Huntsville gazette., 1882-07-15
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Cats

Z IA A4tSaA . soCt4eAtaOlAoS VAeAA
cats are kind Of token Of his age In
boyhocd we are apt to hate cats, regard
ing them as sthe higher yermin. a
dog which, like poor dog Tray in the
poem, sis uncommon good at cats, IS
our favorite companion. We do not
weary of contrasting the sterling merits
and STRAIGHTFORWARD character OF the
dog with the sly and sinking habits OF
the cat. But as age draws on we begin
to see redeeming features in the quiet,
undemonstrative cat. We admire the
:; sagacity with which it passes double
life-a sleek domestic faverite all day, a
/, wild animal of unbridled impulse in the
& darkness of the night If the cat is not
arobustious animal like the Newfound-
land or bull terrier, it is an unaffected
one. 1t does not wag its tail at every
chance conner, but purrs only when it
has good reason to be pleased. The
undemonstrativ cat takes a human in
terest in her own comfort, disturbs no
one Except occasionally at night, and
really deserves protection from the
worse than Bulgarian atrocities OF tlends
in the shape of boys. This animal, SO
essentially hypocritical and civilized,
has a history and a folklore of her own,
which we now propose to examine.
M. Lenormant is convinced that not
Egypt, but Africa further south, is the
cradle of the cat as domesticated ami
NAL. The Egyptian wild-fowl hunter in
the monuments takes his cat with him in
his boat, and the cat acted as a retriever.
i Cats, as a rule, dislike cold water; but
they are fond of fish, and there used to
be a cat in mill on the Yarrow or the
Ettrick (we forget which which would
dive after trout and seize them even in
deep pools. This cat did not illustrate
the Latin proverb: "Catus anaat pisces
sed aquas intrare rec,tsat. - The Egyp-
tian cats fondness for birds doubtless
enabled him to overcome his aversion to
wetting his feet. All the world knows
through Herodotus how the Egyptians
revered the cat, though, indeed, there
was scarcely any animal which some Of
them did not ignorantly worship. The
remarks of Herodotus about the personal
habits of the cat seem to prove almost
to demonstration that the domesticated
animal was no more known in Greece in
his time than in the country where Dick
Wilmington introduced it. bsso
Cats play considerable part in folk
lore, and no wonder. Their ways are
mysterious and uncanny; they appear
and disappear unexpectedly; they haunt
the paths of the night, and they are the
only friends of old women with a repute
for necromancy. We need not, how
ever, say, with the intrepid Gubernatis,
that the cat with white ears in a fairy
tale is ssthe morning twilight" or "the
moon which chases the mice of the
night" There is chattering cat in a
Russian fairy tale, which is killed in the
territory of hostile Sultan. M. de
Gubernatis can not even. let the poor
Sultan off, but explains that he is 'the
wintry night What the chattering
cat is in this case we know not-perhaps
the wind, or the spring, or anything
but cat that chatters. Nine. d'Aul-
noy's white cat, la ehatte blanche, has
not escaped M. de Gubernatis's queer
conjectures. The wooden horse of the
young prince in the tale is ''the forest of
the night.'' The white cat herself is
.sthe white NOON" and, when she is
metamorphosed into a woman, clad,
says Nine. d'Aulnoy, 'dans une robe
dune legere gaze blanche doublee de
taffetas couleur de rose," the "white
moon'' becomes the ssrosy aurora 1t
is needless to say that the gadze and
the rose-colored taffeta are purely in
ventions of Nine. d'Aulnoy's fancy in
the pleasing region of millinery. To
regard the rose colored taffeta as the
survival of the Mythopeic age, and as q
proof that the white cat was the moon,
and became the dawn, is truly worthy
of NJ. de Gubernatis. He treats Esop's s
cat-woman (probably the Greek polecat-
woman) in the same way. That the
B bride went to bed can only mean 'sThe
evening aurora sinks into night The
Italians describe an empty house by
saying ssthere was not even cat there. -"
But do they mean that the house is de-
serted, even by the home-loving domes-
tic puss? Nothing so commonplace.
The proverb is derived from the sun en-
tering the night, where he finds moth
ing, or 'sonly the cat moon.'' Black
cats are not black cats, but they are the
moonless night. The cat in the bag of
the proverb has probably diabolical
allusion!'''e When German invalid
sees two cats fight, he thinks it a bad
omen. Whyp Because, in M. de Gu
bernatis's opinion, the cats ssrepresent
perhaps night and twilight 1t seems
to be held that men take no interest in
anything except so far as it may be con-
sidered symbol of night or light.
When naontes partariuaat and mascetuy
ridiculus mas, the reference is not to the
immensity of the labor and the minute
results. Oh, no; 'from the mountain
come forth the mice of night, the shad-
ows of night, to which the cat moon and
cat twilight give chase"
But we have had enough of M. de
Gubernatis, and of the meteorological
cats which are offered to the world as
the last word Of NEUROLOGICAL science.
The whole process is retluctio ad a5-
surduna of the conjeetural method. just
one more little specimen. s'When the
cats away the mice may play" What
does this meanpss 1t means that s'the
shadows of night dance when the moon