The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-04-02
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tFrcm the Rochester Democrat and Chroni-

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 tFrcm the Rochester Democrat and Chroni.
 elel
 The mysterious bond of sympathy
 that certainly exists between hopeless
 ly unwed human females and the do s mestic cat, q subject generally consid-
 cred and treated as belonging exclu- | sively to the domain of the comic gri-
 ter, is worthy of deeper study than il
 has ever received from serious thinkers
 An able and well-equipped student, who
 should undertake to investigate it's ori-
 gin, cause and meaning, would be led
 back through a fascinating tangle of
 mythology, legend and tradition to the
 very earliest dawn of civilization.
 There has always been in the human | mind la vague recognition of some queer
 tie between women, especially maidens, and cats, that, considering the promi- nent place occupied by the eat in demo- nology, is certainly a temptation to | speculation. Satan, turing elderly fe- males to his service, almost invariably made his advances in the shape of a black cat; black cat was the form | usually assumed by the witch's famil- ! far; the old superstition of the Incubus survives to-day in the belief, more gen eral among educated women than would be supposed, that a cat twill suck @ baby's breath;" the cat-woman is more common in folklore than even the Lamia, the serpent-woman. Five thousand years ago the philosophical priests of Egypt had recognized this mystic relation and recorded their re- cognition of it in the most conspicuous way. The Egyptian virgin-goddess, the original of the Greek Artemis, was Bubastis. She is represented on the monuments of the Land of Khem as having a cats head and the cat was sa- cred to her. Dians pale orb to this day never lacks cat-worship. The contem- porary comic artist uhconsciously re- cognizes the relation between the old maid goddess and the domestic animal. He never draws a nocturnal cat with out introducing the moon In the pie ture The Chronicler has neither the time nor the Knowledge that must be possessed by him who would go deeply
 into this subject. If he has been able to suggest that the fondness of elderly maidens for cats Is an ancient respec- table and somewhat mysterious senti- ment, by no means to be regarded with levity, he has done all that he set out to do.
 It was necessary to thus put this tra- ditional sentiment in Night somewhat less fantastic than that in which the modern world seems content to view 1t, in order that the weight it deserves may be given to an earnest protest the Chronicer is about to make against most irreverent, materialistic and icon- oclastic decision recently rendered by an American tribunal of alleged jus tice. In a Baltimore court a man was recently prosecuted for stealing cat. The facts necessary to secure convic- ton were not disputed, but the thief went free by a decision of the court that the theft of feline cannot be con- strued as felony. The law was de- clared to be that cats are "ferae ratu- rae;" that though a cat may have been born in domesticity and have passed all It's life within the "domusi' of the man who supposed he was it's owner, may wear a collar and answer to it's name, | may have a genuine pecuniary value, 1t is not domestic animal and ho one | can acquire or maintain any property | rights in it. This seems to be almost as bad law as the now famous conten- | ton that a second coachman is not a | domestic servant in establishments | where the stable and the carriage | house are not under the same roof as | the family's living rooms. But it is | sustained by the attorney-general of | the state of Maryland, who, in formal | opinion, declares that cat is really | nothing but a wild animal, that it is of no use to man, and that the taking of cat without the consent of it's owner is not an indiotable offense. The harm- less, necessary cat is, therefore, now an outlaw in the state of Maryland. Pus- sy is taken out of the purview of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. She is game and can be killed, wherever found and at any sea son, by Whosoever may see fit More over, the decision has instantly swept out of existence hitherto existing val ues and, doubtless, reduced many a from opulence to beggary The most precious Angora, Persian, Chinese, Chartreuse tortoise-shell or Manx is no longer worth penny in Maryland This fact makes it ex- Eremely probable that the Baltimore judgment will be taken to the highest lttainable appellate court, where the Jhronicler has not the slightest doubt that it will be reversed. For it rests on ! most outrageous and inexcusable olunder in natural history. The do- nestle cat is not wild animal in the