Northwest enterprise. [volume] (Anacortes, Wash. Ter.) 1882-1887, 1883-05-19
ESSAY ON CATS.
Their undoubted Fondness and protection in
many Instances of Little Children.
DEIFIED AND BURHID WITH POMP
BY THE EGYPTIANS.


fered the abuse that the family cat
receives at the hands of the general
world. We do not speak of those
who starve her, who turn her out.
doors at night, who go away for a
season in the country and leave her
to forage for herself, but of those who
simply slander her by injurious re-
port. When she suffers little children
to lift her by the tail and carry her
round by the heels, dress her up in
caps and aprons as doll, and infict
upon her thousand well meant
pains, it looks as though she loved
them. There are innumerable in
stances on record of the affection OF
cats for children, and entirely contra
dictory of the outrageous old notion
of their sucking the breath of babies.
Puss, indeed, often makes her nest in
the cradle, but not because she loves
the little milEy breath, nor because
she loves the warmth, but because
she loves the baby. She has been
known to fly at the biggest and most
ferocious dog entering the room where
her little friend lay sleeping; to jump
from the cradle when the child cried
and run for the mother, returning and
standing with her fore-feet on the
cradles edge, nervous and anxious
till the mother took up the child !;
and one belonging to Mrs. Wilson,
of Cults, near Aberdeen, Scotland,
once accosted his mistress with pit
eous meaows, running repeatedly to
the door, and endeavoring to fetch
her with him, and finally succeeding,
when the lady found her sick and
feeble child rolled from the sofa
where it had been left, and so envel-
oped in the rugs and wraps that it
would presently have suffocated if
help had not been brought by the
cat When, moreover. the cat con
quers her hereditary attachment tc
places, and follows persons about in
their peregrinations. it can not be
because she loves to travel. DIR.
Stables, a surgeon of the British
navy. tells us of his cat, which, al
though at six years old the mother of
a hundred kittens. yet found time to
accompany him on all his travels,
having journeyed over 10000 miles
in his company, usually bestowing
herself, when she judged that it was
fitting time, in the little basket that
carried her, but on one occasion,
having taken SO long an airing before
starting that her master was obliged
to leave without her, she hailed him,
as he walked along the railway plat
form, from first-class carriage that
she had thought it best to take to
save time.
But when people say that Puss is
cruel they forget that all carnivorous
animals, and man among them, are
cruel too. Yet Puss is sometimes
more virtuous than man in this re.
gard, and will live tor years with the
tempting morsel of bird playing
about her, disputing her dinner, and
alighting on her very head. DR..
Good told, long ago, of one that had
lived at peace with tame canary
suddenly. to the horror of the family,
seizing it in her mouth, and spring
ing to the top OF tall secretary,
whereupon it was found that strange
cat had entered the room, which
authenticated fact, from scientific
authority, must be held to dispose
of the accusations both of cruelty
and of stupidity if there were not
other instances in plenty to do the
same There is certainly sagacity in
the way any cat finds her way across
miles Of country to an old home, in
the way she often sits by the COW,
and asks the milkman to attend to
her wants in the way she as often
goes fishing; it was sagacity in the
cat which caught the escaping canary,
and brought it back alive to hev mis-
tress; it was sagacity in the cat that
absolutely baited a mouse-hole with
part of her own dinner, and sat and
watched till she could pounce upon
the mouse; it was sagacity in the cat
that knew when Sunday came. as Mr..
Whyte of Dallfield Terrace, Dundee,
relates; and the cat that threatened
with condign punishment, have sud
denly disappeared and never reap
peared are legion. If one wants a
study in philosophy, blythe way. and
an opportunity to discriminate be-
tween instinct and reason, he has
only to observe any young cat on her
first experience of a mirror, as she
tries to put her paw behind it. pops
back to see il the foe is still there,
and ends by boxing the ears of the
impudent creature confronting her
there, and scampers away with her
tail as big as ten. profoundly con-
vinced of magic, whether or not she
knows the word. Certainly cats are
to every household where they are
loved at all part of the Lares and
Penates. and to such households it is
no matter of marvel that the Egyp-
tians deifed them, and laid their
poor little carcasses away at last with
all the honors given to the royal
mummy. But it was not merely as
the friend of the hearth that this was
done; for Egypt was the land of grain,
and the enemy OF rats and mice pre-
served it from incalculable loss. In
our own country, where it can hardly
be denied that such vermin cost many
thousand dollars worth of damage
yearly, the cat is no less valuable an
animal than she was in ancient Egypt,
and if she is not deified, she should
certainly be treated with indulgence