Second low-cost edition. Price 4.50 marks.
1870. Weimar. Published by Herm. Weissbach.

Opinions of the Press.

(Nature.) The book, written by painter Gustav Michel in Weimar with great erudition and artistic feeling, is a sort of hymn to the cat, which everyone who has ever lovingly stroked a kitten's fur in their youth or later should read at least once. In and of itself, the theme is simply: The cat in history, legend and art, as well as its virtues; but the author does not write his variations in asthmatic flowery classicism, but prefers to depict them smelling of both roses and of ammonia, which shakes the senses powerfully. So all of his cat pictures, which he also decorates with mischievous woodcuts in the old Nuremberg style, are as fresh as the spring and their colours enliven the reader like moss and meadow green. Nevertheless, this one has no need to fear romanticism in "Kater Murr" or "Puss in Boots" style, and this time the scientific truth does not appear in a long toga, but in the light veil of teasing and charming poetry. All credit to him if the author did it consciously, for we value a good composition and believe that even a scientific book should be a work of art, something we dear Germans pay too little attention to, because we always think that the subject must speak for itself, which it does not, or only rarely does. We credit the author for not allowing himself to be carried away, like other so-called natural science writers, into a perfidious, supposedly witty, depiction that injects something into a subject that is not actually there. Fortunately, his scientific conscience prevented this and caused him to meet even the strictest requirements in 78 footnotes. A. M.

(Literary communication.) - A written defence of the feline race! Doesn't that sound so outrageous and strange that curiosity alone must make this remarkable book worthy of our attention? - The author teaches us in the most inspiring way about the rich fortunes of his subjects, "with a cheerful and keen eye" - sometimes serious, sometimes bubbling with humour, but always instructive, entertaining and scientifically thorough, the author pursues his goal. The Book of Cats is the first work on this subject in our language and is so original in its style that it deserves not only the thanks of cat lovers, but also of science, which thereby receives a work that it has previously lacked. M. M.

Reprint prohibited. Law of June 11, 1870. Right of inspection reserved. [expired]

FIRST LETTER.

A spectacle for the gods
To see two lovers. -
But may I ask, I ask for one thing!
Let me have the best cup of wine
in pure gold.
Singer, by Goethe.

When I think of those days, dearest, those beautiful days on the Rhine, our Rhine, with its vines, its blue sky, its green mountains and fragrant valleys; when I think of that beautiful moonlit night when I said farewell to you and the mountains of my homeland: it almost seems to me as if it had been a dream, told of a lovely mermaid, as if old Father Rhine had sung his most beautiful fairy tale to his departing son. But it was no dream! I really did say goodbye to you, with a pounding heart I timidly asked to be allowed to send you letters, many letters, and you laughed as only you can laugh. "You want to send me letters, lots of letters," you said, and your beautiful eyes looked down on me compassionately like stars from above - "and what do you want to write?" Oh, my dearest! I want to write about everything that moves my heart, about all the hot pangs "Which will soon burn it out and leave it empty, like Mount Etna once did., you interjected, "so I ask you, beloved, write about everything that moves your heart, but above all - about your cat." With these words I felt as if the earth would swallow me up. The mountains danced around me; the castles leaned down into the valley, and the Rhine embraced them like a white snake. - My senses became confused, I closed my eyes, and when I looked up again, everything was still and motionless, only in the distance on the old walls a bright gown shimmered, and the nightingales sang their sweetest songs. "Eleven o'clock! Eleven o'clock!" called the night watchman at my side, "and the Kronenwirth has the best wine," he added quietly. -

You can see now, dear lady, that although the beautiful location on the Rhine has long since vanished and my heart has burned empty like Etna once did, your written wish has nevertheless remained unforgotten. Things have become serious with the cat, serious without any real merit on my part; for, contrite with shame, I confess the enthusiasm of that hour of farewell, i.e. the enthusiasm for my cat, had long since evaporated when one day or one evening, chance presented a serious warning to me.

You know the saying about small causes having great effects; how a soap bubble led to optics and a falling apple led to gravity; that the steaming tea kettle led to the discovery of the enormous power of steam, that the twitching frog's leg led to the discovery of galvanic current, and that Bismarck discovered the German Empire; but you certainly have no idea how great ideas are connected with my cat. Now listen and have pity on your poor friend who, like Goethe's sorcerer's apprentice, can no longer dismiss the spirits he summoned.

It was an autumn evening. Outside, the storm roared, and the mighty, ancient linden trees, which embraced the house as if with protective arms, groaned under its grim force, while it snapped branches and whipped withered leaves around like snowflakes in the air. It chased dark masses of clouds before it, which towered threateningly and poured down icy rain. Deep night lay over the earth, not a friendly star was visible, and the roar of the storm sounded like rumbling thunder.

In such phenomena, poets see the "unleashed wrath" of heaven; the ordinary mortal, however, speaks of bad weather, which is usually followed by sunshine. So what does it matter to us, one or other of my friends may have thought, it is all the more comfortable in a warm room, with a slim-necked bottle and a fragrant dish. - And indeed, my dearest, how quickly one forgets the day's storms when, in the company of dear friends, one recalls in lively conversation the many journeys and forays; when hour after hour passes in cheerful enjoyment, comfort and cheerfulness, Bacchus and the night let the lightning of wit shine. How wonderful is such a round table! Is it not a feast for body and soul, whose epicureanism is revealed by lips and palate; the culinary side is merely a vehicle for intellectual social nourishment, friendship rules the hearts, humour and wit are the best delicacies, which not only refresh while one is enjoying them, but long afterwards when you think back to them.

So we sat together happily, light-hearted and cheerful, and had already cracked open many a bottle, when we were suddenly startled out of our divine mood by a long drawn-out cry, like that of a child. A child's voice! A child outside on such a stormy night! We jumped up from our seats, rushed to the window, tore it open . . . and above us sat a black tomcat. Oh, my dearest! these pale, mortally frightened, ashamed faces struggling to keep their composure, and merrily mad faces, and in the middle of the room the tomcat meowing with delight - is this not splendid material for history painters?

But cold horror soon gave way to a burning indignation. "Out," cried the chorus, "out with the black monster," and hot-blooded, busy hands grabbed stick and umbrella to chase the poor stranger away; the cat, however, thought that I was his protector and meowed imploringly up at me, and my warm heart, as you know, dearest, was conquered. A strangely eloquent spirit overcame me; I spoke fiery words in defence of the oppressed, and when they tried to dismiss me and my arguments, I cried out that I would not only defend this tomcat, but defend all the tomcats of the world, that I would write a defence of the feline race, that I would . . . Derisive laughter interrupted the flow of my speech, but just as there are songbirds that stay silent while all is quiet around them, but sing louder whenever they have to strain to be heard, so there are many people who are taciturn when all is silent, but who become more and more talkative when others are less inclined to listen to them; like canaries, they try to outdo one another with their voices as the noise around them becomes louder.

That's what happened to me. The opposition made me a cat panegyrist, and what some people may not understand is that I like this position. And why shouldn't I? Homer found it worthy of his muse to write the war of the frogs and mice, Virgil wrote of immortality of the mosquito, Lucian of the fly, and other famous people of the rooster, beauty and the flea, so why, by the eternal stars, should the cat not find its bard; its story is no less brilliant and remarkable than that of Odysseus and Helena!

This awareness made me set to work with glee. I searched through old, yellowed folios, combed through the literary treasures accumulated by scholarship, but had the unpleasant experience that the cat is rarely mentioned in our German literature. The French have treated this subject with deference for a long time, but it's probably the English, most of all, who seem to have a special love for this animal, which, in my opinion, can be explained scientifically. The cat is said to have electrical powers, and the chapter on the properties of electric bodies in Experimental Physics teaches that if one places a non-electric body near these bodies, or, as one would say, in their atmosphere, it also becomes electric. I therefore suspect that since Albion's sons, in their watery nature, were not very electric from birth and have little cat-like speed to show, but mostly walk along as if they had swallowed the pole of their national flag, it is precisely the transfer of cat-electricity that can be regarded as the bringing about their love of cats. -

During these excursions, thirsting for knowledge, it soon became clear to me that most of the very few authors who have written about cats - among them authorities in the field of zoology - harbour understandable prejudices against this animal, and in many cases continue to circulate traditional myths without their own judgment. The common sayings and opinions that cats are less intelligent and loyal than dogs, and are more devoted to the house than to their owner, have become almost universal. In particular, since the Middle Ages, the Christian view has regarded the cat as a symbol of deceit, malice and low flattery, but the great falseness of this view can be seen by anyone who observes a domestic cat, not in its random appearance, but in its development. Nor can one speak of a cat without referring to it as cruel', without considering that if the word cruel' is applied to a creature without reason, one may just as rightly assert that all animals are cruel, from the camel to the nightingale.

It is mostly only the more perfect animals that are accused of cruelty and are blamed because they think and act like humans; however, they are never cruel to a human degree or in a human sense. Even the tiger is not cruel; only humans have this quality. People unscrupulously cut off frogs' hind legs and throw them back into the water without killing them completely, they boil live crabs and mussels, they skin live eels, and are hunting, cockfighting and boxing fights noble virtues? It is a curious fact that all peoples who have not yet been touched by civilization treat the animals whose services or company they require very kindly and humanely, and as a result there exists between those primitive people and their domestic animals a bond which is highly worthy of the respect and imitation of civilized people.

The Indian in the American savannas and prairies devotes the very best care to his mustang, speaks to it as if the animal can understand him, and in return achieves an admirable intelligence and efficiency in the animal. Even among the Eskimo, who has only reached the lowest level of education, we always find the same gentleness towards his running animals pulling his sled across the endless expanses of ice and snow, and here, as everywhere where treatment by purely human means seeks to awaken the understanding and affection of the domestic animals, greater intelligence is shown in these and there is no trace of life-threatening excesses, such as we have the opportunity to observe daily in Germany. If we look at the relationship between man and his domestic animals, we find the most pleasing results, as a rule, only in regions where the enervating artificiality of education, with all its harmful effects, has not yet broken the dominion of nature - on the plains, among farmers and shepherds, and among the inhabitants of the mountain regions - there one finds the most enduring, most willing and most capable animals. The intelligence of sheepdogs is world-famous, and now - who has ever seen a shepherd mistreat his dog, the friend who guards and helps to guide his flock?

And now I ask, why is the cat mistreated in such an unjust manner, when it is of such great value to the house? One should not be angry with the cat because it is sometimes shy and unfriendly, it is just how it was made; for it is always man, with his various living conditions and character traits, who has a decisive influence on the character of domestic animals, so that the same types are found in a completely different form among primitive peoples, where, as mentioned, they are treated better.

It is indeed astonishing how much the overall expression of animals can change, improve or worsen; good treatment, good care and educative words ennoble them, and in young animals both their external appearance and their mental nature can quickly improve or worsen through contact with people, so that one could also apply the proverb: Tell me who you associate with and I will tell you who you are! Good, intelligent people can only have a good influence on animals and raise good animals, and the more one spends time with the cat, the more its attachment to the family becomes, but the more one leaves a cat to itself, the more its attachment to its birthplace becomes.

However, dear friend, I will report on all the hardship and injustice that Mrs. Pusscat has to endure elsewhere and will now try to start at the beginning.

According to the famous Englishman Dr. Johnson, the cat is an animal that catches mice. This learned definition, I fear, will not satisfy you; nor will the views of Ross, who claims that the English word "puss" is derived from the Egyptian "Pasht" or from the Latin "pusio". The word "Katze" commonly used in German, English "cat", Danish and Dutch "kat", Spanish "gato", Italian "gatto" are, as in all Romance languages, with the exception of Wallachian, derivations of the Latin word "catus", which was first used by Palladius for the new domestic animal that came from Egypt and has since then, like the Egyptian animal itself, spread not only to all European peoples, including the Basques, Finns, and modern Greeks, but also far into the Orient to Asians of various tribes.[1])

The cat is also called "Mietze", Italian micio, Slavic maceka, as a peculiar name, and just as Mietzchen means little Marie, and Bohemian macek means little Mathias, in Russia the cat is called "waska", i.e. little Basil or "mischka", i.e. little Michel (sic!). The oldest name for the cat is probably to be found in Egypt. Church records in the Louvre give it as Mau, Mae, Maau, but some Egyptologists have read "Chaou" on certain monuments. It is possible that our German word "miauen" comes from the Egyptian "Mau, Maau". -

[Translator's note: the following section discusses words that contain "Katze" [cat], in particular Katzenjammer - "yammering cats" - which means both "hangover" and "depression." Kater can refer to a hangover as well as a tomcat.]

In thieves' language, a lady's muff [hand-warmer] is called a "cat," and "to free a cat" is the same as stealing a muff. The English army knows a cat with nine tails, and the significance of a corpulent money-purse [Geldkatze] is probably generally understood; as is the significance of pretty chambermaids [Kammerkatzen]. A constellation in the southern hemisphere under the neck of the water snake, discovered by Lalande, is called the cat; Katzenbuckel is the highest mountain in the Odenwald, and Katzenveit in Voigtland [in Namibia], is a mountain spirit who is a dwarf, like the Katzenbutz.

According to the Linnaeus system, the lion, the Asiatic tiger, the leopard, and the American panther are also called cats; some other animals are also called cats because of their similarity in shape, for example the civet cat, the guenon, etc. The word "cat" is a general expression that leaves the gender undecided. If this is to be defined more precisely, the male is called Kater [Tomcat], probably also Heinz [2]) or Hinz, in other regions, e.g. in Livonia, he is Kunz, in Lower Saxony he is Bolze, and in English Karl cat (which means the cat's husband).[3])

There are other things that can be understood by the word "cat". Moerike sings beautifully and touchingly:

"Remember, you tearful singers,
In times of despair, one does not call upon gods, "

and Heinrich Heine also gave deep insights into the essence of this world suffering, his description:

"The grey flock of clouds
rose from a sea of joy;
today I must suffer for
being happy yesterday.
Ah, the nectar has turned into wormwood!
Ah, how painfully depression [Katzenjammer]
Has weighed down my heart
And my stomach is as sick as a dog [Hunde-Elend]"

remains imperishable, at least as long as there are still hangovers [Kater].

Hangovers [Katzenjammer, Kater] are those incomprehensible feelings of woe and world-weariness that weigh heavily on us after a night of drinking, when we wake up late the next morning with a dull headache as if from a deep stupor. There is a terrible rumbling in the head as though someone is hammering in there, it feels as if icicles and fiery saws are alternately pushing from the inner surface of the skull into the brain. One lies as though on a bed of thorns, rolling about; first your chin hangs on your knees, then you support your leaden head with your hands; now you lie flat on your stomach, now on your back, letting your arms stick out from your body like windmill sails, while your legs hang from the bed in strange resignation.

Lost choruses and unclear jokes swarm like flies through your weary head, until finally you enter a that in many respects resembles apparent death. Then long-forgotten sins pass before your soul, and in addition to this misery you are particularly plagued by a certain, inexplicable capriciousness of the stomach, which you are powerless to satisfy. It is a pitiful state! The mental and physical devastation is unspeakably hopeless! Deep remorse, burning shame and a contrition that threatens to destroy you because of a not entirely clear night that had been so beautiful, darkens your soul and makes the beautiful earth, sunshine, spring joy, wine, women and song seem like mere trifles. Wisdom and understanding, wit, the greatest philosophers and poets, the most ingenious artists and the boldest acrobats are all null and void in your eyes; but the most terrible thing - and this contempt extends to myself - you are convinced that you are nothing but a miserable human being. Can there be anything more devastating than this awareness of your immeasurable misery and that the earth itself is a vale of tears, not extinguished by pain!

With difficulty you rise from the bed, stagger along dreamily, and sad, deeply clouded eyes gaze into the unknown. You put on your waistcoat first, grab your empty purse instead of the soap, run the shoe brush through your hair, try to comb your hat with the comb and use the newly bought scarf as a garter. Finally you're dressed; breakfast is not something to look at, the newspaper is read mechanically, the essence of the leading article is incomprehensible and you cannot tear yourself away from the adverts. Your attention is particularly drawn to news of deaths and advertisements where you can be paid for civil service. But all these temptations cannot whitewash your future; life is boring, expensive and hopeless. Oh, nature, holy nature! is it possible that a little too much of that noble liquid enjoyed on a high flood of joy can make you forget all your caring love, that you can become a rebel against yourself after being convinced that the earth with its joys is the best there is, and you must be happy to live on it.

This affliction, my lovely friend, has been with mankind for thousands of years and, as they say, has become chronic among Germans. As far as the history of this ailment goes, it dates back to the time when Noah came out of the Ark, planted a vine and thus caused scandal in the Lot family. The hangover has become native to all peoples of the earth and it is, therefore, understandable that since the earliest times medicine has had to try to master this inevitable affliction. Pickled herring (harengus acetecum) has been used successfully as a magic pill against this ailment, which doctors classify as "acute alcohol poisoning". This remedy sets the head straight, takes away the stomach's eccentric moods and, preferably in the company of a fine drink, brings about a radical elimination of the evil, based on the rule that he who inflicts a wound must also heal it. Herring is the faithful companion of the hangover and should not be underestimated in view of its historical significance in the animal kingdom. (4) [Translator's note: this also plays on the cat's love of fish.]

I would also like to mention the word "cat music" (5); it has a history of its own and is connected with marriage and therefore with the fairer sex - and with this I have come to the end of my letter which, along with its subsequent companion letters, I hope will find an attentive reader in you, dear lady.

SECOND LETTER.

Animals and people soundly slept,
Even the lively house rooster was silent,
As a flock of truant guests
Arose from the nearest roofs.
Lichtwer.

My life is love and air and loud singing.
Mahlmann's student song.

