coming from Russia, usually self-colored. Mrs. Frederick Monroe, of Chicago, owns a very handsome blue and white one.

In Pegu, Siam, and Burmah, there is a race of cats known as the Malay cat, with tails only half the ordinary length and often contorted into a sort of a knot that cannot be straightened, after the fashion of the pug dog or ordinary pig.

There is another cat known as the Mombas, a native of the west coast of Africa and covered with stiff, bristling hair. Paraguay cats are only one-quarter as big as our ordinary cat, and are found along the western coast of South America, even as far north as Mexico.

The royal cat of Siam is a short-haired cat, yet widely different from other short-haired varieties. They are extremely pretty, with blue or amber-colored eyes by day which grow brilliant at night. These cats also frequently have the kink in the tail, and sometimes a strong animal odor, although this is not disagreeable. The head is rather longer than the ordinary cat's, tapering off sharply toward the muzzle, the forehead flat and receding, and the eyes more slanting toward the nose than the American cat's. The form should be slender, graceful, and delicately made; the body long; the tail very thin and rather short; the legs short and slender, and the feet oval. The body is of a bright, uniform color, and the legs, feet, and tail are usually black.

The Manx cat is considered by many people as a natural curiosity. It differs from the ordinary domestic cat but little, except in the absence of a tail, or even an apology for one. The hind legs are thicker and rather longer than the ordinary cat's, and it runs more like a hare. It is not a graceful object when seen from behind, but it is an affectionate, home-loving creature with considerable intelligence. The Manx cat came from the Isle of Man originally, and is a distinct breed. So-called Manx cats have tails from one to a few inches long, but these are crosses of the Manx and the ordinary cat. In the Crimea is found another kind of cat which has no tail. The cats known as the "celebrated orange cats of Venice," are probably descendants of the old Egyptian cat, and are of varying shades of yellow, sometimes deepening into a sandy color which is almost red. There are obscure stripes on the body, which become more distinct on the limbs. The tail is more or less ringed toward its termination.

There has been a newspaper paragraph floating about stating that a prize of several thousand dollars had been offered in England for a male tortoise-shell cat. This is probably not true, as a Mr. Smith exhibited a tortoise-shell he-cat at the Crystal Palace Show of 1871. Several tortoise-shell and white toms have been exhibited since, and one of these has taken nine first prizes at the Crystal Palace Show; but the tortoise-shell he-cat is extremely rare. The real tortoise-shell is not a striped tiger nor a tabby. It has three colors usually, black, yellow, and red or brown; but these appear in patches rather than stripes. It is said that the tortoise-shell cat is common in Egypt and the south of Europe. It comes from a different stock than the ordinary short-haired cat, the texture of the hair being different, as well as the color. The tortoise-shell and white cat is much more common, and is the product of a cross between a tortoise shell and a solid color cat. In this case the hair is usually coarser and the tail thicker than in the ordinary cat.

Among cat fanciers there is a distinctive variety known as the tortoise-shell tabby. As the tabby cat is one of the varieties of striped or spotted cats having markings, broad or narrow, of bands of black on a dark tan or gray ground, the tortoise-shell cat would have both stripes and patches of color.

Of the tabbies, there are brown tabbies, silver tabbies, and red tabbies. It is said that the red tabby she-cat is as scarce as the tortoise-shell he-cat. The ordinary observer considers the brown tabby with white markings as much the handsomest of the tabbies. But fanciers and judges do not agree with him, the cats having narrow bands and spots being the ones to take prizes. The word "tabby," according to Harrison Weir, was derived from a kind of taffeta or ribbed silk which used to be called tabby silk. Other authorities state that tabby cats got their name from Atab, a street in Bagdad; but as this street was famous for its watered silks perhaps the same reason holds. The tortoise-shell used to be called, in England, the Calimanco. In America, it is sometimes called the calico cat.

The red tabby is of a deep reddish or yellow brown, with a well-ringed tail, orange or yellow eyes, and pink cushions to the feet. The brown tabby is orange brown, with black lips, brown whiskers, black feet, black pads, long tail, greenish orange eyes, and red nose bordered with black. The spotted tabby must have no bands at all. It must be brown, red, or yellow, with black spots. In the brown tabby the feet and pads are black; in the yellow and red, the feet and pads are pink. The spotted cat sometimes resembles a leopard, while the banded tabby resembles more the tiger. Some of the spotted tabbies are extremely handsome, and came originally from a cross between the ordinary cat and the wild cat.

"Self-colored cats" are entirely of one color, which may vary in different cats, but must never be mixed in the same cat, nor even shaded into a lighter tone on the animal; and whether this color be black, blue, red, or yellow, the self-colored cat should have a rich deep tint. Of course the short-haired white cat is the handsomest of all. One of the peculiarities of this white cat is that it is apt to be deaf. The most valuable white cats, whether long or short haired, have blue eyes. Sometimes they have one blue eye and one green or yellow, which gives a comical effect, and detracts from their value. By the way, cross-eyed cats are not unknown. The best white cats have a yellowish white tint instead of grayish white, as the latter have a coarser quality of fur.

The jet-black cat is thought by many to be the most desirable. The true black cat should have a uniform, intensely black coat, velvety and extremely glossy; the eyes should be round and full, and of a brilliant amber; the nose and pads of the feet should be jet-black, and the tail long and tapering. It is difficult to find a black cat without a white hair, as usually there are a few under the chin or on the belly.

The blue cat is the one ordinarily known in this country as the dark maltese. There is a tradition that it came from the Island of Malta. Many people do not consider it a distinct breed, but think it a light-colored variety of the black cat. It is known sometimes as the Archangel, sometimes as the Russian blue, the Spanish blue, the Chartreuse blue, but more commonly in this country as the maltese. When it is of a deep bluish color, or of the soft silver-gray maltese without stripes, it is extremely handsome. The most desirable are the bluish lilac-colored ones, with soft fur like sealskin. The nose and pads of the feet are dark, and the eyes are orange yellow. The maltese and white cat when well marked is extremely handsome, and there is no prettier kitten than the maltese and white.

The black and white, yellow and white, blue and white, and in fact, any self-colored and white cat is a mixture of the other breeds. If well marked they are extremely handsome and are usually bright and intelligent.

The solid gray cat is very rare. It is, in fact, a tabby without the black stripes or spots.

In Australia, New Zealand, and New Guinea there used to be no cat of any kind. The Siamese cat has been imported to Australia, and some authorities claim that the cats known in this country as Australian cats are of Siamese origin. Madagascar is a catless region.