The Arkansaw traveler., 1884-12-06
A FIGHTING FELINE.
ICanon City Mercurx.i

LC&Aon Ciey MeEcury.t Not more than several bIocks from where we sit and scribble these burning words for the press, words that will re- main warm and green long aher we are turned to dust, lives a lady friend of ours who is the owner of the finest specimen of feline in the city. It is a maltese, one of these fiery, untamed Ukraine breed, blue as smoke, with 8 tail like a second growth of bologna sausage, and it weighs about g pounds. Its name is Cleopatra. It is really Mark Antony cat, but its owner called it Cleopatra be- cause it is such pretty name. You can never tell whether cat has a right to be member of the town board or not by the name girl gives it
 We'll last evening Cleopatra thought he would go ccs for moonlight ramble and see if he couldn't get Maud to come into the garden. He got along very well for short distance and was making pretty good time when, while just back of Charlie Apples store he paused and said:
 Maud, hope to die if don't smell fish," and while exploring the ash pile he was suddenly accosted by lonesome looking cat on the rear platform
 Say, old indigo blue, shinny on your own side"
 "Watchugivinus ?" growled Cleo, just glancing up long enough from an old mackerel to take the platform measure.
 The platformer being on his own premises, made violent effort to restrain his wrath, but he came down to the ash pile and said, in voice that meant busi- ness:
 "Cully, I'll trouble you for that fish, if you please"
 "All right" said Cleo 1" I'll leave you the bones when I'm through with the cadaver."
 The strange cat reached out to take the savory fish and Cleopatra smote him. In less time than it takes to tell it he stood that cat up against the building and wiped enough hair of him to stuff a chair cushion. and as the wailing rem nant dragged its lacerated body under the house, Cleo resumed his fish, re- marking as he dodged beer bottle, that he believed as long as he was out he'd sit up little while and have some fun with the boys. And he had it. He went up the alley and valued to everything he met. He nearly tore the ear off a smart kitten that got up on a wood pile and sassed him and asked him "where he got that red necktie." He prowled through back yards and he almost scared the life out of highly elderly tortoise she'll tabby sitting in kitchen window, by creeping up close and then roaring out to know if she danced the lancers P He scalped harmless Mexican dog all the way down its bare back, in six red, |, raw lines and shouted after the anguish stricken animal to run home and put on its wig" He was hit once by an old kerosene torch that perfumed him up like political procession, and he crawled through an old drain back of the Victo- ria, and came out smelling worse than a Ute picnic. At last he heard music up by Chapman's new mill, and he went there and found the boys were having a little dance, and the first thing he did when he got there was to spit at the bar keeper and slap a bob-tailed cat from Sewing Machine Flat"
 "Pile onto me by thousands" he yelled. "I've just got one more eye than l want to take home."
 They didn't wait for a second invita- ton. They piled onto him then and there, and the babbling mill ditch that prattles OCT the pebbles when it heard the wild, unearthly clamor, turned back and ran up the hill, and in dumb terror watched the circling clouds of misty hair drifting about on the flats below.
 As we opened our office this .orning we saw Cleopatra just coming home. His hair was mostly gone, and what was left had not been combed. His face was scratched. one eye was closed. His ears hung loose and limp. He hiccoughed in his speech and tried to sing, "Well Paint the Town Lurid Hue."
 He caught sight of us just as he turned the corner, and yelled back: Hoop pee can lick the best bloody brindle son of rat-oatcher that ever climbed a fencel Pm the he-Bashi Bazouk of Justice Alley, an don you ferfurgizit- donyoufergizit! Dance to me, some body! l only weigh pound l"
 What his mistress said when he came home and she saw the condition he was in, nobody knows but He who guarded Israel.