As you know, dear friend, there are often inexplicable likes and dislikes, which, because one is at a loss for a more correct definition, are called sympathies and antipathies. What matters here is the extent to which the other person's temperament, ideas and wishes coincide with our own, or, conversely, the extent to which we are repelled by them. In the former case, we feel attracted to one another, often only because of a certain peculiarity of the look or an inexpressible movement of the lips; and in the latter case, sometimes the most external thing has a repulsive effect on us, such as a slightly distorted nose or a too conventional hairstyle.

Antipathies are also often acquired, and are the result of the uncontrolled imagination of mothers, the philosophy of spinsters, and old wives' tales, which have laid the foundation for these idiosyncrasies in children. The most vivid and indelible impressions on the mind of children arise from fear; this is the source of antipathies, which easily extend to objects that least deserve it. Thus, from the cradle, we have been told that cats are false, are sorcerers and witches, and even that they suffocate children. A fear of cats is no more than one of those irrational combinations of ideas which dishonour our understanding. Even the famous Buffon, in his Natural History, was inexplicably unable to break free from the traditional, false assessment of the cat.

"The cat," he says "is a treacherous animal, and is only tolerated in the house to drive away animals that are even more of a nuisance to us. Although cats are polite and mischievous when young, their innate cunning and false character are already evident, which develops more and more with each passing day and cannot be eliminated by training. They are naturally inclined to stealing, and the best training can only turn them into servile, flattering, and malicious robbers; for, like all slaves, they know how to conceal their intentions and wait for the moment to pounce on their prey, evade punishment, and keep away until the danger has passed. They easily adapt to human habits without adopting them; they only appear to be attached, as is evident from the crawling manner in which they move and the ambiguity of their glances. The cat does not look its best friend in the face, even if it shows its attachment to him by certain gestures; it seems to tolerate his caresses, which are more annoying than pleasant, only out of fear or deceit. Very different from the faithful dog, whose feelings are all directed towards its master, the cat seems to feel only for itself, to think only of itself, to love man only conditionally, and to remain in his company in order to abuse it in a selfish way. These characteristics are, however, more closely related to those of humans than to those of the dog, which in its complete sincerity is decidedly the opposite."."

Buffon's views have been sufficiently refuted by modern naturalists. I refer to Scheitlein, Lenz, Brehm, Wood, etc. These erroneous views can only be the result of false impressions from youth, and there are ridiculous antipathies. Bartholin tells the following of a Danish nobleman who was so strong that he could bend iron like sheet metal and yet was extremely afraid of cats: "A good friend of his who was a guest wanted to test him during his meal and had a covered dish with a cat in it served alongside others. Although the nobleman did not see the cat, he was nevertheless very frightened, as evidenced by the sweat that poured from him all over. When the dish was uncovered and the cat had stuck out its head, the nobleman became so indignant that he gave his host such a hard slap in the face that he fell dead to the ground."

Henry III, that weak king of France, could not stay in any place where a cat was present, and Germanicus could not bear the cry or the sight of a rooster. (6)

Many people fear and have an aversion to snakes, crickets, earwigs, even harmless mice, and yet I know women who had mice as their favourites, just as snakes are kept in India for a similar purpose. The prisoner Pelison in the Bastille was fortunate to have a spider in his dungeon, which came to him when he called. Beethoven also had a spider as his most attentive listener for a long time; whenever he played, it let itself down from the ceiling right above his instrument and stayed until the last notes had died away. When one day the maid entered the room and saw the spider, she knocked the little creature to the floor and trampled it before Beethoven could stop her. Beethoven was beside himself with this loss and was inconsolable for a long time.

Sympathy is far nobler and more spiritual in nature. Joy and pity are its children, and when we yawn, laugh, cry and drink with one another, the strength or weakness of sympathy depends on greater or lesser imagination and is therefore found among young people and the fairer sex. When this remark is made, many will think of old maids, and not without reason; for they can hardly be imagined without cats, and this is fortunate for both.

Old maids are sufferers, to varying degrees, victims of modern society; poverty alone has destroyed all hope of a husband, of having children, of family happiness; they are alone with the heavy burden of existence, alone in this cold, wide world - so is it surprising that they take refuge in their solitude and transfer all their love and spurned tenderness onto a cat, the only friend in a dreary life who at least knows how to return that love with loyal devotion, sweet purring and heartfelt meowing. Poor old maid, you too have known the rosy, blissful days of youth, have dreamed of happiness, have seen one hope after another die, and now old age has arrived with its icy certainty of the end, the end of a lost, useless life.

Surely it is harsh, unfair, and disgusting to make her the target of ridicule for her undeserved misery, and to mock her love of cats! Did not the mutual love of the maiden and the cat arise from the similarity of their misfortune, from the hard-heartedness of people, from loneliness! But even the abandoned old maid has virtues which, as Huxley proves, have a national significance in England.

"We Englishmen," he says, "hold old maids in high esteem, because England owes its strong race of people to them. The Englishman draws his strength from good meat, from excellent beef. This thrives mainly in red clover - but red clover needs the visit of bumblebees to produce its seeds. Unfortunately, the bumblebees are being killed by field mice. But who kills field mice? The cat. And who best keeps the cat so that it breeds by the thousand? Old maids. And in this way England owes its strong race of people to old maids!"

Poets and artists also hold cats in high esteem. A particularly sensitive nervous system enables them to recognize its great qualities - a recognition that is impossible for those with coarse-minded natures. Cats also have great friends in politics; the love of certain political figures for cats is explained by their contempt for people, for statesmen know that even the purest can often be won over by money, grandeur and honours. In this respect, people in politics hold no illusions; if they had any, they would not be great politicians. Therefore, they like independence in animals, especially the type of independence found in cats. I will just mention Mohammed, the Sultan of El-Daher-Beybars (1260), Stein, Richelieu, Cardinal Wolsey, Chesterfield, Washington, Chateaubriand, de Colbert, Peter the Great, etc.

Wolsey always had his cat sitting next to him on an armchair during his audiences and Richelieu was always surrounded by young cats in his cabinet. Chateaubriand was an enthusiastic admirer of cats; they were his most devoted friends, who remained loyal to him in misfortune, in happiness, in exile and at the embassy. As an ambassador in Rome, he received a cat as a gift from Pope Leo XII as a sign of special favour, which still possessed all his love and affection in his twilight years, when all other feelings had gradually died away,.

The cat was most revered in the Orient. From recent research we know the prehistoric times of many peoples, especially Asian peoples, including their religious relationship. The Indian idolized all of nature, but did not idolize man, the sinner; he seems to have placed him below all natural things; hence his worship of animals.

Hebrews say that man is related to God, while Indians claim that animals are related to God. While Mosaic worship commanded that rivers of animal blood should be shed, Indian priests strangled only one ram a year, and did so only with a plea to the gods for forgiveness. While Israelites considered animals to lack souls, Indians taught that the human soul travelled through animals in order to be cleansed of sins in these sinless, holier beings. The sun and moon - and their earthly expression and image, the bull and the cow, symbols of nutrition, natural power, male and female, heaven and earth - were the most important, and were as sacred as the transmigration of souls, and celebrated in great festivals. Other animals were also worshipped, such as the elephant as a symbol of wisdom and strength, the swan as Brahma's steed; the raven represented the departed, the shadow souls, the snake represented life and the cat, in the form of a white cat, represented the moon that chases away the grey mice, the shadows of the night.

The Egyptians are an ancient people; Egypt, like India and Palestine, is a land where human knowledge originated in times of antiquity and is closely related to India in terms of ideas, but presents a stark contrast to Palestine. Everything about the Egyptians is striking, most inexplicable is their worship of animals. No people saw so much in animals as the Egyptians; they had entire divine animal species for the whole country, and divine animal species for individual provinces. Some people worshiped them all, others worshiped only one individual from them all.

According to Herodotus, the ibis and the vulture were sacred everywhere and the other animals were only sacred in certain regions; according to Diodorus, it was the ibis and the cat. The main animal sacred to the Egyptians, their highest animal deity, was the Apis bull; everyone worshipped him with the deepest reverence. He lived in a temple palace, rested on expensive carpets, ate his food from golden bowls, and the leading men of the state considered it the greatest glory to serve him. But the cat was also sacred and was particularly revered. At Bubastis the Egyptians had a goddess, the moon goddess, named Pasht (7); the Greeks called her Bubastis and compared her to Artemis, the goddess of childbirth and the protector of women. Great festivals were celebrated for Pasht, and one of these was one of the six great general festivals of the Egyptians.

According to Herodotus, "When they go to Bubastis, a large number of men and women travel in each boat; the women have rattles and clatter along, and the men play the flute; other men and women sing and clap their hands. But when they come to another place, they go out on the land, do as described, and tease the women by raising their skirts. But in Bubastis they celebrate the festival with great sacrifices and more grape wine is consumed then than in the whole of the rest of the year, and seven hundred thousand men and women, not including the children, come together according to the natives." From this description it is clear that the festival of Pasht was a very joyful one and that the blessing of this goddess must have been general, great, and especially joyful for women. The custom of the women, as described above, in its crude naturalness, points to reproduction and birth and justifies the comparison with Artemis. (8)

The goddess Pasht has the head of a cat, the cat is a sacred animal, just as the animal of such an important goddess must be. It is impossible to know for certain why the cat was considered sacred, but we can assume, with a high degree of probability, that it was a symbol of light and radiance and therefore symbolised a goddess with light and radiance. The goddess of birth, who ripened the seed and brought those that were mature into the light is in this respect connected with light; the Romans also called the goddess of birth "Lucina", i.e. goddess of light. If we now consider a birth goddess through festive customs and through comparison with Artemis, we may also assume that in Egypt the cat symbolised of the birth goddess. In Thebes it was one of the temple deities and the Artemis Grotto, as the Greeks called it, takes its name from it. Champollion says in the sixth of his Egyptian letters that the so-called Artemis Grotto was hewn into the rock opposite Beni-Hassan-el-aamar and contained images of Bubastis and around it were the burials of cats. In front of the sanctuary there is a row of cat mummies wrapped in mats, and further between the valley and the Nile in a desolate area there are two burials of cat mummies in packages, covered with sand two feet high.

In bronze statues, Pasht is often depicted with the sistrum (9) in her right hand and in her left hand the lion's head with the sun disk and the uraeus, the symbol of royal dignity, and sometimes also with a basket or an urn on her arm. The sistrum evidently has no symbolic meaning other than its sound which is intended to scare away hostile creatures. In Egyptian mythology the hostile creatures that must be chased away with the sistrum - which mostly belongs to the service of Isis - can be none other than those that could hinder nature's prosperity and blessing. So in Bubastis's hand this tool must also relate to chasing away those creatures that hinder the blessing and Bubastis must, therefore, be a goddess who promotes the blessing. If we assume that Isis's sistrum was decorated with a cat's head, it follows that the cat was considered a symbol of nature's blessing and reproduction.

A cat-headed goddess Rta is found in the oldest monuments of Upper and Lower Egypt, especially near the pyramids, and had the same significance as the Bubastis.

The Egyptians paid full divine honour to the animals chosen as symbols of their deities. Where such a symbol was worshipped as a god, the entire species was not allowed to be killed. One of these animals was the cat; it was worshipped through a mysterious cult that was gradually transmitted to the Greeks and Romans and left traces in many monuments, as eloquent witnesses to the great importance of the cat species. And, dear friend, does it not seem to be a particularly wise act of Providence that these antiquities have come to us, to remind us that little Mrs. Pusscat does not deserves to be treated badly! Is it not greatly importance, indeed indispensable, to present copies of those ancient works of art to the cat's enemies? - And so I begin with a figure which, as you will notice, is richly decorated with symbols and is designed to arouse envy. In front of the cat goddess one sees a lotus flower and a sistrum, the handle of which is in a cup - and now I would like to ask her opponents how they explain the coming together of the sistrum and the cup, which are usually depicted between the cat's feet. I believe, my dear, that they will honestly admit - and there are certain truths that can overcome the prejudice - that the sistrum is the symbol of music, the cup evokes the idea of festivities, and if they pursue this path further, they soon reach the realization that cats took part in Egyptian festivities and, with the magic of their beautiful voices, were the cream of the entertainment.

The Egyptians were anxious to enjoy the life's pleasures as much as possible, so skeletons were carried around during their banquets as silent reminders of life's transitoriness. "Drink," they said, drink and be happy, tomorrow you may be dead." This custom certainly has its advantages, but I do not know whether the first impression of this reminder could have been a pleasant one; for joy can only be awakened by joy, and how could this be better achieved than by the sistrum and the cats! Surely only they were able to bring joy and merriment to the festivals by their appearance.

Another image shows the cat goddess with a cat's head on a man's body and a sistrum in his hand. But with what a sense of security he carries it; does that not undeniably mean: "Behold, I have mastered it!"

And why shouldn't there be a real relationship between musical instruments and cats, seeing as it has been recognised for centuries that dolphins can understand the sounds of the lyre, that deer delight in the sound of the flute, and the mares of Libya loved the songs of the shepherds so much that a special song was made up for them. (10)

Music is without doubt the oldest and most powerful of the arts, and its power lies more in feeling than in understanding. The dried intestines of a cat, stretched over a piece of wood and raked by hair, can summon the spirits of harmony from the realm of the air, and make the harmony of Plato's heavenly spheres and the harmony of Christian angelic choirs audible even here on earth. Musical notes are truly air spirits that move from one soul into another, hence they are a universal language not only for humans, but also between humans and animals and are perhaps the next transition to mutual understanding. All peoples at the first level of culture already have music; primitive man follows his feelings when he hears musical tones or makes them himself though he has no idea of our mathematical tonal systems; what "moves his heart," dear friend, is sung out, just as the lark sings, high up in the blue ether, in the radiance of the sun, yes even like the tomcat on a moonlit roof slope.

According to the ancients, gods invented music; Maneros (11) invented music in Egypt, Apollo created the lyre, "from Jubal came the pipers and fiddlers" and among the ancient Germanic peoples, Odin was the god of music. The first real musicians were the priests of Egypt and India. The ancients had many wonders to tell about music as the ruler of all passions. Orpheus (12) moved trees, rocks and even hell with his art; Amphion moved the building stones in the construction of Thebes (13); Voinamoinen's harp in the Kalevala made the wolf forget its cruelty, the bear forget its wildness and the fish forget its coldness; the trumpeters of Jericho blew down the walls, and in Germanic myths the Albleich is a sweet, tempting tune and that of the Swedish Stromkarl or Fossegrim is tempting and enchanting. Of his eleven variations, only ten may be played: at the eleventh, which belongs to the Night Spirit and his army, tables and benches, jugs and cups, old men and grandmothers, even children in the crib would begin to dance. Anyone who wants to learn his art sacrifices a black lamb or a white kid to him; if it is very fat, the Fossegrim takes hold of the apprentice's right hand and moves it back and forth until blood spurts from the fingertips: then he is perfect in his art and can play so that the trees dance and the waterfalls stand still; indeed, the player cannot stop unless someone cuts the strings from behind or he has learned to play the piece backwards.

The basis of all music is song, and therefore vocal music is the oldest, in which birds, and animals in general, were our teachers; in music they are freer, they make their own rules. But cats are also very well organized for music; their voices are capable of the richest modulation and are able to express their feelings in the most varied expressions. What inner well-being the cat shows when it purrs or makes the sound of a spinning wheel, or what a wonderful gift it has to express sorrow, joy, delight, anger, fear and despair in its meow. In a chivalrous "Murr Murr" it can express belligerence, a short chuckle can express love and tenderness, its growl and hiss can express anger and pain - in short, it can express all emotions in the most varied modifications. Does it not have the most extensive vocabulary of all animals, and this, the simplest of all languages, is surely more admirable than the language of man, who often speaks a lot, but conveys so little?

I am convinced that these views will be challenged by cat-haters; but what sounds like howling to today's cultured people is probably nothing more than their own lack of knowledge and taste. Our music today is limited by a division of tones that we call whole tones or half tones - and we ourselves are limited enough to assume that this division must encompass everything that can be called music. This is precisely where the injustice of referring to cat songs as roars, howls and meows comes from, precisely because we find their intervals and admirable connections incomprehensible because they transcend the boundaries within which we are trapped. In this respect the Egyptians were more enlightened than we are, they knew the cat and its musical abilities; for they knew that it is a matter of individual feeling as to whether a tone is right or wrong, and that some people, out of habit, call certain combinations of tones either dissonances or chords; they felt that when cats in their music went from one tone to another in the same proportion as we do, or when they split the same tone and struck the intervals which we call pitches: that this would have produced an extraordinary difference between their music and ours. The Egyptians were able to distinguish well between the simple or artistically hidden modulation in a cat choir or in a recitative, the lightness of the runs, the softness of the sound or the sharply penetrating accent of the dramatic climax because they were receptive to pleasures that we have completely lost in our desire to be know-it-alls. As a result, we have no qualms about declaring the cat's songs to be wild noise, even if this difference is due only to our ignorance and a lack of sensitivity in our own organs. To us, the music of the Asian peoples seems ridiculous at the very least, and the Asians find no sense in ours; we each believe we only hear the other yowling instead of singing; every nation has this view to a greater or lesser extent and each is, so to speak, the other's cat. (14)

My opinion about the euphony of cats' voices may seem dubious to some, but it finds strong support in what Plutarch says about crickets. Plutarch calls crickets singers and claims that they were declared as such by Pythagoras, who, out of love for their singing, issued the command to destroy swallows' nests on houses, because swallows tried to kill crickets. Pythagoras was the finest connoisseur of music in antiquity; someone who heard and felt the concert of the stars when the planet Earth, through its movements, produced exactly a third or an octave with the tone formed by the planet Venus, certainly deserves to be believed when he says that crickets are singers. (15) If we must therefore admit to Pythagoras that the song of crickets is melodic, only ugly envy can deny this recognition to cats; at the very least we must admit that the voices of cats are clearer and that we can more easily distinguish the differences in their tonal figures.

