The Hood River glacier. (Hood River, Or.) 1889-1933, 1912-02-29
Fins. Furs, and Feathers.

This euogy of the old house act has
been called forth by the recent adyep-
lures of a man, who, awakening from
deep sleep of peace, like Abul Ben
Ahmid, his slumbers having been dis
turbed by a peculiar wailing noise,
donned his bath robe and crept softly
to his back yard to rescue the infant
that he had concluded had been de-
serted and left there to his care. In
stead of young human being, his
astonished gaze, as soon as the kitchen
door was opened, met the iieeting
shadows of "a half dozen old beau fe-
lines. They had evidently been set
Ting, or were preparing to settle, some
affair of honor, or some difficulty
brought on by an affair of the heart.
Such actions are impossible under the
scrutiny Of strange cats, much less the
observation of dogs or men, and the
Devy of Sir Ih0mases, with but few
farewell greetings scuttied over the
back fence, licked their rullled coats
into shape and made ready to 90 home
and meet their wives and kittens in
the morning
The good citizen, who bad always
been a peaceful man, wiped his puzzled
brow with fringe of his robe and
took a solemn oath of everlasting en-
nifty to all cats, collectively and indi-
vidually He has purchased an auto
matte revolver and woe to the cat that
decides to join convention in his back
yard
Peculiar bea is are cats they pos
sess nine distinct lives and two "felin-
tiles Gf a mans temp -rament and
other elements combine are called his
personality, why can't we term cores
ponding attributes in Tom Cat, his
felinity?l But every old house cat has
two distinct natures. He may spend
his days purring before warm fire
and eating food from the hands of
gentle old maiden, all gentleness-both
the cat and the maiden lady. Yet let
The sun be down a couple Of hours and
he gets lis bristles up, becomes YER
liable feline Caruso and little bit
more He can whine softly, making a
noise ike the cry of an infant, shrill
maria" the next minute in a Shrill
falsetto, and punctuate the concert
with snorts like the exhaust of a Mo.
gul locomotive. To see the old boy
| lying under a cooking stove, with one
eye closed and lcking his paw, you
would never place your money on him
as a fighter. Yet the most 'Ornery'
| looking old yellow cat can raise more
rumpus in 10 minutes than any other
| form of animal energy of equal weight
10 the world. When you hear his wall
| at night, don't shoot him. his cries
| increase as he lives out his lives, and
when he reaches the ninth life, the end
of which will drop him over in to that
bourne" that Mr.. Shakespeare makes
| Hamlet soliloquize over, his whine
sounds like the sneeze Of the dog, Ger
ebus from across the River StyX.
While the stories Of the "boys" are
usually about some experience of hunt
! ing or fishing, they sometimes use up
all the material for such diversion and
! trivial anecdotes are related. Once in
a long tine good one is sprung. And
''good one, you know. always re-
calls another good one, until some
evenings a series of stories come forth.
| The boys grow eloquent and their Ian
guage 'famboyates around the cell
ing of the room. Sam Blythe could
catch hundreds of suggestions to pickle
for winter use on the "Who's Who"
page of the Saturday Evening Post,
and even that versatile slang singer,
George Ade, would occasionally run up
against a fable that would make some
of his own look like picked gander
The story of the horsefy and the
Dutchman, recently told, when served
properly, is above the mediocre yarn.
1 Down in southern Indiana one of the
fattest Dutchmen in the state kept a
road house. He was dirty old cuss
and the tap room of his joint was al
ways a seething mass of flies in the
Summertime. But the Dutchman had
become used to them. Although his
head was as bald and slick as peeled
onion and was used by the DipteraI
Society (the buzzer's fast setl as q
dance hall, on which they did the
Texas Tommy to the musical drCne OF
a blue bottle fly, the Dutchman never
seemed to care in the least. lie was
absolutely indifferent until one day,
while in the back yard drawing mug
of suds for a customer, a big horse fJ
came buzzing over the lea and zippeC
down on the bald pate. The horse fly
hadn't eaten that day and deciding
that the blood of a beer soaked Dutch
man was better than nothing, inserted
his proboscis to draw some of the
"red" from a little vein on the balC
crown. 1t was a little too much fo
the Dutchman and with his free hant
he brushed every last insect from hi
head. Now py tam, he said. ''whel
it comes to that you'll all have to ge
| off. "