The Portland daily press., 1882-06-08

Bast, or Pasht, the divine cat. M Lenormant
fluids that the Egyptians still respect cats, and
in Cairo serve up copious banquet every day
to the cats of each quarter lin the court OF the
house of the Cadi." In one or the picture gal
eries was lately exhibited a study OF cats on
pilgrimage in Egypt; they had camel all to
themselves under the direction OF an old Pill
grim, and were perched most comfortably on
the animals shoulders.
The cat like SO many other animals, PLAYED
considerable part il Egyptian religion. But,
if NJ Lenormant is right, cat worship is com.
paratively late in Egypt. He finds no trace OF
the animal among all the many monuments OF
the ancient empire Under those early dynas-
ties the cat goddess, Bast or Pasht, was a lion
ess goddess. Not till the twelfth dynasty, and
the conouests in le pays de Kousch, does the
cat come to the front in Egypt. We may
therefore regard the cat as a Cush1te animal de-
rived from the FehS nsanaeatoto, iouna wiz ~, IN
Upper Nubia and the Soudan. Our cat on the
other hand is thought to be descended from
the F'eLis catas, the wild cat which gave
name to Clan Chattan, and to the Duchess OF
Sutherland Gaelic title, said to mean The
Great Lady of the Cat" The Spanish cat is
regarded as hybrid, dating from the Arab in
vasions.
The late introduction of domesticated cats
among Semitic peoples seems to be proved by
the absence of cats in the Bible We do not
remember single mention of cats in Holy
Writ. The Assyrians and Babylonians are
said to have been equally ignorant of this
charming animal There appear to be no
Greek or Roman pictures or other representa-
tions of the nadu, or "mew cat, OF the Egyp-
tians. Perhaps one exception should be made,
for NJ Longperier has encountered cat on a
Tarentine coin, struck shortly before the wars
Of Pyrrhus Another archBologist mentions
| Romac tombstone, that of Calpurnia Felicula
| pussy on which cat was engraved: but the
| monument is lost, and its date was post Chris
tiau. Orelli thinks that felcula Qittle cat or
| kitten) is a late name for women. The Byzan-
| tine writers, in the latest days of Greece, are
thought to have been the first who gave The
| name gale to the modern cat The Greek gale
| was polecat, or foumart; though there was an
| old fable of a cat changed into woman, which
seems more naturally interpreted of the mod
| ern cat The names of the cat in European
| languages are interesting. M. Pictet, the au.
| thor of Lies Origines Indo Europeennes,
| thinks that none of our names for pusS belong
| to the old Aryan tongue The Romans-who,
! rather late in the day, were the Whittingtonss
4 of antiquity, and introducers of the cat-call
the animal catus. The adjective catus means,
in bad sense, ''sly, cunning, artful, crafty y
| But NJ Pictet was not so easily satisfied he de-
| rived the late Roman cdtus from the Syriac
| cato and the Arabic gift (kitten). Nor even
/ here did he stop in his impetuous course Qdt6
| and qatt, 1t seems, are not originally Semitic
| but African words, as in the Nubian EddlSEd
| The Egyptians. as we have seen, gave the cal
a childish name; as infants call the COW moo,
they called the cat n,au, an imitation OF It'll
plaintive cry The history OF cats, then, is de-
| rived from countries bordering on the Upper
Nile, whence the beast came to Egypt, ano
| passed to Syria, Rome, and Western Europe
The Indo- Aryans Of the Vedic age seem tt
have lived and died ignorant of cats. The
Sanskrit names of the cat mean "the ANNA
of the house, "the house-wolf,o the rat
| eater, 'tthe enemy of mice" The name o.
the wild cat in many languages seems to De re re-
lated to our puss. The Persian is puschak
Afghan, piSchik. Even the fanatic Kurt
keeps his psiq, the Lithuanian is attached t.
his domestic piJje, and the Turk has kindly
feeling for the puschik. M. Pictet, that auda
cious philologist, is inclined to connect thos'
words with the Sanskrit, putchha-that is
"tail:" and so we should find in "puss" thu
same idea as in the Greek ailouros, the crea
| ture with the waving tail.
Cats play considerable part in folklore
and no wonder. Their ways are mysterious
and uncanny; they appear and disappear I'm
expectedly; they haunt the paths OF the night
and they are the only friends of old womer
with repute for necromancy. We need not
however, say with the intrepid Gubernati
that the Cat with white ears in a fairy tale i
ssthe morning twilight or "the moon which
chases the mice of the night" There is
chattering cat in Russian fairy tale which i
killed in the territory of a hostile Sultan. M
de Gubernatis cannot even let the poor Sultan
off, but explains that he is 1.-THE wlntry night.
What the chattering cat is in this case W.
know not-perhaps the Wind or the spring, O.
| anything but cat that chatters. Nine. d Aul
noy's white cat, la chatte blanche, has not es
| capped M. de Gubernatis's queer conlectures
The wooden horse of the young Prince in thu
tale is "the forest of the night. The white
cat herself is ''the white moon," and, whe1
she is metamorphosed into woman, clad, say
| Nine. d'Aulnoy, dams une robe dune legert
gaze blanche doublee de taffetas couleur d.
rose,' the "white moon" becomes the "rosy
aurora" 1t is needless to say that the gauzt
and the rose-colored taffeta are purely inven
lions of Nine. d'Aunoy IS fancy in the pleasing
region of millinery. To regard the rose-col
ored taffeta as the survival of the Mythop9it
age, and as proof that the white cat was the
moon, and became the dawn, is truly worthy
4 of M. de Gubernatis. He treats Esops's cat
woman (probably the Greek polecat-woman) il
the same way. That the bride went to bee
can only mean "Tbe evening aurora sinks into
night" The Italians describe an empty house
by saying there was not even cat there,
But do they mean that the house is deserted
even by the hnme-loving domestic puss.
| Nothing so commonplace. The proverb is de-
| rived from the surNentering the night, where
he finds nothing, or 'only the cat moon. :
Black cats are not black cats, but they are the
mooness night. "rhe cat in the bag Il the
| proverb has probably diabolical allusioD!
| When a German invalid sees two cats fight he
thinks it bad omen. Why? Because, in M
| de Gubernatiss opinion, the cats represent
| perhaps night and twilight" 1t seems to be
| held that men take no interest in anything ex.
cept SO far as it may be considered symbol OF
| night or light When monies pdTtuutunt and
| ndscetur Tidiculas mas the reference is not to
| the immensely of the labor and the minute re-
| suits. Oh no; "from the mountain comes
| forth the mice of night, the shadows 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
a reductio dd absurdum of the conjectural
method just one more little specimen.
"When the cats away the nice may play
| What does this mean? 1t means that s'the
shadows of night dance when the moon is alb
sent.' which is precisely what they do not do.
No moon, no shadows, still less any shadow
| Dance The most ordinary truths of experience
are not only set aside, but reversed, by the
method of NJ. de Gubernatis, method from
| which not even poor puss has escaped. The
most gruesome cat story is the roasting of the
cat by the prophet in Highland superstitions.
Aman was tied up in bulls hide while his
friends roasted live cat. One of the company
said, "What are you doing?" to which he who
turned the spit replied, 81 roast this cat until