How greatly music was refined in animals, not only as natural song but also in theory, is evident from the seventh story of the Panchatantra, in which the donkey appears as a singer, and with unexpected success. Once upon a time there was a donkey named Uddhata (the arrogant one). During the day he carried loads in the house of a fuller, and at night he roamed about wherever he wanted. One day, as he was wandering around the fields at night, he made friends with a jackal. Both of them broke down fences, went into the cucumber fields and feasted on the fruit to their heart's content; in the morning they returned to their places. One day the donkey, arrogant with pride, said to the jackal when he found himself in the middle of a field: "O sister's son! Look! The night is so clear, so I want to start a song. Tell me, in what key should I sing?"

The jackal replied: "My dear! Why all the unnecessary noise? We are involved in roguery. Thieves and lovers must stay hidden! It is also said that if you have a cough, you should not steal; if you oversleep, you shouldn't be a robber; if you're sick, you shouldn't talk too much. Besides, your singing sounds just like the sound of a conch shell and isn't at all pleasant. As soon as they hear it from a distance, the field guards will set out and bring about your imprisonment and death. So just eat these cucumbers that taste like jelly and don't bother singing here."

When the donkey heard this, he said: "Ah! You don't know the magic of music because you live in the forest, that's why you say such things. They also say: If the autumn moonlight breaks through the darkness near your sweetheart, blessed then are the ears into which the divine drink of the song penetrates!"

The jackal said: "My dear! That is true, but you sing harshly. So why all this shouting, which would only disturb our plans?"

The donkey said: "Ugh! Ugh! You ignorant one! You think I don't know what singing is? So listen to its division: seven tones and three octaves and twenty-one intervals and forty-nine time signatures and three quantities and tempos. There are three kinds of rests, six melodies, nine moods, twenty-six colours, and then forty states. This system of singing, comprising one hundred and eighty-five numbers, if well executed and flawless, encompasses all parts of singing. There is nothing in the world that even the gods would prefer than singing; through the magic of the gut strings Ravana sings Siva himself. So, oh sister's son! why do you call me an ignorant one and stop me?"

The jackal said: "My dear, if you do not want anything else, I will stand at the gate of the fence and watch the field guard, and you can sing as much as you like!"

When this was done, the donkey stretched out its neck and began to bellow. When the field guard heard the donkey's bellowing, he gritted his teeth in anger, picked up a club and rushed over. When he saw the donkey, he beat it until it fell to the ground. Then the field guard tied a wooden mortar with holes in it to its neck and went to sleep. But the donkey got up immediately without feeling any of the pain, as is the nature of donkeys, smashed down the fence and fled with the mortar.

In the meantime the jackal watched this from afar and said laughing: "Although I said: 'Oh uncle! Stop singing!' you still continued: now, as a reward for singing, you have this completely new adornment hanging around your neck."

The views on the expressiveness of the cat's voice, and on the language of animals in general, are still very poor and it is astonishing how close communication between humans and animals in this direction has not been able to produce more results.

Every animal has its own language. Animal language is only gesture and tone language, which does not begin with syllables, as with us, but is taught by nature according to the phonics method and is quickly learned. The cock, the farmyard despot, converses with his hens like a sultan in his harem, storks hold long councils and make long speeches, and cats, as has been proven, have a great gift for conversation and have an extensive dictionary. We understand only a few words, and we are naive enough to think that all words must sound German; but we overlook the fact that animals are astonished to hear us speaking in our own gibberish. Man, as the pinnacle of civilization, is able to account for a subordinate intelligence. He is able to dissect his most secret feelings in the alembic of reason and study them to their final reduction. While a child cannot follow the complicated mechanism with which civilization has equipped man, an older person knows from experience how to understand the child's utterances; in the same way the wet nurse understands the child, but the child does not understand the wet nurse; and an animal is comparable to a child in this respect.

What prevents us from discovering the secret of animal language, from understanding the conversations of most animals, is the difficulty of putting ourselves in their place. This difficulty is increased by the prejudices with which we view animals and at the same time by our own overestimation. Learning the language of animals is not as difficult as it seems; for if one observes it most carefully, one soon understands that the animal attaches different meanings to different sounds. The cry, evoked by emotion, by a nervous reflex, is repeated on a similar occasion, becoming the definite expression of a definite feeling. If you lives in close contact with animals and have the necessary powers of observation, you will find that learning animal language cannot be more difficult than learning that of savage peoples, or that of some distant nation of whose language we know neither dictionary nor grammar.

If we accustom our ear to the sound and imprint it in our memory, we will immediately recognize it when it is repeated and distinguish those sounds which have a similarity to it.

The animal has few needs and passions, but those needs are imperious, those passions lively, and the expression of them is significant; but its ideas are few in number, its dictionary small and the language more than simple. In comparison to this, we have a very rich language, a multitude of ways of expressing the differences in our ideas, and therefore we should not be embarrassed to be able to translate animal language into human language. But is it not incomprehensible that animals are able to translate our own rich language into their own impoverished language; for it is well known that they understand us; otherwise how would the cat, the dog, the horse and the birds obey our call and understand our teaching?

Important people have studied animal language and published noteworthy observations about it. Among others, Scheitlein, Montaigne, Dupont de Nemours; Marco Bettini translated the song of the nightingale, Wezel wrote a book about love and the language of animals. Even outstanding musicians have recognized the cat's musical virtues. Domenico Scarlatti, born in Naples in 1683, was the greatest piano player of his time and composer of many piano pieces, including a cat fugue. His favourite cat, who ran across the keys, gave him the theme in the following tones:

Rossini's famous cat duet is believed to have had the specific purpose of pointing to the increasingly widespread externalization of Italian music, and truly, he could not have chosen better and more authentic interpreters. The composer Adam also loved cats very much, and is said to have always composed while lying in bed with his cat. Only a few of the great minds of our century have understood the music of the cat, and the foremost of them is Heinrich Heine, who poetically described the beauty and expressiveness of the cat's voice in the following truly magnificent poem:

Mimi.

I am no modest bourgeois kitten,
Purring in some pious little room,
I'm a free cat roaming in the open -
Prowling upon the city roofs.

When I am raving on a summer night
When the air is cool upon the roofs
Music stirs and growls within me,
In song I let my passions loose!

Thus speaks Mimi. From her bosom
Pour forth her wild bridal songs,
And her euphony is a summons
To all the wandering bachelor toms.

The tomcat bachelors flock to the singer
Purring, growling, to express their love,
Longing to make their music with sweet Mimi,
Thos ardent suitors glow with lust.

These singers are not virtuosos,
Who desecrate music for reward,
No, these remain faithful apostles
Of holy music, from the heart.

These musicians need no instruments,
They themselves are violas and flutes;
Their bellies are the kettledrums,
Their muzzles play the part of trumpets.

Together they raise their many voices
Performing in a that rooftop concert;
They play their fugues, like those of Bach
Or Guido of Arezzo's works.

They perform great night-time symphonies,
To outdo Beethoven's caprices,
Competing with Berlioz's melodies
Which they growlingly surpass.

They make such wonderful forceful tones!
Their magical sounds are beyond compare!
Their choruses even shake the sky,
And make the shining stars grow pale.

When she hears that magical night-time music,
Those wonderful nocturnal sounds,
Selene, the pallid moon, covers her wan face
And hides behind a veil of clouds.

Only the slanderous songstress nightingale,
Haughty Prima Donna Philomela
Turns up her proud nose, denigrating
Mimi's singing, that cold, unfeeling soul!

But no matter, for Mimi plays her music,
Despite the Signora's disparaging tones,
Until on the horizon dawn approaches,
And fair Aurora's rosy smile glows.

History is just an agreed fable.

In the Mysteries of Isis, to return to the cats in Egypt, several more images were found which I will discuss in more detail in order to characterize the full significance of the cat.

The cat goddess Pasht, sometimes called Aeluros in Greek, was often depicted with a human-like face, a peculiar appearance that has been interpreted in many ways and explained, among other things, by the resemblance that the cat is said to have to the moon. Plutarch says that she represents the moon because of the colour of her fur, her activity at night and her fertility; for she first gives birth to one offspring, then two, three, four and five, and then seven at once, so that in total she gives birth to twenty-eight, which correspond to the days of the lunar month. The cat's pupil is said to become full and wide during the full moon and to become smaller again and lose its shine during the waning moon.

According to Horapollon, the cat was worshipped in the temple of Heliopolis; it was sacred to the sun because the animal's pupil follows the course of the sun. Horapollon sees secret analogies in the play of the cat's eye and the sun; Plutarch connects them with the moon; modern science, on the other hand, is very cold; it explains these phenomena through optics and leaves the influence of the stars on humans and animals to the mystics.

But this union of human and animal nature in the cat goddess has another, metaphysical cause, which I think it is particularly important to examine. You know, dear friend, that the vanity of humans always drives them to resemble the being they have raised above themselves. When altars were dedicated to the Pasht in Egypt, some of their features were transferred to her, perhaps unconsciously, for this deity has a human body and a cat head, and as a sign of the highest veneration, was adorned with the uraeus and the radiant crown, among other symbols. It is obvious that the women of Egypt felt the advantage of resembling the Pasht, and one may assume that it was they who embellished the goddess with some of her forms and thereby contributed greatly to her prevalence and popularity. And really, who could object to that! It's surely praiseworthy to see the cat goddess represented by a beautiful woman, adorned with the uraeus, a kind of sceptre in her hand, majestic, sublime, every inch a queen! -

Another image (16) in the form of a woman wears a kind of half-veil which partially covers the shoulders, but leaves her graceful neck free. A tunic falls modestly to her feet and in her hand, pressed to her breast, she holds a man's head as a symbol of power over hearts. Is it any wonder, then, that with such a wealth of grace, they saw in her the mother of love, and that the beauties of Memphis strove eagerly to resemble her, that poets in their praise of women could say nothing more flattering than to find the eyes of their beauties as round and shining as those of their ideal, the cat goddess! Perhaps women who hate cats may be displeased by the strength of these facts, but I cannot help wishing them such an enviable fate, to be as loved and praised as the cats in Egypt.

In Egypt (17) every deity had several priests, among whom was a high priest, and from the order of priests the kings were sometimes chosen. These priests led a very austere life, had taken a vow of celibacy and spent most of their time in the temple caring for the cats. The priests who were next in command to the king took part in the government of the country and all higher wisdom - what an honour for the cats - emanated from them.

The ceremonies of their temple service - we assume - corresponded with the spirit and other characteristics of this deity; liveliness, elegant suppleness and graceful movement of the body would have been cultivated and practiced in the temple of Pasht. But isn't it strange that this kind of temple service, this tendency to amuse ourselves, has found a clever imitator, a representative in our German Kasperl puppet show, that what makes the scene comical in our country was, in Egypt, the entire majesty of the goddess, before whom one bowed to the ground! What a strange contradiction of the human mind! The animal that was divinely worshipped in the land of the pyramids is, after a while, mistreated by a stable maid - yet people say that the gods are immortal!-

The respectful treatment that cats received in Egypt (18) shows us how much value was generally placed on them in society; they were perfumed daily, fed with the most exquisite delicacies and laid in well-stuffed beds. Cats of delicate constitution were cared for with loving attention; in cases of illness all the secret remedies of medicine were used and for the time of love their mate was chosen with careful attention. Herodotus tells us: "When the females have given birth, they no longer run to the male; the males then steal the young from the females and kill them, whereupon the females return to the males, since this animal likes to have young."

"But when a fire breaks out (19), a strange thing happens to cats: the Egyptians stand aside and watch over the cats, not worrying about putting out the fire, but the cats slip through the people and throw themselves into the fire." At this disaster there was a general solemn mourning, and it was so sincere that women even forgot their beauty, smeared their faces, wandered through the streets weeping and beat their breasts; at their side walked their closest relatives, half naked and lost in that kind of mental confusion which is always the mark of great grief. (20)

Diodorus reports that anyone who kills a sacred animal either deliberately or unintentionally is often put to death in the most gruesome way by the arriving crowd without a verdict. Therefore, those who see such a dead animal stay far away from it out of fear, and cry out loudly with lamentations and assurances that they have found it dead (21). The sacred fear of these animals was so deeply rooted (22) that King Ptolemy was unable to save a Roman who had unintentionally caused the death of a cat. The people, outraged by the disgraceful act, gathered in a mob and marched to the perpetrator's house and neither the nobles sent by the king nor the fear of Rome prevented the embittered crowd from avenging the supposed sacrilege by murdering the perpetrator. This rebellion was the beginning of the downfall of the Roman power - which was bound to fall as soon as it had a cat as a rival.

If a cat died of natural causes (23), the inhabitants of the house wore mourning and shaved their eyebrows (24). The deceased was laid in one of the holy houses, embalmed with the most precious spices and buried with solemn pomp at Bubastis.

In Memphis (25) there may have been cats whose funeral was more splendid and more expensive than that of Alceste or Hephaestus. Admetus, to show his great grief at the loss of his dear wife, ordered the manes and tails of the horses that drew the hearse to be cut off, and Alexander went even further and had the manes and tails of the mules removed throughout his kingdom, as well as the horses' manes and tails, and even the battlements of the cities had to be torn down; (26) - but what are such sacrifices (27) compared to the tears of the most beautiful women who wandered through the streets lamenting and demanded that ate returned their cat whose days had been prematurely cut short by the pitiless Fates; what can be weighed against so many sacrificed eyebrows, the adornments of the most beautiful foreheads in Egypt!

This veneration of animals influenced all the Egyptians' actions. According to Diodorus "In the cities, vows are made to these animals and parents shave their children's whole head or a part of it and the weight of the hair in silver is given to the animal's keeper receives for the animal's care. The sacred animals are cared for in sacred rooms, receive warm baths, the finest food and are anointed with the best ointments." (28) Caring for these animals was considered a great honour; people wore the image of the sworn cat on their chests and the citizens' respect sometimes went so far that they bowed to the ground in greeting these people. (29) This piety towards the cat was never shown in a clearer and more beautiful light than in the war against Cambyses. (p. p. 65.)

This ambitious and violent king was unable to expand in Egypt until he conquered Pelusium (30), which was strongly fortified and considered impregnable. Many attacks had already been repulsed when Cambyses came up with an ingenious stratagem. He knew that the city garrison consisted only of Egyptians, and he knew of their idolatrous worship of cats, therefore, during the next attack, he had cats driven in front of the army and each of his soldiers carried a cat on his arm instead of a shield, (31) - and the Egyptians surrendered without a stroke of the sword.

The Arabs (32) worshipped a golden cat; they held cats in high esteem and attributed to them a different origin from the creation of other animals. In the first book of the censored Alkoran it says as follows: "Once Abiades asked Muhammad why Jews and Turks were forbidden to eat pork and was told that when one day the disciples of Christ asked him to tell them what had happened with the ark, how the people lived and dressed in it, Christ took a handful of earth, kneaded it into a certain shape and threw it on the ground, saying: "Arise in the name of my Father!" and immediately a man as grey as ice stood up. Christ asked him who he was and received the answer: "He was Japheth, the son of Noah." He then asked: "Were you always so grey when you died?" He said: "No, in the hour when I thought that I would have to rise again and perhaps appear before the Last Judgement, I became grey from fear." Then Christ ordered him to tell his disciples the story of his father in the ark. Japheth related that the accumulation of garbage had caused the ark to tilt to one side, which forced his father to move the elephant to the other side as a counterweight. But the elephant, as soon as it arrived, increased the garbage without any consideration, which resulted in a large number of mice, which immediately began to gnaw on the walls of the ark. Noah was in great distress and consulted with God, who gave him the order to strike a blow to the Lion's forehead. When this was done, the lion snorted and a cat fall out of its nose, and throttled the mice in an instant."

Another oriental legend concerning this subject, which has escaped the researches of various travellers, bears more the stamp of probability and therefore appears to me more worthy of note.

During the first few days when the animals were in the ark, frightened by its movements, they remained fearfully in their cages. The monkey was the first to think of breaking the boredom of their new abode by visiting its neighbours. Soon his heart was lost to a young lioness, and from that time on they flirted with each other, with sweet nothings, a attractive example which met with universal approval, and spread a spirit of coquetry throughout the ark, which lasted not only during the flood, but lives on in some of the animals to the present day. As a result, many infidelities occurred, which resulted in entirely new species of animals. From the love of the monkey and the lioness came twins, a male and a female cat, who were distinguished from all other animals which had been created from such unions in the gallant time of the Flood, in that they had the ability to reproduce their race. (33)

The Arabs have other reasons for respecting cats and protecting their lives. It is widely believed that if a woman gives birth to twins, the second-born child may turn into a cat.

Lady Duff Gordon tells, among other things, in Macmillan's Magazine the following about an experience during her stay in the Orient: "Do you remember the German fairy tale about the boy who sets out to learn to be scared? Well, I, who have never been scared before, had a foretaste of it a few days ago. I was having tea in the company of some gentlemen in the morning when I noticed a cat which made a move to approach us. I lured it and offered it milk, but the cat looked at us and ran away. "You would do well, lady, to be kind to the cat," said one of those present, a local merchant, a very sensible man, "you would do well to be kind to this cat, for I believe she gets little enough at home. Her father is a poor man and cannot cook for his children every day." And addressing the company in an explanatory tone: "It is Yussuf, Ali Nassierie's son, it must be Yussuf, for his twin brother Ismaien has gone to Negadeh with his uncle." I confess that this speech gave me the creeps; not, however, because of the strangeness that I had heard, for I have often heard similar ideas expressed by men and women in Europe; but this absurdity in a caftan with the full seriousness of a Muslim made a very special impression on me. What, I said, the boy who brings me meat every day is a cat?! "Certainly, and he knows well where to get a good morsel, as you see. All twins, if they go to bed hungry, walk about at night as cats, while their bodies lie as though dead at home. But no one is allowed to touch this one, otherwise it will die. When the twins get older, around ten or twelve years old, they lose this peculiarity. Our house boy also goes about at night as a cat. Hey, Achmet! Come here! Don't you sometimes go out as a cat too? "No," replied Achmet calmly, "I am not a twin, but my sister's sons do." I then asked whether people were not afraid of such cats. "Oh no," said the merchant, "why be afraid? They will just eat a little of the cooked food. You just must not hit them, because the next day they will say to their parents: "so-and-so hit me," and then show their lumps. But you can also prevent these transformations into cats if you give the twins a certain dish of onions and milk as their first meal immediately after birth."

