Tombstone epitaph., 1890-01-25
CUTE DOGS AND CATS.
Specimens of Both Live in Scranton, Pa,
 If These Stories Are True.

A man in the southern part of Scran- ton, writes a New York Tribune corre- spondent, missed several ot his young black Hamburg chickens early in the summer, and for awhile he laid the theft to a neighbor's big cat, but finally caught the culprit and it wasn't the old cat. It was black and tan dog that be- longed to family five blocks away, and it seized downy little chicken and ran off with it right before the eyes of the astonished owner. He chased the dog, but soon lost sight of it. In day or so the dog returned and stole another chicken. This time the man traced the dog to it's home, and caught it with the chicken in it's possession. The family begged him not to kill their children's pet, paid him for all the chickens he had lost, and saved the dogs life.
 A small Scotch terrier belonging to a man who lives near one of the Scranton hotels got in the notion early in the summer of following the hotel omnibus to the railroad stations. He came near being run over one morning, and after that the driver scared the dog back whenever he started to tag along behind the vehicle. There was a good hiding place under the hotel veranda, and in it the dog kept shady until the driver had mounted his seat. Then he stole out, and before the omnibus had got fairly under way, he hopped upon the rear step and hung like mailer as the omnibus iolted and rumbled over the rough wooden pavement down to the station, Before the driver had time to get down the dog was mingling with the crowd, where he stayed until the driver was ready to start back, when he sought his perch again. The cunning animal had done this number of times before the driver found it out from gentleman who had been watching the dog, and it pleased the driver so much that he let the dog have his own way after that, and the interesting brute continues to ride back and forth on the step.
 A Jefferson township farmer owns she cat which, whenever the swallows begin to fly low just before rain dur ing the summer, steals away to coV cred drain by the roadside, hiding her self in the open end. From the little walled space she can look far down the road and see the swallows as they sal along close to the surface, but the birds can't see her. When they get all most over the spot puss springs out and pulls down a swallow with as much certainty and grace as the felders of the New York giants pull down fly balls.
 Druggist John Fl. Phelps has mother cat with peculiar habit, formed when her three kittens were old enough to lap milk, early in the season. Milk for them all was poured into small mortar in the rear of the store. The heads of the three kittens took up about all the space there was. Several times the old cat tried to get her nose in the mortar while her little ones were tapping the milk, but she found that she would have to push one of the kittens aside if she did so. After having watched the kittens for 8 minute or two, the mother cat very carefully and slowly pushed her left paw between two of them, touched the milk gently, and then pulled her paw out and licked the milk off. She kept this up until the kittens had got their fill and moved back to wash their faces, and even then she stuck in her paw and licked it off. The habit grew upon her, and when the kittens were in the cellar she would come upstairs and poke her paw into the milk and lick it off for forty or fifty times in succession. Fuss has never Tapped milk since.