The leader., 1903-10-03
CATS THAT NEVER SEE LIGHT,
Many Are Employed by Government
to Protect stores--They Are
Better Than Traps.

The recent alterations to q hotel IN
| the Strand have resulted among otnef
| things in calling attention to a re-
markable colony of semiwild cats tna'
has long fourished in the vaults pc
meath the building.
| Their ancestors, gays Stray STORIES
are supposed to have been q PAN
| abandoned by the workmen when the
hotel was being built. AS their pro-
geny increased in numbers they TOOK
up their abode in the blacklist ano
least accessible vaults beneath the
lowest basement, whence they emerged
| only at night
They are extraordinary cats; BLACK
| and white as to color, with enormous
heads; and many of them are nearly
is inches tall and fully three, feet IN
! length from the tip Of the tail to the
snout.
In Naples is a race of nocturnal re-
| lines that breed in the vaults beneath
| the churches. They are regularly rec
by the authorities, but not too bountl'
fully, for they exist to keep down, sc
| far as possible, the hordes OF mice
which infest all old Neapolitan build.
| ings
| Some hundreds of cat colonies are
kept by the British government. The
| animals receive a regular subsistence
allowance, which figures each year in
the estimates, and the large majority
of them spend their lives almost en-
tirely underground.
The biggest colony of this kind is
located in the vast subterranean gran
aries which have been excavated from
the living rock just outside the city OF
Valetta, in Malta.
Here are stored grain and other pro-
visions sufficient to maintain the en-
| lire population of the island during a
| period of seven years, and quite lit
tie army OF cats is constantly employed
in waging war against the rats and
mice that would, if they were free
| from molestation, play sad havoc.
Like the Savoy cats mentioned
| above, these Maltese pussies have. in
the course of years, developed into a
special breed, very fierce and of great
size, the reason beng probably that,
In accordance with the law which de-
crees the invariable survival of the fit
test under such circumstances, the
weaklings have been continually killed
off by the rodents with whom they are
engaged in perpetual battle.
In England cats are similarly en-
| ployed by the post Office authorities
for the protection of mail bags, a sum
being granted for their maintenance
from the public purse.
At the Tower of London the ord
nance department finds it necessary to
employ q considerable number for the
protection of the large quantities OF
military stores deposited there from
time to time.
Dock companies regularly employ
underground cats in considerable num-
bers, as do also all railway companies
breweries, shipping and storing
houses, mills and factories.
Occasionally some firm or other will
| try to substitute traps, or poison, but
in the end they are generally only toe
glad to revert to the pussies.
'You see," remarked to the writer
one day recently the foreman of one OF
London's biggest -four mills, sit is not
so much the vermin the cats kill as the
vermin the cats brighten away. Given
plenty of cats, of the right sort, and
neither rats nor mice need be very
| greatly feared. Without them they
will play havoc"