The Persians, an enlightened people as you know, revered cats to a great extent; this is already evident from the history of one of their most famous kings. He called himself Hormus. He was startled out of the comfortable calm of peace by the news that Prince Shabe-Shah, his relative, had invaded his kingdom with three hundred thousand men. The king was dismayed, his ministers were at a loss; suddenly a venerable old man appeared in the doorway and said to the king: "King, you can destroy the rebel army in a day; the hero who deserves this glory is in your kingdom. You will recognize him among your generals by a distinction as rare as it is worthy of glory; you will recognize him by - - - but, my lord and king, in order not to appear suspicious by the strangeness of my statement, I will remind you of the services I once rendered to King Nuchirron, your great father. It was when your father entrusted me with the task of obtaining a princess for him from the Khan of the Turks in marriage. I was taken to the palace of the princesses, who all seemed to me exceedingly beautiful, and I should have been very embarrassed if beauty alone had been to guide my choice; but I wanted to balance the scales with good qualities of heart and mind. The Khan allowed me to stay at court for a while, and I took advantage of this opportunity to learn the peculiarities of the princesses' characters, and I must confess that they all showed a great desire to become the wife of the Persian King, for each one tried to surpass the other in amiability and beauty. But one of the princesses-she is the one who became queen and your mother-one, I say, did not change her conduct; she always showed the same love for the performance of her duties, was a rare character of great gentleness and true femininity; she possessed a certain grace of spirit which irresistibly won her the love of all who came near her. These signs of true virtue determined my choice; in the name of my king I wooed this lovely princess, and the emperor, her father, following the custom of his country, had his most skilful astrologers cast her horoscope. The observations of all these astrologers had the same result: one day this princess would give birth to a son who would surpass all his ancestors in fame; who, attacked by a prince of Turkestan, would be victorious if he were so fortunate as to find among his subjects a man with the face of a wild cat." The old man, who possessed the knowledge of the wise, had hardly finished his speech when he disappeared as quick as lightning.

The king sent many messengers into the country to find the man who would save his crown. The old man had not given the hero's name or place of residence, but the happy resemblance to the cat soon led him to recognize him as Baharam, called Kunin; he was from the line of the princes of Rei and ruled the province of Adherkigan at that time. Hormus gave him command of his army, but Baharam chose only twelve thousand men to defeat three hundred thousand rebels. This small troop, encouraged by the miraculous sign on the face of their general, defeated the enemy army; Baharam personally killed Prince Schabe-Shah and took his son prisoner. - Thus the victorious end of one of the most famous and remarkable wars can basically be considered the work of a cat. - (34)

The importance of the cat in ancient life - and not only in the Orient - can be seen from the fact that dreams in which cats appeared were given special significance. Artemidorus, the Greek philosopher, writes in his Oneiro kritika (Dream Interpretations) III: If one dreams of cats, it means adultery; for just as the cat pursues birds, secretly and quietly, so does one pursue women; birds are compared to women because of their beauty, loveliness and friendliness, as well as their chatter and charming song.

In other customs and traditions, too, there is the idea of a connection between cats and adultery. The Egyptologist Prisse d'Havennes reports: Women sentenced to death for adultery are sewn into a sack with a cat and thrown into the Nile. A similar law can be read in the Electorate of Saxony Constitution. The murderer of parents, children or husbands was sewn into a sack with a cat and drowned. (35)

The dream book of Apomasiris - to speak even more about cat dreams - tells us: A cat in all dreams means a thief, whether he is a man or a woman, etc. - A dream in which a cat appeared was even the cause of a piece of world history.

A cat once appeared to Etzel, king of the Huns, in his youth. He was sitting dreamily in his uncle Rugila's tent; he was melancholy and was wondering whether he should become a Christian and serve God and the sciences - then the cat came. Among Rugila's jewels it found the golden orb, a piece of booty from Byzantium; it held it in its claws and played with it, rolling it back and forth. And a voice said to Ezel: You shall not become a monk, you shall play with the globe like this animal! And he saw that the Hun god Kuttka had appeared to him, so he went and swung his sword towards the four continents, let his fingernails grow and became what he was to become, the mightiest king of the Huns and the "scourge of God" feared by all peoples. (36)

Many historians, (37) among them the most important, have always been inclined to report remarkable events as being caused by cats, and if they have failed to do so, one can at least observe that they generally showed a marked respect for cats. Lucian, in his Dialogues of the Gods, discussing the revered animals of Egypt, ridicules the Sphinx, the monkey, etc., but maintains a reverent silence about cats. This shy reserve in a writer known as a ruthless satirist can only be regarded as a tacit veneration of the feline race. And this is not the only case of special consideration for cats; for during sacrifices in the Temple of Hercules the Romans were anxious to keep dogs away, as their presence would have desecrated the temple and the sacrifice. This commandment was not applied to cats; it had probably already been seen that their peculiarly supple forms meant they could not be prevented from joining these august assemblies, where they were presumably most pleasing company. (38)

Even today, the Romans love cats very much. These animals are fed in a special way in Rome. The knacker, or certain men who buy the meat of fallen animals from him, carry it through the streets on poles covered with it at both ends. At a certain shout from these men, the cats come together from all buildings, from all corners, and stand in the doorways where the meat is thrown for them. The owner of the cats has to pay a small monthly fee. Something similar happens in Geneva, where cats are as numerous on the streets as dogs are in Constantinople.

The largest of these is the cats' meat business in London. Here, 200,000 pounds of meat are used weekly for this purpose (although dogs also participate in the feeding). A pound costs on average 2 and a half pence; thus 2000 sterling is spent weekly on maintaining the cats. Mayhew estimates that there are a thousand meat dealers for supply cats and dogs, each of whom earns at least 50 sterling annually; he puts the number of cats residing in London at about 300,000.

Muhammad (39), the great founder of Islam, was very fond of cats; it is said that he once preferred to cut off the tail of his robe on which his cat had fallen asleep, rather than disturb his beloved cat's sleep. Muhammad wished to honour Abdorraham, his most faithful and beloved follower, and gave him a title which is an everlasting adornment to the cat race. It was the custom among the Arabs to be called the father of something which was related to the virtues and talents of the person concerned.

Khalid, a guest of Muhammad, was given the nickname "Abujob," i.e., father of Job, for the extraordinary patience he showed during the journey to Medina. And Muhammad believed that among Abdorraham's most outstanding qualities there was none more worthy of respect than his love for his cat, which he always carried in his arms; he therefore gave him the title of "Abuhareira", father of cats, as his highest honor. (40) We can assume that this title must have been of particular importance, given the great care with which Muhammad considered all his steps; for he was too cautious to call one of his disciples, to whom he wanted to give authority over other people, the father of cats, had the cat not been held in such high esteem. This is consistent with what de la Porte says about the respect that the Muslims have for cats: When a soldier came home from war, he usually brought a cat with him, even if he himself had nothing to live on at home. The cats on the Zouaves' knapsacks indicate an African origin - in the former, the tendency towards comfortable rest is shown, in the latter, the sneaking, suddenly pouncing on prey style of fighting.

In Constantinople, cats are treated like children of the house and people in the highest offices often set up institutions to care for cats that want to live independently. There are open houses where they are received with the friendliest courtesy, are well looked after and have soft beds prepared for them for the night. Such dwellings can be found in many cities in the Orient, so that even the most blase cat-lover can be satisfied. (41) -

Sultan El-Daher-Beybars, who ruled in Egypt and Syria around the year 1260 AD, left in his will the provision to found a garden near Cairo for needy stray cats; this can still be found today with a building for cat care.

One of the curiosities of Florence is a cat sanctuary, which has been carrying out its blessed mission for several hundred years in a monastery belonging to the church of San Lorenzo. If you want to get rid of a cat, you send it to these pious people; if, on the other hand, you want to get a kitten, you have only to present your request at the monastery gate: the good monks take every wish into account, whether it concerns fur colour,, the age or body size.

There has been a cat hospital for many years in Pennsylvania (42), America, the owner of which has made it her vocation to provide a safe home for all distressed and unfortunate cats. The owner is the daughter of a rich and highly respected farmer and, after her love of cats caused her to separate from her husband, she has lived with her 60 to 70 favourites for more than thirty years. She uses the entire income from her considerable fortune for this purpose and in her will she has instructed that all her property be used for establishing cat sanctuaries after her death. The famous Lord Chesterfield also left pensions to his cats and their descendants. Such legacies are not uncommonly contested by the testator's relatives and only a few years ago the eminent lawyer Cremieux had to represent a cat in court; he did this with great skill and with a warmth that has earned him the gratitude of all cat lovers. (43)

The cat is often involved in serious legal matters, caused by legacies, wills and maltreatment. Of animals, it is the one that most occupies the civil and criminal courts. The patron saint of lawyers is St. Yves, the saint with a cat beside him is the symbol of legal scholars.

The history of the mythological animals (44) of the Indo-Germanic tribes offers rich material for the glorification of the cat. Among Indians, the moon was thought of as a white cat. Margara, the cat, actually means the one who cleans herself, and also the purifier of the night. As a white cat, as the moon, she protects innocent beings; as a black cat, she pursues them. Many Indian legends are based on this view. Among the collections of oriental animal legends, none is as old as the Indian famous collection known as the Hitopadeca (45). In the fourth fable of the Hitopadeca it says:

On the bank of the Bagirathi, on a mountain called the Geierhorn [vulture horn], there stands a fig tree. In a hollow in this tree lived a vulture named Jaradgava (46), who had become blind through the harshness of fate. The birds that nested in the tree, out of compassion, each gave him something for his sustenance, on which he lived. One day, Dirghakarna the cat (47) came to eat the young birds. When the young birds saw her coming, they cried out pitifully.
The vulture heard this and called out: Who is approaching?
Dirghakarna saw the vulture and said fearfully: Alas, I am lost! However, you shouldn't be afraid of danger until it has actually appeared. When you see that danger has come, you should act as accordingly. I cannot escape from his presence, so let what is to be done happen; I will approach him and try to gain his trust. So she approached and said: Venerable one, I greet you!
The vulture said: Who are you?
She said: I am the cat.
Then go far away, replied the vulture, if not, I must kill you.
The cat said: First hear what I say, then, if I deserve death, then kill me! For who should be killed or honoured merely because of his class? After his conduct has been recognized, a person may be considered worthy of punishment or praise.
The vulture said: Tell me, why have you come here?
She replied: I always bathe here on the banks of the Ganges, and do not eat meat, as I fulfilled the Chandrajana vow(49) as Brahmacharya (48). Since all the birds in my presence always praised you as a person devoted to the knowledge of the law and worthy of trust, I have come here to hear the law from you, who have grown old and wise. And you are so knowledgeable about the law that you would kill me as a guest?
She said: the duty of the Grihastha is as follows: It is fitting to show hospitality even to an enemy who approaches the house; the tree itself gives shade at its side to the person who cuts it down. But if you have no wealth, you should honour the host with friendly words. A bed, a room, water and a friendly conversation for four are never lacking in the house of the good. Whether a child, an old man or a youth comes into the house, he must be honoured. The stranger is considered honourable by everyone. The good have pity even on the worst creatures. The moon does not take its light from Chandala's hut. (50) And there is the saying: A guest who leaves a man's house with disappointed hopes leaves him his sins and takes his virtue with him. (51) Even a low-born person who comes into the house of someone from the highest caste must be honoured as is fitting. The stranger is equal to all gods.
The vulture said: But cats are greedy for meat and there are young birds living here, that is why I speak to you like this.
The cat touched the ground and then her ears (52) and said: I have heard the teachings of the law book, and after having destroyed all desires within me, I have decided to take this difficult vow. But even the teachings that are in conflict with one another all agree on this: not killing is the first duty. People who are far from all murder, who tolerate everything and offer refuge to everyone, go to heaven. Virtue is the only friend that follows us even in death. But everything else perishes along with the body. If someone eats the flesh of another once, behold! what a difference there is between the two! One has the pleasure of a moment, the other is deprived of life. One should spare one's neighbour, considering the pain that a person feels when he sees that he must die.
So listen: What man would commit murder for the sake of a hungry stomach, which can be satisfied by herbs that grow wild in the forest?
When the cat had calmed him down with these words, it went into the vulture's tree hollow and during the course of the day ate the young birds that it caught and dragged into the hollow. When those whose young had been eaten were searching here and there, wailing sorrowfully, the cat noticed this, crept out of the hole unnoticed and escaped. Later, however, the birds, searching everywhere, found the bones of the young in the vulture's hollow and immediately said: It's none other than this Oscharadgava that has eaten our young. Then they came to a decision and the vulture was killed.
Therefore I say: One should not give shelter to one whose family and character one does not know. The vulture Oscharadgava was killed by the cat's evil deed.

In the Panchatantra the cat is called "Dadhikarna" or the one with the white ears, it acts as a judge between the sparrow and the hare.

I once lived in a certain forest region in a large fig tree. A sparrow named Kapinjala nested in a cave underneath. We both spent our time together at sunset, talking in many different ways, praising the ancient deeds of the wise gods, kings and priests, and telling each other about the many wonderful things we had seen on our travels, and so we enjoyed the greatest pleasure. Once Kapinjala went foraging with other sparrows to a place where there was plenty of ripe rice. When he did not return from there even at night, my heart was heavy, saddened by the pain of being separated from him: Alas! Why has Kapinjala not returned today? Has someone caught him in a snare? Worse, has he been killed by someone? If he were safe and sound somewhere, he would not be able to live without me. I passed many days in such thoughts. One day, at sunset, a hare named Sighraga came and took up residence in this cave, and I, having given up all hope of finding Kapinjala, allowed this. One day, however, Kapinjala, having grown fat from eating rice, returned to his cave, thinking of his homeland. It is rightly said:

Even in heaven, no mortal is so joyful than when back in his own country, place and house, even if he is poor. But when he saw the hare sitting in the hollow of the fig tree, he said angrily: "Hey, hare! It is not right that you have moved into my house, so get out of here quickly!"
The hare said: "Thor! This isn't your house, but mine. How dare you lie to me with such rude words! Get out of here at once! If you don't, it is all over for you!"
The sparrow said: "If that is your opinion, then the neighbours should be asked. For it is said: For wells, ponds and cisterns, as well as for houses and pleasure gardens, the neighbours' evidence is also considered proof, as Manu teaches. And therefore if a lawsuit arises over disputed land and fields, wells, soil and pleasure gardens, then the neighbour is considered proof."
Then the hare said: "Thor! Don't you know the saying of customary law, which says: If someone has publicly owned fields and the like for ten years, then only the ownership is the guideline and neither documents nor witnesses are valid. Nor, you fool, have you heard Narada's judgment: For humans, the standard is ten years of ownership, for birds and four-legged creatures, it is the time since they have lived in it. So this house belongs to me by law, not to you.
Then Kapinjala said: "Hmm! If you want to act according to the law, come with me so that we can ask a legal expert who he says the house belongs to by law, and let him take possession of it."
After this they set off to watch the trial. But I thought: "What will come of all this? I must watch the trial!" So I also set off after them out of curiosity.
After they had gone a little way, the hare asked Kapinjala: "Dear! Who will decide about our trial?"
He replied: "Won't it be Dadhikarna the cat, who lives on an island of the sublime Ganga, which produces roaring sounds through its crashing, surging waters whipped up by strong winds; she who is engaged in penance, mortification, vows and deep devotion, and who has compassion on all creatures?"
But the hare, after seeing this, felt his innermost being tremble with fear and said again: Nothing from this villain! It is said: You should never trust an evil one, as he feigns repentance; even in places of pilgrimage one sees penitents who indulge in their own sins."
Meanwhile, Dadhikarna the forest cat, after hearing the argument between the two, went to the bank of a river near the path in order to inspire them with confidence, and holding a handful of sacred grass, with the twelve sacred spots, squinting one eye, raising her arms, only half a foot touching the ground, with her face turned to the sun, she uttered the following moral sayings: "Ah! how insipid is this universe! The embrace of one's own is like an illusion of the senses! So there is no salvation except virtue! For it is also said: All bodies are fragile; happiness does not rest in one's own hands; death is always near: therefore hold fast to virtue. He whose days always come and go without virtue is, like a bellows, lifeless even though he breathes. And so: just as there are cornworms among grains, and cats among birds, and gnats among mortals, so there is she who does not lead by virtue.
Blossom and fruit are more valuable than the tree, butter is better than milk, oil is better than oil-cake, virtue is better than man. To be equal in all actions, that is what the wise man praises, that speeds up the path of justice, which is strewn with obstacles. In short, we can say what is right; why, people! be expansive - the highest reward for the righteous, and the highest punishment for the wicked! Listen to the whole of virtue and take to heart what you hear! What you do not want to happen to you, do not do to others either!"

When the hare heard these moral sayings from her, he said: "Listen! Listen! Kapinjala! There stands the penitent on the bank of the river, teaching virtue. So let us ask him!"
Kapinjala said: "Is he not our enemy in his innermost being? So let us stay away from him and ask him from here! It may be that his vows are not strong enough."
Then they stood at a distance and said: "Hey! Penitent! You teacher of law! We both have a legal dispute! Give us the decision about it according to the legal teachings! Whoever is wrong, you shall eat!"
The other said: My dears! For heaven's sake, don't speak like that! I have left the path that leads to hell. The path of virtue is: not to harm anything living. For it is also said: Doing no harm is the first virtue according to the righteous saying, so we should even spare bugs, wasps and the like! Even those who harm noxious animals are already pitiless and will go to a terrible hell, not to mention those who kill the good ones. Even those who kill animals during sacrifice are wrong and do not know the true meaning of the holy scripture. It does indeed say: "One should sacrifice with Adja (unborn or goats)", but Adja refers to three-year-old or seven-year-old grains of rice, insofar as these cannot be reborn.
It also says: Anyone who cuts down trees and kills cattle and stains himself with bloodshed can go to paradise, but who is hell for? So I will not eat anyone, but will decide who has won and who has lost. But I am old and cannot hear the content of your speech well from afar. Take this to heart and come near me to carry out your justice before my eyes, so that I may, with correct insight, pass a verdict that strikes to the very core of the case and not forfeit my eternal salvation.

