The record-union., 1898-12-09
THE PROFESSORS SCHEME.
How He Managed to Get Rid of the
Cats

How He Managed to Get Rid of the
Cats.
Mild and amiable as a man could
be-" said Colonel Calliper. my old
friend, Professor Cephas Bunkleton,
who formerly lived in Storksville Gen.
ter, VT, was greatly disturbed by the
bowling of cats; and when cats began
to gather nights on his back fence he
did not hesitate to take means to get
rid Of them. This was before cleo
tricity had come into it's present wide
spread common use. The Professor
couldn't string wire along the fence
top and simply by pressing a button
set in the wall at the head of his bed
annihilate any cats that might stray
that way. But he was Of an inventive
turn, and he had no difficulty in pro-
ducing contrivance that answered the
purpose perfectly.
He lived ON the banks of a small out
rapid stream that skirts Storkville Gen.
ter, and which had, just below where
he lived, fall of forty-two feet The
Professors house stood on high bank,
His back fence was probably fifty feet
above the surface of the river and fifty
feet back from the edge of it; SO that
from the fence to the water the river
bank sloped down at an angle of about
40 degrees. The problem, as it pre-
sented itself to the Professor, was how
to precipitate the cats from the top of
the fence down the bank into the river.
Difficult of accomplishment as this
might have seemed to some persons, it
never gave Professor Bunkleton the
cl;rbtoct tr011bln who tayo,
THE fence ran parallel with the
river. At one end of the fence, and so
formed and placed that the beginning of
it seemed a continuation of the fence
itself, the Professor set his trap. At a
little distance from the end of the
fence the trap became deep steel
trough, running on at first in line with
the fence, and then, it's sides here ris-
ing up and over until they formed a
pipe, curving outward toward the river.
Upon the end that joined the fence,
which had no upturned sides and which
seemed to- be a part of it, the Professor
placed his bait, which was always
something very tempting. By means OF
a mechanical arrangement the instant
the cat stepped on the plain piece of the
trap and just as 1t was about TO seize
it, the bait was drawn suddenly down
into the beginning of the trough. The
cat jumped after it, and that was the
end of the cat, for the trough and pipe
section was on hinge at the end Of
the plain section, and the weight of the
cat was enough to drop it to a consid-
cradle angle.
THE inside of the trough and pipe
was polished smooth and carefully
creased. There was no place where the
cat could possibly get hold. Carried
by the impetus Of its jump and the
lowering of the pipe, it began to slide
with gathering velocity down the trough
and around the curve, bowling all the
time with a howl that sounded like the
whistla of a. rapidly moving locomotive.
Muff1ed for moment as the cat en-
tered the pipe, the bowling sounded
louder than ever when it emerged at
the end toward the river.
1.-The cat was then going very fast,
but great as its velocity was it had not
gathered sufficient momentum to carry
it clear of the bank and into the river,
and here is where the Professors gem
ius again came into play. OF course,
he might have put pipe line right
QOWH Tie Ddllh 70 Tie WdlCl, Jul h1S
didn't want to do that, and it would
have cost too much, anyway, and so he
provided down the bank a simple relay
appartus.
He gave the outer end of the pipe the
slightest tilt upward, so as to give the
cat a little sheer outward and so a
greater fall; and at the place where it
would come down, which was at point
about two-thirds of the way down the
bank, he placed a. broad sheet of can
vas, stretched between two supports
planted in the ground, the canvas be-
ing inclined at the same general angle
as the bank of the river. but at not
quite SO much of an angle; it was lit
tie more nearly level.
This canvas served as a spri1gboard
to bounce the cat over into the river.
Drawn tight at the beginning, the can
vas was at night, when it was wet
with the dew, as tight as a drumhead.
Dropping down out of the air, with its
howl trailing behind it, the cat would
come down on this great drumhead,
ku-ur-r.
Bunk!'
"And bound up again and over, like
mortar shell in it's flight, and fall
into the swift current of the river, too
1azed now to give utterance to any
sound, and a minute later 1t had gone
over the falls.
Strangers that came to Storkville
Center to settle always used to wonder
how there came to be so few cats
around: they said they'd never seen
place so free from cats. When, after
a time, as always happened, some older
inhabitant took them to see the Pro-
fessor's cat trap, their wonderment was
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