Morning journal and courier., 1886-12-27
ALL ABOUT CATS.
What They Used to Re, and What They

l ALL ABOUT CATS.
 What They Used to Be, and What They Are.
 | The domestic cat, says the London Field, which we now know in such great variety of forms, has doubtless not always been do- mesticated, but, like the dog, horse and some other animals, has at some remote period been reclaimed by mans agony from wild state.
 Cats are mentioned in Sanskrit MSS. 3, ,0eo years old, and ill Egypt their antiquity is known to be even greater, as shown by mon umental drawings, and the discovery of their mummied bodies in very ancient tombs, The Egyptians not only took great care of their cats while alive, but honored them when dead, going into mourning and shaving their eyebrows. The reason for this has been variously explained. According to Horapolla, the cat was worshipped in the temple of He1lopolis, sacred to the sun, be- cause the size of the pupil of the animals eye is regulated by the height of the sun above the horizon. Thus the cats eye was thought to symbolic the orb of day.
 The Egyptian name for cat was Maou. The familiar name of 7.'puss' apparently has also come to us from the Egyptian. One of the most ancient representations of the cat is to be found in the metropolis of Thebes, which contains the tomb of King Hana of the 11th dynasty. A statute of this king represents him as standing erect, with his favorite cat Boubaki at his feet. It has been conjectured, from a painting taken from 8 tomb at Thebes, and now at the British Museum, that the cat was taught by the ancient Egyptians to retrieve The painting in question de- picts ap Egyptian fowler gliding in fiat bottomed boat through areed bed .and throw ing sticks at waterfowl, while a cat is 1 represented as looking up at him with wild duck in her mouth, and another bird, apparently water hen, under her fore feet.
 It does not appear that the cat was known to the early Hebrews or to the Assyrians or to the Greeks as domestic animal. The late Professor Rolleson was at some pains to show that the domestic mouse killer of the Greeks was not cat, but 8 mar ten. The Romans, on the other hand, were ly acquainted with the cat as a mouse killer. Rev. MT. Houghton is of opinion that the Tyrrhene trade with Egypt must have intro duced the sacred animal into the house of the Roman noble. Through the Romans probably domestic cats were introduced into Gaul and Britain, where snch as made their escape, or were lost, would return to feral state in the woods, and pairing with the Flu ropean wild cat, which was formerly very common in England would in the course of generations lose its similarity tosits Egyptian ancestor and gradually assume the appear ance of our own wild eat, which is now marked in the variety known as "tabby." The origin of the word sstabby'' is perhaps not generally known. It is corruption of the Turkish utabi, a particular kind of waved silk imported from Bagdad, and so named after the locality where it was made.
 As to the particular species of cat which was domesticated by the ancient Egyptians orain n he view that Fells chaus, widely distributed species, extending from northeastern Africa to India, was probably the ancestor of our domestic race, but so far external appear ance goes, Fells, caffra, the Caffer cat, is more like our "tabby," though a larger ami nal with longer legs.
 A great French naturalist, however, De Blainville, who made critical examination of the mummied bodies of several cats brought from Egypt tombs, arrived at the conclusion that they represented three differ ent species. The wild eat by some authors is regarded as the original stock from which our domestic cats are descended; but all though, through repeated crossing with this indigenous wild species, the breed of do- nestle cats has been materially affected, it is most probable that the earliest domesticated individuals seen in Britain were not reclaimed kittens of the native wild species, but were imported from abroad very likely by ths Ro- mans. This view seems strengthened by the fact that the early Britons set great store by their cats; fixed their value by law, accord ing to their age, and imposed penalties for destroying them. This they probably would not have done if they were common, or could be easily procured by rearing wild kittens and tanning them. According to the Welsh laws of Howel Dha who died in 948, after a reign of thirty three years over South Wales and eight years over the whole principality, the value of kitten before it could see was
 fixed at penny; after it had caught 8 mouse twopence, and when it had become an ex- pert mpuser fourpence, which in those days anyone killed cat belonging to the Kings household the animal was suspended by the tail in the granary that it's nose just touched the floor, and the delinquent had to forfeit, by way of fine, so much corn as, when heaped on the floor, would exactly hide the cat from view.