For it is said: Whoever, whether out of pride, greed, or enmity or fear, makes a wrong decision in a legal dispute will go to the jaws of hell. Five strikes for anyone who lies about an animal, ten strikes for anyone who lies about a cow, a hundred strikes for anyone who lies about a maid, a thousand strikes for anyone who lies about a man. Whoever sits in the courtroom and does not present his case clearly must therefore stand back and not speak the case for himself. Therefore, explain your case clearly and with full confidence near my ears."

To cut a long story short, the villain quickly managed to instil so much confidence in both of them that they placed themselves in his lap. Then, in one and the same moment, he seized one with the end of his foot and the other with his saw-like teeth. Then they both lost their lives and were eaten by him. Therefore I say: The hare and Kapinjala, eager to have their rights decided, chose a villain as judge and both perished.

In the Mahabharata we find the fable of the penitent cat. The cat, by the mortification it performs on the banks of the Ganges, inspires the trust of the birds, who gather around to honour it. After a while, the mice imitate the birds' example and place themselves under the protection of the cat so that it may defend them. The cat made its meal of them every day, getting one or two to accompany it to the river, and it became exceedingly fat and plump, while the mice become fewer and fewer. Then one day a wise mouse decided to follow the cat when it went to the river; the cat devoured both the mouse that accompanied it and the spy. Then the mice discovered the trick and hastily evacuated the dangerous place.

In the case of Puss in Boots, (53) which has been brought so close to our public through the dramatic treatment of a modern poet, one might have doubted whether its own humour did not first arise in the French story and spread further from there. But it is nonetheless one of the very oldest and most thorough fairy tales that exist. The cat plays the role of a helpful, good-natured house spirit, and the boots he wears are none but the seven-league boots worn by dwarves and giants, or, among the higher powers, the god's winged shoes, which the goblin or Hinzelmann needs here in order to hunt game with tremendous speed and to take all the other precautions that make his protege appear to be a rich lord. The French legend is distinguished from all others by the fact that it alone has transmitted such a charming, if not essential, feature. The character of the fable appears to be similar everywhere else, although it is very differently presented; a German adaptation can be guaranteed in advance, but it has not yet been found. The story of Constantino in Straparola 11, 1 is indeed the oldest, but also the poorest.

Gagliuso is more richly endowed in Pentamerone 2, 4. In Naples there lived a very, very poor man who was so airy, empty and light, so poor and naked, and so without the slightest rag or tatter on his body that he went naked like a louse: When he was now ready to shake out the bags of life, he called his sons Oratiello and Pippo and said to them: "I have now been summoned to pay the debt I owe to nature, and you may believe me, as truly as we are Christians, that I would leave this cave of sorrow, this prison of suffering, with much joy, if I did not leave you in such a miserable situation, as stripped of everything as Carthusian monks, as poor as church mice and without the slightest penny, as shiny as barber's basins, light as feathers and dry as plum stones, so that you have not as much as a dog can carry on its tail, and if you ran a hundred miles not a farthing would fall out of your pocket, for my fate has brought me to such a shambles that I lack the most basic necessities and have no more than I had when I came out of the womb, that, as you know, I am always yawning with hunger and have always gone to sleep without a light. In spite of all this, I will leave you a token of my love when I die, and therefore you, Oratiello, who are my first-born son, take the sieve that hangs on the wall there, and you, who are the smallest chick in the nest, take the cat, and may both of you remember your father!" As he spoke, he began to weep, and soon after he said: "Farewell, I am going to sleep!"

As soon as Oratiello had begged sufficient funeral expenses for his father and had him buried, he took the sieve and looked for work here and there to support himself, so that the more he got through the sieve, the more he earned; but Pippo took the cat and said: "Just look at what a wonderful inheritance my father left me. I, who have nothing to live on myself, must now provide for two! Has anyone ever seen such a disastrous legacy? If only the whole inheritance had stayed with the cuckoo!" When the cat heard this moaning, she said to him: "You complain about the injustice you have suffered, and yet you have more luck than sense; for you do not know that I can make you rich whenever I want." As soon as Pippo heard these words, he thanked his cat, and recommended himself most earnestly to her goodwill, stroking her back three or four times, so that the cat, full of pity for poor Gagliuso, went to the shore every morning at the hour when the sun fished for the shadows of night with the lure of light on its golden hook, and if she saw a large moray eel or a pretty goldfish, she would catch it and take it to the king, saying to him: "Sir Gagliuso, Your Majesty's most humble servant, sends you this fish with all respect, although he thinks it is only a small gift for such a great lord!" The king then answered the cat with a friendly face, as one usually does to someone who brings something: "Tell the unknown gentleman that I thank him most sincerely." Another time the cat ran to the moors and bushes, and when the hunters shot down a grouse, a snipe or a partridge, he was off with it and brought it to the king with the same words; in short, he continued to do this until the king said to him: "I feel so obliged to Mr. Gagliuso that I wish to meet him and to show my gratitude for the courtesy he has shown me," to which the cat replied: "Mr. Gagliuso only wishes to place his property and his blood at your majesty's disposal, and tomorrow morning, as soon as the sun sets the stubble fields of heaven on fire, he will come to show you his respect."

But when the morning came, the cat went to the king and said: "Mr. Gagliuso sends his apologies to your Majesty for not being able to appear, for several of his valets ran away last night and did not leave him a single shirt." As soon as the king heard this, he ordered his wardrobe master to bring Mr. Gagliuso a number of articles of clothing and linen, so that not two hours had passed when he arrived at the palace accompanied by the cat and was showered with courtesy by the king, who even made him sit down in his presence and arranged a splendid banquet. While Gagliuso was busy grabbing food, he turned to the cat again and again and said to her: "Dear little girl, come to me so that these few rags don't slip out of my hands again!" to which the cat replied: "Just be quiet and shut your mouth and don't make so much talk about beggarly things like that!" and when the king wanted to know whether Gagliuso wanted anything, the cat answered that he wanted a small lemon, so the king immediately had a basket full picked from the garden. Gagliuso, meanwhile, soon started his line about old clothes and shirts again, and again the cat told him to plug his mouth, and the king also asked in the same way whether he wanted anything, so that the cat, as before, had to come to the aid of Gagliuso's humble mind with a quick excuse.

At last, when they had finished eating and had talked for a while about this and that, Gagliuso took his leave, but the cat remained with the king and praised the virtue, intelligence, and sagacity of her master, but especially his great wealth and landed property, which, as she said, extended far and wide in the countryside around Rome and in Lombardy, so that she thought him worthy to be related by marriage to a crowned head. When the king then asked how rich he could possibly be, the cat replied that it was impossible to count the movable and immovable goods and equipment of this Croesus, who himself did not know how much he had; but if the king wished to convince himself of the truth of what she said, he should send people with her across the border, who should convince themselves by sight that no wealth in the world could equal his. The king therefore summoned some of his most trusted servants and ordered them to inform themselves as carefully as possible about the matter in question, whereupon they followed the cat from place to place, for she always ran ahead under the pretext of having the necessary refreshments prepared for her at each resting place; but whenever she met a flock of sheep, cows, horses or pigs on the way, she called out to their keepers and herdsmen: "Hey, beware, for a band of robbers is plundering everything in these fields; but if you want to escape from their hands and keep your property untouched, just say that it belongs to Mr. Gagliuso, and not a hair on your head will be harmed." The cat also said the same thing at the farms she passed, so that the king's men, wherever they went, heard the same story, for everything they met on their way was said to belong to Mr. Gagliuso; so at last, tired of asking questions, they returned to the king and told him wonderful things about Mr. Gagliuso's wealth. As a result, the king promised the cat a beautiful fur coat if she could arrange a marriage between his daughter and Gagliuso, which order the cat, running back and forth like a weaver's shuttle, actually carried out, and Gagliuso returned and received both the king's daughter and a very large dowry.

After a month spent in numerous festivities, Gagliuso finally said that he wanted to take his young wife to her new home, and accordingly, accompanied by the king to the border, he went to Lombardy, where, on the advice of the cat, he bought a number of properties and lands and had himself made a baron. Gagliuso, seeing himself thus very rich and honoured, thanked the cat most sincerely, saying that he knew well that he owed his life and wealth to her love, and that the cat's wisdom had done him more good than his father's intelligence; she could therefore do with his property and his life as she wished and liked, and he promised most solemnly that if she should die one day after many years, he would have her body embalmed and kept in a golden coffin in his room, so that her memory would always be before his eyes. The cat listened quietly to this boasting and let it pass for a while, but then one day she stretched herself out on the ground in the garden and pretended to be dead, so that Gagliuso's wife, as soon as she noticed this, exclaimed: "Ah, dearest husband, what misfortune! the cat is dead!"
"God willing, that would be the greatest misfortune that could ever happen to us," said Gagliuso. "It's better that she dies than we do!"
"But what shall we do with her?" asked his wife.
"Grab her by the leg and throw her out the window," replied Gagliuso.

The cat had scarcely heard of this glorious reward, which she had least imagined, than she immediately jumped up and exclaimed: "Is this the thanks I get for having rescued you from the vermin? Is this the reward I get for having helped you to discard your rags so that you now wear an untorn coat? Is this my reward for having adorned you with splendid clothes and satisfied all your desires, when you were previously a starving beggar with your shirt hanging out of your trousers, yes, a torn, ragged, tattered heap of rags? But that is what usually happens to those who throw their pearls before swine! Cursed be everything I have done to you, for you do not even deserve to have someone spit in your face! Is this the golden coffin in which you lay me, the splendid burial you wanted to prepare for me? You let me serve, toil, sweat and work myself to the bone in order to receive such a fine reward at the end! How deplorable is the person who wants to warm his pot with the hope he places in others, and how true was the philosopher who said that he who acts like an ass will be treated like one, to whit the harder you work, the less reward you can expect." With a sad face, the cat cried this out and hurriedly left, and no matter how hard Gagliuso tried to soothe her with words of humility, she would not return; on the contrary, she ran straight ahead without even turning her head, repeatedly exclaiming:

"God protect us from the high ones who have fallen,
And also from all the beggars who have risen."

In a similar way, but with some original differences, a Norwegian fairy tale in Asbiornsen No. 29 deals with the same legend.

In Madame d'Aulnoy's fairy tale, (54) "La Chatte Blanche," of ancient popular origin, we are told of the white cat Blanchette, who, veiled in black, lives in an enchanted castle, rides on a monkey, speaks, and gives a young prince, who rides on a wooden horse, in an acorn, the most beautiful little dog that ever existed in the world, small enough to go through a ring, to take to his royal father. She then gives him a wonderfully patterned robe four hundred ells long, but so thin that it goes through the hole of a small needle, enclosed in a grain of millet. This wonderful cat eventually turns into a beautiful girl, who appeared like the sun that has been long hidden in clouds; her blond hair falling over her shoulders and in large curls to her feet. Her head was encircled with flowers, her dress was light white gauze lined with rose-coloured taffeta. The white cat with her entourage of cats, before she becomes a beautiful girl, invites the prince to be present at a battle in which she is engaged with the mice.

Closely related to the French fairy tale and essentially of the same origin is the German fairy tale, "The White Kitten", a North German legend by Kuhn and Schwarz.

Once upon a time there was a king who had three sons, the youngest of whom was rather foolish and was always looked down upon by the others and forced to do the most menial jobs. When the king grew old he said to his sons, "I am tired of ruling now; go away, and whoever of you brings me a boat without a nail or a peg on it shall have the kingdom and the crown." So they all set off, but the two eldest said to the youngest, "You go where you like, you won't bring the boat anyway," and they left him in the middle of a forest. He sat down on a tree trunk and ate his breakfast, and as he sat there a small white man came along and asked him where he was going. The prince told him everything and said: "Sit down here with me and eat with me; I have enough food for both of us." The white man sat down next to him and when he had eaten, he laid his head on the prince's lap and fell asleep. The prince fended off the flies so that they would not wake the little man, and when the man woke up he told the prince to come with him to his castle, where he could have what he was looking for. So the prince went with him, and when they got to the castle, a white kitten ran towards the little man, looking at him forlornly and pressing itself against the prince with an arched back; he was filled with horror, and yet it was so friendly and looked at him as if it wanted to speak. Inside the room they sat down at a table, and the kitten brought bowls and plates, and they ate and drank, and the kitten sat at the table and ate with them.

When they had refreshed themselves with food and drink, the little white man led the prince into an adjoining room, where there was a long row of boats, on which there was neither peg nor nail. The prince chose one of them and when he wanted to take it with him, the little white man said: "No, you shouldn't burden yourself with that, just go home and I will send it to you." The prince was satisfied, took his leave and went home again. When he arrived at his father's court, the other two brothers were already there, and when they saw that he hadn't brought a boat with him, they called out: "We knew right away that you would not bring the boat!" But the youngest said: "Just wait a little, mine is coming by and by," and as he said that, slaves came along with his boat, and it glittered and sparkled so brightly in the sun that they all had to hold their hands in front of their eyes. The King had to say that the youngest's boat was the best, because on the other two there was a peg or a nail visible here and there, but still he did not want to give him the kingdom. So he said that they had to pass another test: whoever could bring him the finest linen would be king.

All three set out again, and when they came to the forest, the two older once again left the youngest and said, "Wherever you got the boat, you can get the linen too!" Once the brothers were far away, the little white man came again and shared the prince's breakfast and asked him where he was going and the prince told him everything. The little white man took him back to his castle and the white kitten was there again and they ate and drank like the first time and the white kitten also ate at the table and sat down next to the prince and he stroked its back so that it arched its back and pressed itself close to him. When they had eaten and drunk, the kitten ran away, but came back immediately and brought the king's son a hazelnut, and the little white man told him to go home with it. He left and returned to his father; the other two were already there, and had each brought a splendid strip of linen. The youngest gave his father the hazelnut, and when he opened it, there lay a barleycorn inside, and when he opened the barleycorn, there lay a strip of linen inside that shone like silk and was so fine that you couldn't see the threads at all. But still the father did not want to give the kingdom to the youngest son and said: "All good things come in threes, go out once more and whoever brings me the most beautiful princess shall have the kingdom." For he thought that his youngest son may have found the boat and the linen from a here, but he would never bring a princess.

Then all three of them went out again and everything happened as it had the two previous times; But when the youngest prince told the little white man his task and went with him into the castle, the little white man said to him, "Now cut off the kitten's four paws and its head." But the prince did not want to do that and said that he could not harm the dear kitten. But the little white man calmed him down again and said that he should just do it, everything would turn out well. And so he took the kitten, laid it on a block and cut off one of its paws. There was a mighty clap of thunder that shook the house, and when he recovered from his fright and looked at the kitten, he saw a human leg instead of the paw and immediately realized that it was a curse. Then he quickly cut off the other paws and the head as well, and suddenly the most beautiful princess in the world stood before him and was freed, and the little white man and everything else that was cursed in the castle was also redeemed, and he married the princess and went home to his father and also received his bride's kingdom in addition to his father's kingdom.

In the Aesop's fables, a fox and a cat argue about which of them is the highest animal; the cat lets the dog catch the fox while she climbs a tree herself.

In the letters of Peredu Hald. Delon, History of the Brahmins and others, there is a story which is particularly suited to the praise of cats. A king in India, named Salagan, had at his court a Brahmin and a penitent; they were both equally famous for virtue and reputation, but it was precisely this similarity which gave rise to jealousy and quarrels, from which one of the most remarkable events was to arise. One day, when these two combatants were arguing before the king about the degree of virtue which one claimed to possess over the other, the Brahmin declared that his virtue was so highly recognized by the god Parabaravarastan, the king of the first-rank deities, that he could instantly ascend to one of the seven heavens for which the Indians have great longings. The penitent took the Brahmin at his word, and the king, chosen as judge, ordered him to go to the heaven of Devendiren and from there to take a blossom of the tree Parisadam, the fragrance of which alone makes one immortal. The Brahmin bowed deeply before the king, took flight, and disappeared as quickly as lightning. The court remained astonished, but not without doubting the Brahmin's success; for Devendiren's heaven had never been accessible to mortals before. It is the abode of forty-eight million goddesses, who have one hundred and twenty-four million gods as husbands, the head of whom is Devendiren, who holds the Parisadam flower in particularly high esteem, and regards it as the greatest treasure of heaven. During the Brahmin's absence, the penitent did everything in his power to emphasize all these difficulties in all their severity, and was already looking forward to the defeat of his rival, when suddenly the Brahmin appeared with the heavenly flower, which he could only have picked in the Devendir's gardens. The king and the whole court fell to their knees in admiration, and the Brahmin's virtue was extolled to the highest degree.

The penitent alone refused to pay him this homage. "King," he said, "and courtiers, so easily deceived, you consider the ascent into Devendiren's heaven as a great miracle, but this is only the work of an ordinary virtue. Know that if it pleases me to send my cat there, she will be received with the greatest friendship, the most solemn distinction." Without waiting for an answer, he sent for his cat Patripatan, said a word in his ear and behold! the cat flew away, disappears in the clouds, and reaches heaven, where Devendiren took him in his arms with a thousand caresses. Up to this point, the penitent's undertaking was a complete success, but the favourite goddess of the Devendiren fell so in love with the amiable Patripatan that she put all her power into keeping him. Devendiren, who had learned the purpose of the feline ambassador, used all his eloquence to describe the great impatience of King Salagan and his court, and did not fail to emphasize that a delay would endanger the penitent's reputation, and that it was the greatest disgrace to rob someone of their cat. But like all goddesses, she too had her own divine brain, and with tears and caresses (just as at home) she knew how to persuade old Devendiren to let her keep the cat for a little while, two or three hundred years; after this time, however, Patripatan was to faithfully return to the court of King Salagan, who was waiting for her.

