The weekly intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1891-1901, 1898-05-14
CATS RUN A PLANTATION.


A Tribe of FcIines That Kills Dogs
and Attacks Horses and Cows.
There is in the neighborhoOd of La
Grange, Miss, a farm, once beautiful
and prosperous, now almost given over
to dcsolation and cats. The cats, of
course, are the cause of the desolation,
and the cause of the cats is a long
story.
Here it is, as the old man who owns
the farm old it to me:
my little granddaughter May is to
blame for all this said the old man,
once the most active man in this COM
munity now grown old and seedy,
living alone in the big house, penned
up behind barred windows and screened
doors to keep the cats out.
"a curious little mink May was, al
ways let to have her own way, and
with all sorts of queer notions inside
her curly head. She lived in ST. Louis,
God bless her, and one day she was
going down the street when she saw
some boys torturing a kitten. The ras-
Gals had broken the poor things legs
and were dragging it about proddingit
with sticks. Suddenly little May APP
peared in the midst of them like a
whirlwind. Shaking her tiny fists in
the boys faces, and hurting her fiery
words at them, she snatched up the
kitten and ran to a surgeons office
near by and made him set the broken
limbs. Then she carried the little in
valid home with her and nursed it well
again.
This was just the beginning. Her
heart thus awakened went out in sym
pathy to the whole world of cats. She
rarely went out without returning with
one or more stray cats in tow, and she
would frequently spend her last penny
at the butchers stall buying meat for
the hungry felines she met with. You
may well imagine what a course of
this sort of thing resulted in. 1t was
only a short time before the whole
place was alive with cats. So nu-
merous did they become on the prem
Uses that my son-in-law had to sell out
to get rid of them. 1t was then, just
in the beginning of ummer, tina little
May came to stay with me awhile. When
she came she brought 70 cats with her,
all that her father and mother would
let her retain of the vast number that
had infested the place as the result of
her too kindly attentions.
"Well, so the little girl came with
her 10 cats to make us a visit here
her grandmother was living then.
Twelve cats is n fairly lively number
to start on, but May lost no time in add
ing thereto. People hereabouts have
or at least they used to have-a habit
of drowning kittens when the house
cat begins to be too prolific, or else of
leaving them to perish by the roadside.
May soon got on to this practice and
made many daily excursions in her
little pony cart to rescue the perishing
and care for the dying. Ihave no means
of computing the possible number of
cats she accumulated during her visit.
! know that they became so numerous
that I had to rave the windows barred
and the doors screened to prevent their
literally taking the house. Everything
else, as you see, belongs TO them. They
have multiplied n h~undredfold. They
nave driven off every bird, every fowl, |
every small animal that once made the
farm and its woodland their home. En-
masse they attacked the dogs and did
them to death. Even cows and horses
nave been overcome by them, so that
now the only remnants of my once
famous stud and fine nerd are a few
stunted specimens that l try to keep
to work the place, but which are in con
slant terror of their lives, so fierce have
the cats become"
In the ours of the conversation the
old man had touched a bell and ordered
a servant to serve dinner. When we
went into the d%ining-room by and by
such n yelping and screaming and
squalling l never heard. A regiment OF
cats, it seemed to me, had scented food,
and came leaping and dashing at the
windows and literally hanging in fes-
toons on the screen doors. 1t was
enough to make the blood run cold,
and l confess mine did, but the old
man ate his dinner as undisturbed as an
oyster.
why in the world don't you organ
ize shooting parties" said l, and hunt
these terrible creatures off the face of
the earth
"They are little Mays cats, sir" he
made answer. "She is dead, and they
are all 1 have left. Surely I may take
care of them for her sake.'-Cor. Phil
adelphia Times,