Meanwhile, Salagan and his court sat and waited, and when the cat still refused to return, the penitent, by the power of his persuasion, was able to make them wait three hundred years without feeling any discomfort other than a temporary impatience; nor did they grow old by virtue of the penitent's virtue. After this period had elapsed, the sky suddenly became more beautiful, and from a cloud of a thousand different colours a throne arose, built of Devendiren's most delectable flowers. The cat sat majestically on this throne, holding in his lovely paw a whole branch of Parisadam flowers, which she gracefully presented to the king when she reached him. The whole court cried out in triumph, and the penitent was filled with bliss. The Brahmin, however, also disputed the penitent's success, which he presented as the result of quite ordinary virtue. He pointed to the Devendiren's passionate love for cats and that without doubt half the credit for this remarkable story belonged to Patripatan. The king, moved by the sharpness of this logic, refrained from making any judgment. Patripatan, however, reaped the full benefit and from that time on was the most celebrated person at the court of Salagan.

It ise enough to give these few examples from the immensely large number of fairy tales and animal legends to convince you, dear lady, of the importance of the cat within Indo-European animal myths. Perhaps you will have to half-reluctantly admit to me that, since ancient times, my little darling has occupied one of the leading positions in the fantastic productions of the poetic folk spirit, and that the magical veil of fairy-tale tradition has been woven around him with great pleasure - a veil that our modern rationalism has not been able to completely tear away.

FOURTH LETTER

The miracle is faith's dearest child.
Goethe.

The most beautiful goddess of the ancient Germanic tribes was Freya, (55) wife of the sun god Baldur, the goddess of the sunny seasons, marriage, childbirth and protector of domestic happiness. The basic symbolic idea of the German main goddess is a nourishing, fertile nature, be it the rain-pregnant cloud, which the Indians already compared to milk-giving cows, or the fruit-bearing earth moistened by the heavenly powers. What Bubastis was to the Egyptians and Artemis to the Greeks, Freya is to the Germanic tribes; she drove a richly decorated team of cats, and cats were among the animals sacred to her; therefore, whoever loved and cared for cats could hope for her protection and blessing in love and marriage. She especially rules over the female side of life, is the guardian of domestic order, a goddess of industry, peace and love. Perhaps the thought occurs to you, dear lady, that in your friend's heart too, the veneration for the cat race is an unconscious echo of the beliefs and disposition of our forefathers? That, in order to enjoy Freya's protection and blessing, he defends, protects and venerates cats? That, finally, perhaps the ultimate purpose of these letters goes far beyond an apologia for the cat? No, dear lady, your friend has long since lost the trusting belief in the gods of his youth; he knows that Freya has passed on to the stiff, powerless dead, just like her Greek sister, the lovely huntress Artemis, and all the gods and goddesses who once, thousands of years ago, gave active protection and support to mortals. Ah, your friend knows that in the sober present a man can rely only on himself when it comes to winning a reluctant or indifferent woman's heart, and that neither Freya-Artemis nor "our dear lady of Melos" can help him any more.-

The fanciful Middle Ages identified the ancient Germanic goddess - in the form of a goddess of love also called Hulda, Holda - with the Greco-Roman Venus. Many aspects of her myth were transferred to Mary; she also rules over thunder and lightning and has a special relationship with the weather. In addition to the actual gods, the pagan Germans believed, and people still believe, in other, non-human, ghostly beings, most of which were originally representatives of natural forces. In addition to demons, giants, dwarves, mermaids, etc., ghostly animals also belong here, and among these the cat occupies a special place as a witch's animal.

The origin of this superstition may be found in Ovid's Metamorphoses (56), where Jupiter turns the cruel king of the Arcadians, Lynceus, into a wolf because of his inhumanity. Witches usually turn into cats, and we can probably prove this superstition to have originated in paganism. When Galanthia (57) was turned into a cat by the Fates, Hecate took pity on her and made her her priestess. Then, when Typhon (58) forced all the gods and goddesses to turn into animals, Hecate herself took the form of a cat. (59)

As early as the fourth century, when paganism and Christianity had ceased to be directly opposed to one another and the pagan gods began to become mythical, belief in the existence of higher evil natures gradually developed, so that the earlier demons or pagan gods became our present evil angels or devils. From the seventh to the thirteenth century, all these different assumptions and ramifications of belief in magic and demonic influences became ever more fantastic and rich. In this dark, though in its way powerful and creative age, we find almost incredible things preserved in history about them. From the many features of this period we can trace the gradual development of witchcraft, from which the later witch trials arose; however, until then the animal transformations mostly appeared as mere confused, crazy ideas of a brooding imagination of common popular belief, but from this point on, when the devil himself made use of them, they assumed, so to speak, an official character and were publicly and historically recognized by popes and magistrates. (60) Characteristic of this age was the ever more widespread madness of accusing women of sorcery. Tacitus had already reported that the Germanic people believed in something holy and prophetic in women; they did not scorn their advice in the most important matters and paid close attention to the answers women gave. The main activity of the priestly women was prophecy; in peace and war, the secret knowledge of these women was sought, and what they saw from omens, from flowing sacrificial blood or other signs, often determined undertakings more than the advice of experienced men. The Cimbri had their priestesses interpret fate from the blood of sacrificed prisoners of war; Ariorist made his undertakings dependent on the word of the wise mothers. The drawing of lots was particularly popular in this search for fate: beech sticks, into which signs had been carved, were thrown onto a white cloth and, while praying, the priestess picked up three sticks from which they read the will of the gods. (61) Singing and dancing, which are closely linked, were also part of the cult.

The origin of the belief in witches probably lies in the fact that in Christian times the inclination towards the old gods' worship was retained among many women who still celebrated the old gods' festivals in secret gatherings. (62) The women's memory of their former position, which they lost in Christianity, strengthened their inclination towards the old, and since the old gods now became devilish beings, their priestesses and secret worshippers were believed to have made an alliance with the devil (13th century), and this was probably the reason for the witch trials.

The notorious bull of Pope Innocent VIII introduced witch trials on a large scale. The centre of this terrible aberration was our unfortunate fatherland, which had been so badly affected by the Thirty Years' War. In the midst of the thousands who were slain by hunger, sword and plague, witches were constantly being burned and countless families and entire communities were destroyed by witch trials.

Of the thousands of examples, just one will serve as a glimpse into the life of the great Johannes Kepler. While he was discovering the natural law named after him in Linz in Austria, that the planets' orbits block off the same parts of their elliptical area in the same time and that the squares of the orbital periods of the planets are related to each other like the cubes of their mean distances; while he was summoned to Regensburg by the Emperor to give his opinion on the matter of improving the calendar; while he himself was ill and the war was making the area unsafe: - he suddenly had to travel to his home in Wuerttemberg to save his poor, old mother from the stake after she had been conscripted as a witch and was to be burned. He did not succeed without great effort and exertion. -

According to his own statement, Remigius had nine hundred witches burned in Lorraine. In neighbouring Trier, where the Jesuits held sway, things were probably even more crazy. The number of victims can be judged from the fact that in the seven years from 1587 to 1593, twenty villages near the capital alone burned three hundred and sixty people at the stake. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, around five hundred witches were burned in Geneva in a period of three months, and Ludovicus Paramo reports that the Inquisition burned 30,000 witches at the stake in 150 years. But it was not just witches, sorceresses - and often enough scholars - who were burned, but thousands of cats also ended up in the flames as witches.

In the Middle Ages, in Aix, in Provence, on the Corpus Christi festival, the most beautiful cat that could be found in the area was swaddled like a baby and displayed in a precious shrine for public worship. Every knee bent before him, a thousand hands scattered flowers and incense, and Hinz, the cat, was showered with honours as the god of the day. But this happiness did not last very long. On the feast of St. John, Hinz's fate underwent a sad change. A number of cats were locked with him in a wicker basket and thrown onto a pyre, which was set alight by the bishop and his priests with many ceremonies. Then they went through the streets, followed by a large crowd, singing psalms. De Fontenelle related that he had been brought up to believe that on the eve of St. John not a single cat remained in the city, because on that day they had to go to the witches' sabbath. This superstition survived in the country until a few years ago and was celebrated as a public festival in Metz. On a certain day the magistrate went to the market square in all his dignity to burn cats locked in baskets on a pyre. The cats screamed terribly and the more they screamed, the louder the mob cheered, as they believed the cats were witches. The Flemish were more humane in this respect than the French. In 1818, in Ypres, it was forbidden by law to throw the customary cat down from the top of the tower. This festival usually took place on the Wednesday of the second week of Lent, a festival which did not honour the people much. -

The shining eyes of the cat greatly contributed to making it a supernatural animal, and yet those same eyes were the object of envy and ardent desire among women; for there was no greater or more praiseworthy virtue than to have eyes as green and iridescent as those of the cat; the eyes of Venus were also green. Green eyes inspire great passion, and nature, which in our century so rarely grants this asset to the beautiful, has endowed the cat species with green eyes in abundance; the brilliance of the eyes, which humans consider a chief adornment of physical beauty, is present in cats in lavish quantities. In humans, and to a certain extent also in animals, shining eyes express a happy, cheerful mood, and a peculiar gleam in the eyes almost always indicates a higher intellectual gift. It is different from the dull mother-of-pearl lustre of the eyes, which has something unpleasant about it and usually indicates base passions. Above all, you can recognize openness and deceit. Deceitful eyes always look somewhere other than into you eyes, even if they are very close to your gaze; you feel that they are always thinking of something other than what they are talking about. But if they are ever forced to look at you, the gleam of their eyes are ice-cold and they temble in their sockets.

The brilliance of the cat's eye is due to its construction; this has advantages that the human eye lacks. We can only perceive objects with the help of light, and our eyes are useless to us when light is not present. Cats have their own light; the sun, moon and the artificial lighting we need as an absolute necessity for almost all our actions only provide them with a spectacle. The love-seeking cats are able to see each other clearly on the roofs without light and can discern the object of their desire even in the darkness of night.

These properties of the cat's eyes deserve the attention that science has given them; it respects them as much as its intestines, (63) which are used as violin strings, and succeeding centuries will recognize that cats were not superfluous in the academies of science and art, but that they contributed to their perfection.

The visual organs of cats, like those of all animals that hunt prey by day and night, are adapted for both times. The retina is very sensitive to the action of light waves and is therefore protected by a special muscle belonging to the eyelid, which enables the pupil to be constricted to a vertical, almost line-like slit during the day and, on the other hand, allows it to expand enormously in the dark. But even this astonishing mechanism would not be sufficient for the diverse hunting grounds, often accessible only in very low light, where the cat seeks its prey, if the eye was not also able to collect even the weakest light in such a way that its rays are caught by the tapetum lucidem, which forms a concave mirror in the depth of the eye, and reflected back onto the image of an object that the retina has recorded. The sensitivity of the cat's retina is so great that neither the contraction of the pupil nor the closing of the eyelid would protect it sufficiently against the effects of light, if there were not a special membrane, the nictitating membrane, which lies like a third eyelid over the transparent cornea. This nictitating membrane has the effect of black glass and allows the light to fall on the retina as softly as a shadow. In the cat, this third eyelid is most visible when it opens its eyes after a long, peaceful sleep; it is more fully developed in the eagle, whose eyes can see the full brilliance of the sun.

The glow of the cat's eye in the dark is caused by the external rays of light that collect in the eye and are reflected by it; for even if a room is apparently dark, rays of external light, whether from lamps or other luminous bodies, which are invisible to our eyes, penetrate the animal's eye which is more able to collect light rays. If the iris of the eye is fully round, the degree of luminosity is also at its greatest, and the more the iris is closed, which is always the case when the light is intense, the less luminosity it has. This is also the reason why cats cannot look you in the eye, which they can and always do in the dark. The assumption that cats are deceitful because they cannot look anyone in the face is therefore shown to be incorrect. (64)

Witches' eyes were red, their eyebrows were joined together, and these, along with other characteristics, were their identifying marks. They also had flat feet, "witch's feet" [pentagrams], which are also characteristic of the Marts and Alps and, like the dwarves, indicate their supernatural nature. People who act as Alps can be recognized by cutting nine kinds of wood in the church at midnight; many cats come along and you can recognize them in the people the next day. (65) Witches usually transform themselves into cats. That a cat crossing your path means bad luck is generally held by Germans and Slavs and is an ancient belief widespread among the ancient Indians and all related peoples.

[Translator's Note: A Mart or Alp is a supernatural being in German folklore and attacks sleeping people (they were blamed for causing sleep paralysis). A Mart is a more feminine version of an Alp. They drink blood for the nipples of men and children, and drink breast milk from women. Alps also make mischief.]

When black cats reach the age of seven or nine, they become witches themselves and go to the witches' meeting on Walpurgis Day or guard underground treasures.

If you want to protect cattle from being attacked, you let a cat go into the stable first so that it can draw the attack onto itself. This is not always reliable, since underground powers, dwarves and demons in general, like to turn into cats and even Mr. Cloven-Hoof [the devil] sometimes appears as a cat with fiery eyes.

In Montserrat, it is believed that all cats that run around on the roofs in February are not real cats, but witches who must be shot dead. For this reason, cats are also kept away from children's cradles.

In Hungary, witches ride cats and you can free cats from being ridden by witches by making an incision in the shape of a cross in their fur.

In Tuscany, it is believed that when someone is about to die, the devil passes by his bed in the form of some animal, such as a billy goat, cockerel or black cat. Aldrovandi tells of Stefano Cardano, who lay on his deathbed when a cat unexpectedly appeared before him, uttered a loud cry and vanished. In Bohemia, the "milk kitten," a white, ghostly cat that appears and purrs outside the window, indicates an imminent death; in German superstition it is a black cat.

Nature is most stingy in producing black cats. It seems to me, therefore, that black cats consider themselves to be great beauties; I conclude this from the observation that they are the most eagerly sought after by bachelor cats. Black cats have, especially in their eyes, something piquant which is common to brunettes of all classes. Black cats have magical powers, are used for money magic and can tell fortunes. The Laplanders consider the black cat to be a house spirit (transformation of a deceased ancestor) and an oracle, without whose advice they do nothing. In Upper Palatinate folk tales, cats are called "Wana" (Devil's Vana), which is probably related to the demigods of the north, the Vanir.

In Sicily, when the rosary is prayed for sailors, the meowing of a cat means a bad voyage.

When the witches in Macbeth prepare their evil spell against the king, the first poem begins with the words: "Thrice the brindet cat hath mewed."

When the cat, Freya's animal, grooms itself or arches its back, it means there will be guests, especially suitors; if it runs its paws over its ears, distinguished visitors are coming, but if it stretches out its hind legs, someone is coming with a stick; if it leaves crumbs lying around, grain will be cheap; but if anyone looks at it when it is washing itself, they will be beaten that same day. If a cat cries in front of a house, there will soon be quarrels and misfortune, even death. The wind will come the next day from the direction in which a cat scratches or paws; if it turns towards the fire, frost will come. The tri-coloured cat protects the house from all sorts of misfortune; fires can be put out by throwing it into it, which is why it is called a fire cat. If you drown a cat, you will either have no luck or will be unhappy for seven years. You must not hit cats, but if you do, you must do it backwards. If you bury a dead cat under someone's door, you will bring misfortune into the house.

You can make yourself invisible by sticking a pea in the head of a dead cat, burying it in the ground and eating the peas that grow from it. Cat meat is good against consumption; if you swallow a cat hair, you will get consumption, and if a small child does it, it stops growing. In Oldenburg, there is a legend that if a man suffering from a fever takes a cat to bed with him, it will take away the fever; but if you pity the animal, the fever will come to you. You can cure a bad finger by sticking it in a cat's ear, and epilepsy by drinking seven drops of blood from the severed tip of a cat's tail.

Cats can be accustomed to living in the house by putting them in a sack, swinging the sack around you three times, then letting them look into the chimney and then into the mirror. On the other hand, you must not take a cat with you to a new home, otherwise someone in the family will soon die. The time before the baptism is a very dangerous one for babies and is observed with anxious care. Even during birth, all doors are locked tightly and keyholes plugged so that witches cannot sneak in as cats. A cat must not be raised at the same time as a child, otherwise the child will learn to steal. A black cat with a white spot must not be allowed in the house, its breath is fatal to babes in arms.

Of all animals, the cat is the subject of the most superstition, which is found more or less among all peoples. We also owe many legends and a great treasure trove of proverbs to its name and nature. This is no small achievement, for proverbs are the collected pearls of the human collective - that is, of the common mind. They come from ancient times; poets, sibyls, prophets and wise men created them, and they were considered divine revelations and oracles.

The proverb has a rich, widespread literature, which extends from ancient times to the present day, and knowledge of this has always been considered of great importance. The greatest minds have occupied themselves with proverbs and quoted them in their writings. Solomon, the wise king of the Hebrews, is said to have known three thousand proverbs, and among the Greeks proverbs were as highly respected as they were in general use in language. Aristotle left a book about proverbs, Plato and Plutarch made special use of proverbs; so did Christ and Muhammad in their parables; in oriental works, such as the Hitopadeca, Panchatantra, Mahabharata, etc., there are many proverbs full of profound wisdom and rare beauty. (66)

The main treasure of our oldest proverbs is found in our minstrel singers, in the fable writers of the Middle Ages, and in the old proverb poems and chronicles. One of the more recent works is Wander's Proverbs Dictionary; it contains more than 1000 proverbs about cats, which are all the more highly regarded as a result. For if people had not been accustomed to dealing with cats, they would have chosen another animal instead or used another figure in proverbs. But cats were loved and esteemed; they could not be used enough as the subject of conversation, nor could they be connected enough with the maxims of morality.

And what could replace it?! If you want to describe someone who knows how to get out of all unpleasant situations with skill, it is simple and elegant to say:

"Cats and gentlemen always land on their feet." (Grimm.)
"The scalded cat also avoids cold water."

In this proverb she is represented as a symbol of wisdom, and it is high praise for her to set such a wise example for mankind. But what a comical spectacle for the cats themselves, to see us day after day falling into the same traps whose danger we have only recently experienced. No matter how often a lover deceives us, she always finds enough resources in our weakness to regain our trust, and then deceive us again. A cat can only be deceived once in its life, and then it is not only suspicious of the person who deceived it, but also of all who remind it of this deception. If hot water has put it off, that is enough for all time, and it even shies away from cold water. Let's not blush about it - but it is precisely on the lonely roofs that we would do well to improve our education, I particular it's there we would find admirable examples of activity, modesty, noble emulation and hatred of idleness in the most ideal form.

It is also said: If you play with cats, you have to put up with being in demand.

The following incident, dear friend, has either given the expression an interesting application or even brought it into being.

Before the last Middlesex Sessions in 1837, a certain Thomas Saverland brought an action against a Caroline Newton, a portly person of middle age, for having bitten off a piece of his nose when he attempted to kiss her in jest. The defendant was acquitted, the foreman of the jury explaining to the mutilated plaintiff that the loss of his nose was certainly to be regretted, but that he who played with cats must put up with being bitten. As is well known, English law is very strict when it comes to forced kisses, and there have been cases where someone has been fined 100 (too expensive!) or imprisoned. Here too, the foreman said to the jury: "Gentlemen, if a man tries to kiss a woman against her will, she is, in my opinion, perfectly justified in biting off his nose if she wants to." And they can eat if they want to, added a lawyer at the bar. (Breslauer Zeitung, 1837, No. 109.)

"You have to put up with the cat."
Lessing has the Saxon chambermaid Franziska in Minna von Barnhelm say: Yes, yes, in the carriage, the major has to put up with the cat. [Cat was a colloquial word for a chambermaid] About a hundred years ago there was a game called the cat game, where the space allocated to the players was called the cat or boundary and had to be held. So no overstepping, but holding a measured border, and the latter seems to fit the above words even better. (H. Schumann.)

"The cat has nine lives, the onion and the woman seven skins." (Eiselein, 361.)
In Shakespeare and Butler the cat also has nine lives. (Wander.)

"To have a cat in one's throat."
About singers who always sing badly. The saying comes from the French from a certain Madame Cornet, who lived under Louis XIV, often sang badly, and said apologetically to those around her: Regarding my fatal cough, I have a cat in my throat. (Wander.)

"He must drag the cat through the stream."
This seems to refer to an earlier punishment of honour, as the following passage from Fischartz Flohhatz speaks for: "And whoever is the weakest, then drags the cat through the stream." (Wander.)

"It is a wet cat,"
- from an immoral woman: "When she was a wet cat and gave the shearer a play." (Hans Sachs.)

"The cat is the best house friend." (Wander.)
"The cat dropped the light and ran after the mouse." Dante once claimed against Cetto that art was more powerful than nature, and to prove his opinion he said that he had trained a cat to hold a burning light in its paw when he was reading in the evening. "I must see it for myself, said Cetto, before I believe it." An evening was set aside for the demonstration, Cetto turned up at the agreed time with a covered bowl. Dante sat down, Cetto opposite him; the cat did its job as a candlestick. But no sooner had Cetto lifted the lid of the bowl than a couple of mice jumped out; the cat dropped the light and leapt after them. Nature had triumphed. (Erie Watchman, 1868 No. 47.)

"The cat looks at the emperor." (Gaal.)
When Emperor Maximilian was in Nuremberg for the third time in 1517, he often visited the artist Hieronymus Resch, who carved Durer's Triumphal Arch in wood. When Resch was working, his cat always lay next to him, even when the emperor was present, which is where some people think the saying comes from.

English: The cat may look upon a king.
Dutch: De Kat ziet den Kaiser wel aan.

"The cat will also be mousing next year."
The same situation will prevail. The saying forms the end of a poem from the time of the Thirty Years' War. After describing the war events of 1620, it says: "The cat will also be mousing, watch out for the next year." (Wander.)

"Cats and women have seven lives." (Reinsberg I.)

"Cats that have eaten look around."

"The young ones learn to hunt mice from old cats." (Birlinger.) "And if the old cats don't listen, they run with the young ones into the devil, into the oven of eternal damnation." With these words a Capuchin from Bremgarten concluded an educational sermon in 1818. (Klosterspiegel.)

"He who does not like cats will not get a beautiful wife." (Wander.)

"A cat's joke kills mice." (Luther.)

"You should not wake a sleeping cat." (Gaal.)
You should not provoke a dangerous person who is behaving quietly.
French: Reveille point le chat qui dort.
Latin: Ne catum expergefac dormientem.
According to Lendroy, the proverb has a French origin and in the following way. However, it seems that it is only an application of an already existing proverb. The perception on which it is based is that the proverb, which also exists among the Germans and Hungarians, could not also have originated among them. The proverb is certainly of older origin, although no German source for it has yet been found.

Lendroy relates: When Paris had already opened its gates to Henry IV, after he had accepted the Catholic faith, and most of the towns had followed the capital, the Dukes of Mayenne and Mercoeur still showed themselves to be opponents and marched against him with an army. Henry sent the brave general Le Chat against them and called them the Tard-venus (the late ones). To avenge themselves for this insult to their self-esteem, they had a cat of gigantic size painted in reference to the name of the enemy general and had written above it: "A cat that sleeps and dreams, but never bites." The satirical picture was erected at night, not far from the enemy camp. Le Chat, informed of this, took the reprimand to heart, and the following night he was able to paint a large fat mouse on the back of the canvas and add the caption: "One must not wake the cat that is sleeping." The party leaders, increasingly irritated, decided to attack, but were so heavily defeated that they could no longer regroup. Le Chat sent the report of the victory along with the picture to his king, who had it preserved next to the captured flags as a monument to the bravery of his general Le Chat.

"When the cat is away, the mice dance on the benches."
French. Quand le chat est hors la maison
Souris et rats ont leur saison.
English.: When the cat is away, the mice will play.
Italian. Quando la gatta non e in casa, i topi balano.
This proverb is very common. The modern Greeks say: the cat is absent and the mice dance; the Croatians: when the cat is not at home, the mice are masters of the house; the Turks: when the cat is away, the mice raise their heads; the Czechs: when the tomcat is not at home, the mice have a funfair; the blacks in Surinam even say: when the cat is dead, the rat makes a drum out of its fur.

"Nobody wants to tie a bell to a cat." (Lehmann. Simrock.)
Advice is easier given than carried out. This saying comes from a well-known fable in which mice decide to put a bell on the cat so that they can be warned every time it's around - but nobody wants to do it. It is meant to express that in a dangerous matter there are plenty of people who give advice, but there is rarely anyone prepared to carry out what they have advised. There is also a cultural-historical explanation, and according to this, the saying refers to the old custom of leading lewd women, so-called "Kathes", around with a "ruff of bells" as punishment. In certain situations it was said to have been difficult to apply the ruff, and people gradually said: "Nobody wants to put the bell on the Kathe." A transition from Kathe to kitten and cat is possible. (Paternoster, Strasbourg 1616.)

"You mustn't buy a pig in a poke." (Simrock.)
French. C'est mal achat de chat en sac.
Dutch.: Koopt geen kat in een zak.
"Let the cat out of the bag" is an old saying that is still widespread among people and which is explained in more detail in the following rhyme:
What do we want? What do we want?
Would you also like some of the treasure
That the neighbour's grey cat
Has secretly buried?! -

But who doesn't immediately start shouting when faced with a cat in a bag [pig in a poke]: "Let the cat out! because we're not buying a cat in a bag!" Gubernatis considers the proverbial "buying a cat in a bag" to be an allusion to the devil. In the 10th story of the Pentamerone, the King of Roccaforte, thought he was going to marry a beautiful girl, but when he finds that he has married an ugly, veiled woman he says: "Questo e peo nce vole a chi accatta la gatto dinto lo sacca." This is what happens to those who accept a cat in a bag.

"You cat's head."
"We are not cat's heads either." (Lessing.)

"You can see the cat's paw there." (Grimm.)
To describe outright deceitfulness.

"I don't want to be the cat's paw to pull his chestnuts out of the fire."
The Russians: "When the clever man wants to catch the otter, he attacks it with fool's hands."

Dr. Careri relates in his "Voyage around the World 1695" that a man who wanted to punish his worthless, thieving monkey put a coconut in the fire and then hid himself to see how the monkey would pull the nut out of the fire without getting burned. When the clever animal saw itself alone, it seized the cat sitting by the fire, held its head with its teeth, while it took the coconut out of the fire with its paws, and threw it into the water to cool down before eating it with pleasure.

"He is at the cats' table." (67)

As a punishment, he is alone and has to eat in isolation. According to Weber's monasticism, the saying comes from the nuns of Our Lady of Calvary, where the slightest mistake was punished by the absentee having to eat alone.

"A pious kitten, a bad cat."
All proverbs show the inventive power of people, who presented certain general principles of experience and moral truths in a tangible and visual way. If people preferred to use cats for this figurative representation, if there are over a thousand proverbs and proverbial sayings that have cats as their subject, then we can conclude from this with what preference people have always occupied themselves with observing this animal. Further proof of how closely connected the nature of the cat was and still is with the development of human education.

FIFTH LETTER

Half God, half child's play at heart.
Goethe.

In diligence the bee can outdo you,
In skill a worm can be your teacher,
You share your knowledge with superior spirits,
But art, oh man, is yours alone.
Schiller.

In German and Romanesque legends there is a widespread assumption that animals - like humans - once possessed language. The most extensive and significant poem about talking animals is Reynard the Fox. It has always enjoyed the affection of our most distinguished minds, not only because of its special poetic value, but because it rests on a foundation of universally valid, always justified feeling and fidelity to nature.

The gods of the Greeks and Germanic tribes always appeared in the company of animals; a part of their divine omniscience was transferred to the animal, into whose form they alternately transformed themselves or which they used as a herald of their heavenly will. Our ancestors acknowledged that animals had a soul, and accordingly the animal, thought to have a soul, was drawn into human customs, and since individual animals were sacred to the gods, the animal's name was transferred to man as a healing power, and so, for the same reason, the man's name was transferred to the animal for the common protection of the latter. The naming of the animal was a solemn act, whereby it was simultaneously included in the charitable deeds of the civil statutes; offenses against it then resulted in legal fines. It was entirely in keeping with the view of German antiquity not only to treat servants like domestic animals, but also domestic animals like servants, thus granting the animal certain human rights, especially in the form of fines and dues.

In Saxon farming settlements, the so-called grain fine, has been preserved, which the owner is entitled to demand if his cat killed by another person's hand. The dead animal was hung up by the tail so that its nose was on the ground, and red wheat was poured over it until it was covered. This legal custom is also found among the Arabs and in Wales under Howel the Good (948). In the north, a similar assessment was common by filling the flayed skin of the animal; our ancients also knew of such a fine for humans, only that instead of grains of wheat, grains of red gold had to be poured over the corpse. (68)

The Eddic saga is also based on humans in animal form. (69)

Hreidmarr had three sons, Otr, Fafnir and Reginn. Otr changed into the form of an otter, as his name suggests, climbed into the river and caught fish. One day he was sitting on the bank, blinking as he ate a salmon, when three gods of the Aesir - Odin, Loki and Hoenir - came along. Loki saw the otter sitting there, grabbed a stone and killed the otter. Happy with their catch, they skinned the animal and moved on. That evening, they took shelter in Hreidmarr's house and, knowing nothing of Otr's relationship, showed off the catch. Hreidmarr and his sons immediately recognized the hide, laid hands on the Aesir and demanded a ransom, which was to consist of the entire hide being filled with red gold on the inside and then covered with gold on the outside. Being hostages of their enemies, the Aesir had to accept the demand. They sent Loki to fetch the gold and, when he had brought it, they began to fill and cover the otter skin. When they had done this, Hreidmarr went to the pile of gold and looked at it; seeing a single uncovered hair sticking out he demanded that this be covered. The gold had gone, so Odin had to give up a precious ring, which he would have preferred to keep, in order to cover the hair and fulfil the ransom.

Until 1780, the so-called "cat law" (70) was in force in the canton of Zurich, according to which if someone killed another person's cat, the animal's skin was stretched out on the ground between four sticks and had to be covered with grain and handed over to the cat's owner. The office of the animal master, which was established for the same administration of justice, had previously been valid throughout the whole Zurich region, and was last held in the city of Winterthur in 1764. This is also the basis for a law according to which every animal should be granted rights and the word should be kept. (71)

Legend has it that Emperor Charles VI was the one who decided a dispute between a snake and a cat in Zurich before his own judge. -

It is on this basis of an original and natural feeling that most of the sayings and songs about animals, which are still found in children's games, have grown up. The cat is also often sung about in nursery rhymes; it is one of the first figures that children encounter and that concerns them, for it is present even in the poorest hut; its simple name, such as cat, kitty, is easy to remember, and this explains why the animal plays such a large part in the first impressions of early childhood. Allow me to cite just a few examples from the extremely large number of nursery songs and children's rhymes which feature the cat.

After the first three months, which are usually called the stupid quarter, people begin to play with the child to entertain it. Soon the child is thought of as a puppy, a kitten or a mouse, and then they say:

The kitten runs up the stairs,
It has a red jacket on,
It has little knives at its side.
Where do you want to go?
I want to go to Bullemann's house,
I want to get me a nice fat mouse,
Quick quick quick quick.

If the child doesn't want to eat something:

Bam bam beg,
The cat doesn't like to eat eggs.
What does kitty like then?
She likes bacon out of the pan.
Oh, how delicious is our madam!

Spelling jokes: [this one does not work in English translation]

ABC
The kitten ran into the snow,
And when it came home again,
It had white trousers on.

Oh dear, my goodness! (72)

[It works in German]
ABC,
Das K tzchen lief in'n Schnee,
Und wie es wieder nach Hause kam,
Da hat es wei e Hoeschen an.
Jemine, o weh! (72)

Riddle.
[The German "spinnt" means both spins and purrs.]
It often spins, yet does not pull a thread.

A grey cat is running
Over the walls
describes the stormy lake, in which the cat - the animal that heralds storms and winds - is personified as a splashing wave on the shore of the stormy mountain lake.

We find a very similar concept in Germanic mythology. In his competitions with the giants, Thor is supposed to lift a black cat off the ground, but can only lift one of its hind legs. The giants trembled, for the cat was the enchanted ocean, which was already threatening to flood over the earth.

In the Harz region, on St. John's Day, the following songs are sung during the festive bringing in of small Maypoles:
We go round the chain,
Smooth as a mirror-glass;
Cave in the meadow,
Seven years, shoot!
Maid Matilda has turned,
The cat's tail is turning.

[Wir gehen um die Kette,
Spiegelglasgl tte;
Hoehle auf der Wiese,
Sieben Jahre schie e!
Jungfrau Mathild hat sich dreht,
Hat der Katz' den Schwanz' num dreht.]

With this saying and dance, the winter ice, along with snow and hail stones, is danced away, and because the storm is figuratively expressed by hailing cats and snowing spears, the child dancing solo is partly encouraged and partly rewarded for having pulled out the tail of the weather-making cat. Here, the weather-witch and the weather-cat are one and the same; in the Harz Mountains, the weather region is called the cat's nose.

All these rhymes and stories are rooted in popular traditions that are whispered in the child's ear, grow up with him, walk through the storms of life with him, but always remain a sweet memory of early youth. This may be the reason that so many important people have retained such a great love for cats.

An animal with such great purity of monumental lines as the cat has always attracted the attention of artistically inclined people, and in fact, depictions of the cat are among the oldest artistic monuments. The oldest depictions of the cat can be traced back to Egypt. In particular, they are hunting pictures from the swamps of the Nile valley; these show cats plunging into the water to fetch the game they have killed. It was hardly domestic cats that were used for these hunting purposes; it is very likely that they were hunting leopards or cheetahs, animals that can be seen as a transitional link between cat and dog.

A Pompeian mosaic, now in the Naples Museum, shows a cat tearing apart a quail.

Wilkinson describes a painting of a tomb at Thebes, now in the British Museum, as follows: One of the oldest monuments relating to the cat is in the necropolis at Thebes, which contains the tomb of Hana, on which stands the statue of the king, between whose feet lies his cat Bauhaki. Various funerary monuments of women have also been found in that city, with the inscription: Techau, the cat, as a sign of the shot of the goddess Bubastis. The Museum in London has a papyrus fragment on which Egyptian caricatures are drawn. A cat, holding a flower in one paw, is offering a sacrifice to a rat; the rat sits majestically on a chair and inhales the fragrance of a gigantic lotus flower, while a second rat stands behind it holding a fan. Another Egyptian caricature is in the Abbott Collection; it also depicts a sacrificial scene. A tomcat standing upright, bearing a flabellum [large ceremonial fan], is offering a plucked goose to a cat enthroned on a chair; the cat is holding a flower in one paw and a drinking bowl in the other. -

Wherever one encounters such representations, whether in the form of the sphinx or whether the cat's head adorns the body of a god, whether in connection with musical instruments, whether as a profane or sacred character: everywhere the Egyptians portrayed the animal's artistic side with dignity and expertise and, while remaining grounded in reality, they developed majestic contours from the figure of the cat.

After the Egyptians, we must mention the Japanese, who not long ago introduced themselves to Europe through ingenious hand drawings in the field of cat depictions, and who have also proved themselves to be equally capable painters of women and the fantastic. This trilogy may seem strange, but it is mostly found in artists who have recognized the intimate, tender nature of women and cats, from which the third element in the alliance easily arises - a love of the fantastic and the strange. Women, fantasy, cats, what mysterious magic, how much beauty and happiness lies in these three words! - Couldn't the saying "He who loves cats also loves women" have its origins here? - Japanese artists possess the ability to create the above-mentioned trilogy to a high degree; they know how to surround their female characters with romantic elegance, with colourful ideas, and listen to the cat in its most intimate movements.

They also do masterly work in caricatures. A well-known example is a cat's head made of cats, whose eyes form two bells, probably an allusion to the fable of the cat in which mice try to hang a bell on it. The most important cat painter in Japan was To-Kou-Say. In China, cats are often painted or modelled in porcelain. Entrecolles saw a porcelain cat there so lifelike that if a small light was placed in the hollow of the head and the pupils were illuminated, the rats fled from the cat's image. This strange triumph of art is vividly reminiscent of the Grapes of Apelles.

The Chinese not only venerate cats in porcelain, but also appreciate their culinary value. Cats are considered a special delicacy and are chained up and fattened with rice. In India, Africa, Spain, Holland, Ireland and France, cats are eaten with particular fondness and are often served in restaurants in the guise of hare and rabbit dishes. In the museum in Bordeaux, on a grave from the Gallo-Roman period, there is a picture of a girl with a cat in her arms and a rooster at her feet. This depiction is explained by a custom of that time. The toys and animals that the child had particularly liked during life were placed in the grave with the child's corpse.

Old works on coats of arms provide interesting information about the use of cats in heraldry. Palbiot reports on the coats of arms of the Romans: The company of soldiers, Ordines Augustei, who marched under the colonel of the infantry, sub magistro peditum, bore a sea-green cat on their white or silver flag, and another company of the same regiment, called the fortunate old men, Felices seniores, had half a red cat on a shield of gilded silver.

Valson de la Colombiere, a scholar of heraldry, gives the following explanation of the cat in heraldic animal combat in his Livre de la science heroique: Like the lion, the cat is a solitary animal, but its eyes sparkle in the darkest nights and, imitating the moon, they grow and shrink; just as the moon receives its light from the sun and changes its face daily, so too does the cat follow the moon. Another scholar of heraldry connects his interpretation with creation.

At the moment the world was created, the fable says, the sun and the moon wanted to take part in it. The sun created the lion; the moon, on the other hand, gave the cat, who was neither as brave nor as beautiful as the lion, and was inferior to him in the same way the moon was inferior to his brother the sun. This mistake provoked mocking laughter and indignation; laughter from those present and indignation from the sun, who, provoked by the moon's presumption of wanting to be her equal, created the mouse as a sign of contempt. But the moon, aroused by the scorn of his surroundings, brought the ugliest of all animals, the monkey, into the world, and inextinguishable laughter greeted the rashly born creature, which made the moon furious and, in order to take revenge on the sun, he caused undying hatred to arise between lion and monkey, cat and mouse.

The cat as a symbol of independence is Roman in origin. In the Temple of Liberty, built in Rome by the efforts of Tiberius Gracchus, the goddess stood dressed in white, holding a sceptre in one hand and a cap in the other, and at her feet lay a cat as a symbol of freedom.

The people, who had always been fond of legends, began to use them on their banners, inspired by the fantastic nature of the cat. It is therefore found as a heraldic animal among the Greeks, Romans, Vandals and Suevi; Clotilde, wife of King Clovis, also carried a golden cat killing a rat on a black field. Cardinal Mazarin says of the cat in the flag of the old Swabians: "The cat is a symbol of freedom and was used on the flag by the old Swabians because of this meaning." On the communal gravestone of the Munich patrician family von Kazmayr in the Holy Spirit Church in Munich there is a jewelled helmet on which there is a seated cat, and the museum in Wiesbaden has the shield of Count Dyther III of Katzenelnbogen with a cat in the field; the Neapolitan nobles della Gatta also had a silver cat in their coat of arms.

As we left the Middle Ages, a cat meant independence. This assumption also explains the printing sign of Seffa, a printer in Venice (1500), who printed on the last page of their books a picture of a cat surrounded by strange decorations. The art of printing was light and light was liberation. The sixteenth century understood it this way and used the cat in this sign, and not without reason. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, there are only slight traces of the cat as a symbol of independence; but it acquired new significance in this respect in the French Republic, which made it its symbol. During that period, the symbolic figure of Liberty is represented countless times by the cat, most often Liberty next to a broken yoke, holding a cap on a staff, and next to her a cornucopia and a cat. The painter Proudhon was the only one who gave his allegorical figures a delicate, chaste character; he left behind a peculiar symbolization of the Constitution, which expresses wisdom through Minerva connected with the law; behind the law, children lead a lion and a lamb; in her hand, Liberty holds a lance, on the tip of which is a Phrygian cap; at the feet of the goddess rests a cat.

The frequent use of the cat as a symbol of freedom and independence proves that its virtues made it particularly suitable for this purpose. If we go into the superior regions of a city, where poets, artists, and scholars usually have their quiet attic rooms under the roof, as they are closest to God, and a region higher still, where all other four-legged creatures cannot reach, there we find the cat in a state of peace, in an enviable independence, for which it owes nothing to man, but only to itself. Their coming down to us is only an act of courtesy; free to choose their abode, they inhabit the proud gables of the royal palace or the simple roof of the intellectual worker, according to their ambition or their philosophy, and they do not care about the favour of princes or the profound speculations of a solitary thinker; they are free in their comings and goings, and neither complaisance nor the desire to please are necessary to gain them entry, for their lightness and their suppleness are superior, opening to them, so to speak, the way into the open air as well as into the most hidden chambers. It is therefore the surface of the cities that cats populate as a kind of Utah, where they form a republic that maintains and flourishes by its own power. Without human help, cats provide comfort, rest, love, exciting festivals, song and dance, and the whole magic of sweet moonlit nights, in fact everything that makes them happy. And with what moderation they enjoy their beautiful existence, the necessity of which they know how to ennoble by balancing freedom and pleasure; even in the little plays they perform with the mouse, they have much in common with the noble passions of great lords who enjoy the hunted stag for a long time before they kill it. Do you also know, dearest, why cats wash themselves after every meal? It is a secret that every sparrow on the roof knows, but it is still little known among people.

Once a cat caught a sparrow and was about to devour it when the clever proletarian exclaimed: "A gentleman washes himself before he eats breakfast." The cat, struck by this argument, washed his moustache, while the sparrow happily fled, leaving Hinz behind. But the cat angrily swore that in future he would only wash himself after his meal - a custom which has become common among the cat race.

The cat's love of freedom is most bravely defended by its claws; they are, so to speak, its happiness, its homeland - they protect it against oppression and slavery. Those claws, which are so infamous, are not treacherous, malicious weapons; on the contrary, it will not be difficult for me to prove that they conform to the laws of war applicable among animals and that they show openness and innocence in their use. - The cat's paws, I admit, are terrible instruments for reliable intervention and defence, but how beautiful they are in their simplicity, what an ingenious apparatus are those supple sheaths, in which, the claws are preciously preserved like jewels in a jewel box, and what great attention and perfect dexterity it requires on the part of the cat to guard those sharp weapons lest it inadvertently injure others with them. The cat is therefore always in a state of restless anxiety, which is connected to the peculiar purpose of this mechanism, which requires inner reserve and constant self-control in our presence; this constant sacrifice proves its devotion, its affection for us. If it sometimes happens in the course of a cat's life that, out of distraction, it abandons its claws to their natural purpose and perhaps scratches where it intended to caress - which, given its easily excitable nervous system, can happen if it is caressed for too long - a word is enough to call it back to gentleness. If she grabs the hand which is constantly moving back and forth before her eyes, it is because she feels it is necessary to grab hold of this moving object, for thinks it is a toy. But then she is said to be deceitful, unfaithful, and all her virtues, all her tender attentions, which she needs in order to avoid scratching us more often, are suddenly forgotten. What injustice, what ingratitude! A kind friend has spent his life sacrificing himself for us, and we forget all this love and friendship because of a single moment of distraction! Could human society exist if men regarded one another with the same severity, with the same nit-picking spirit? Wouldn t the blows they bestow on one another in the course of their association and even in friendship be destructive to the state, indeed for humanity, if the recognition of our own imperfections didn t urge us to be lenient, and make it necessary for us to forgive and to forget! - Let's admit that it's our egotism and ignorance that make us act so inhumanely, but shouldn't this lack of uniformity in the cat's behaviour be a real advantage for it? Could we trust someone who only ever shows velvet paws, and doesn't someone deserve more respect when they show us that they also have claws to maintain their dignity? The cat also knows how to distinguish when a child is mishandling it with no intention of offending it; cats can make fine distinctions, and we humans, we most divine beings, are not always able to do what a cat shows us every day.-

From the lap of happy independence, the cat comes to us, following its inclination, to charm us with its grace, its amiable cheerfulness, its diverse dainty movements, the imitation of which was once the glory of the most famous pantomimes. But it isn't looking for a master! - Born in fortunate circumstances, in which she could remain forever, she has no reason to exchange her golden freedom for an inglorious servitude, and we owe the good fortune of her company to her unselfish affection for man, her decency and her good humour. In this respect she is more worthy of respect than the canine race, which is so readily praised at the cat's expense by ignorant human beings. Dogs, like the canine natures among humans, cannot be wiped out, and dogs are loved so fraternally by people because they are their role models. Gentlemen, however, are fond of dogs because they remain excellent teachers and examples for their subordinates - dependent, sniffing, wagging, licking - the very epitome of so-called canine loyalty. That is why these gentlemen mostly hate cats and set their dogs to chase these fine, clever animals, whose independence annoys them; they see in them the "revolutionary principle!" -

Dogs only attach themselves to us because they would starve without our help, and humiliated by this baseness they must endure insults of every kind. How different! In the most perfect dog we find only a faithful slave, but in the cat we have a pleasant friend whose attachment is voluntary, for every moment that it spends with us is just as much a sacrifice of its freedom. But we will also shed light on the other high qualities of its character.

If we analyse their feelings, their intellectual nature, what grandeur we encounter! Nothing surprises them, nothing impresses them, everything that moves, crawls and flies, becomes the object of their play, they assume that nature exists for their sake, that movements have no other purpose than to entertain them. And as for our teasing, with which we cause their comical leaps, does it not seem as if they view us as jesters whose actions are only foolish antics for their benefit? In this way we put on performances for each other and we provide entertainment while we believe we are being entertained. (72)

But the cat also has many other virtues. For example, are we not reminded by its graceful but well-calculated leaps to keep things in proportion, neither to give too little nor to go beyond the goal? In its graceful walk through fragile objects on a table, perhaps through the relics of a gloriously survived drinking session, doesn't it illustrate a fine power of discrimination and serve as an example worthy of imitation that in striving for our goals we should be careful to make our way without unnecessarily knocking others to the ground! - Also, their silent steps and furtive movements point to the necessity of restraint and caution in our actions, while their quick action at the right moment warns us against the mistake of indecision.

The curiosity that makes her wander around in every corner, the smelling of all objects unknown to her, is evidence of her desire to expand her knowledge and - since she never examines an object twice - evidence of her memory and understanding. Even if I have not succeeded in convincing you of the other numerous advantages of my protege, you yourself will certainly have to admit from the outset that cats have charm, grace and a more than usual degree of social politeness. For example, if you give a cat something it doesn't like, the way it inclines its head towards you expresses a kindly, dignified, tactful refusal, just as the way it asks for something while standing on its hind legs must be recognized as graceful and modestly kind. Cats cannot tolerate anything that rubs their hair the wrong way, so one should not treat one's fellow human beings in an unkind way and should tolerate other people's opinions and peculiarities with benevolent politeness. And is there an animal with such a happy disposition, so full of beauty and grace as the cat? Is there anything more majestic than a cat when it is curled up with its legs crossed, comfortably dozing, taking a nap in Olympian peace and bliss? The sight of it then has something soothing about it, something of that quiet grandeur with which the sphinx looks down on the hot hustle and bustle of humanity in the shadow of the pyramids! -

If a cat gets tired of the hustle and bustle of the city, the country offers them a new home, where Mother Nature has provided for all their needs. They never worry about tomorrow, they enjoy and feel the beauty of the fleeting moment, and in this they also show their true artistic temperament. Foresight may have its notable right, but it is and always will be a child of fear, and a dog, surrounded by everything that is most dear to his gluttony, does not enjoy that peace which constitutes happiness, for even in the moment of enjoyment he senses the future poverty, and suspiciously buries the part of the excess; he is the symbol of avarice. But the cat, in the lap of abundance, enjoys the pure pleasure of comfort; its skill and moderation are its surest guarantees of a pleasant future. At the same time, she is neither quarrelsome nor angry, never attacks her own sex, and never attacks the weaker, as is so often the case with dogs. When cats eat together from the same dish, it is in the deepest peace, while dogs can never finish a common meal without quarrelling; the cat, the selfish, hypocritical animal, leaves its companion its share; the dog, the gentle, good-natured animal, snatches the bone from its own father! Nor can we blame cats, as we rightly blame dogs, that their company imposes constraints and worries on us; wise in the choice of where they live, they know how to use any place in the house as a place of residence and refuge; they are not bound by the hour of mealtimes, and in the intervals there is no need to fear the misfortunes that thirst can bring on dogs, namely rabies, the terror and ruin of so many families in whose arms they were lovingly brought up. The cat does not cause the slightest inconvenience to its owner; it communicates with us by a sweet murmur and controls its resonant voice with as much skill as care; in short, it is a pleasant and instructive amusement for us.

The dog, happy to be our slave, sells us its servitude, but by the inconvenience it shows in cities it only increases our worries.-

These numerous and outstanding qualities of the cat have been recognized and appreciated by a number of more deeply thinking and keenly observing men than I, and I am pleased to introduce you, dear lady, to some eminent minds who, in just appreciation of their virtues, have made cats the object of their affection and care.

Chateaubriand, a warm friend of cats and an enthusiastic writer in the field of cat literature, wrote one of the most beautiful things about cats. "What I love about cats," he said to du Meril, "is their independent character, which borders on ingratitude; they live alone, need no company, and only obey when it pleases them. Buffon mistreated the cat, but I am working on its rehabilitation and hope to make it a respected animal, a fashionable animal." When Moncrif, the Queen's reader and highly respected at court, one day published his book on cats, he was attacked from all sides with pamphlets, pasquinades, and satirical songs, and the peaceful life he loved so much was over. Grimm and Voltaire were particularly against him, calling him "the man of the roof ramp," and when he wanted to take his seat in the Academy, such a storm broke out against him that he was forced to delete his book on cats from his works.

The poet Prosper Crebillon, deeply impoverished in his old age, lived in a garret. Kaunitz, the Austrian statesman, visited him there and found him abandoned by all people, surrounded only by his only friends, his cats. Crebillon, the poet of Electra, Rhadamis and Semiramis, was the most celebrated poet in France until Voltaire's star eclipsed Crebillon's brilliance. One of Crebillon's cats was a quarrelsome animal, it bit the others and was therefore called "Voltaire" by the poet. "It is the only animal I beat," he said, "I think I am beating Voltaire."

In Victor Hugo's salon, amidst tapestries and Gothic monuments, there was a large, high throne on which lay a cat that seemed to want to receive the homage of the visitors. A thick fringe of white hair lay on its black fur like a chancellor's collar, and its moustache was like that of a Hungarian. Victor Hugo said of this cat that God had created it to give man the pleasure of petting a little tiger.

The artist Delacroix seems to have shared Victor Hugo's opinion; his cats usually look like little tigers.

Of the French of modern times, the learned Champfleury should also be mentioned; in a certain sense he is to France what Ross is to England. We know that Tasso and Dante loved and prized cats; Petrarch had his favourite cat stuffed after its death and placed in a niche in his study, where it is still on display today. The Spanish painter Goya was, as a painter, what Hoffmann was as a writer; both wonderfully expressed the bizarre, mysterious character of the cat. Hoffmann knew how to put a lot of imagination into his tomcat Murr, and Thiek knew very well how to vividly portray the cat's mischievous grace, charming cunning and coquettish cleanliness; he gave it the palm [honours] over all domestic and tameable animals, as his "Puss in Boots" is full of direct and indirect homage to the free nature of cats. Holtei's "Cat Poet" also contributes to the glorification of cats, but above all Lessing should be mentioned here, who loved cats very much and was always surrounded by these intimate animals until his death.

Gottfried Mind, better known as "the Raphael of Cats", contributed a lot to the popular character of cats through his folksy cat drawings. Mind did not just see his cats as models, he drew them more for their own sake than for the love of art.

Hie had a great love of cats, and when there was a plague of feline distemper in Bern and the authorities killed more than eight hundred cats, no one was more unhappy than Mind; he made many efforts to protect his darlings from this mass murder, as he was inseparable from them and was able to maintain a kind of conversation with them through gestures and signs. When he was drawing, Miss Kitty sat on his lap, while her offspring made themselves comfortable on his shoulders.

Old England also presents a nice contingent of cat lovers, including Thomas Moor, Goldsmith, Burns and others.

There is a funny story about the painter Barett. Barett had two cats, one big and one small, for which he had made two holes at the foot of the door. When a friend visited his workshop and asked him about the purpose of these holes, Barett explained that they were for his cats to come in and out. "But," said his friend, "wouldn't one hole have been enough?" "You idiot," replied the painter with a superior smile, "how would the big cat get through the small hole?" - "Well," said his friend, "couldn't the small cat find its way through the big hole?" - "Truly," exclaimed the astonished Barett, "of course it can, but I hadn't thought of that!"

Among the Dutch, it was the painters Bloemart, Vischer, Hollar and Breughel who used the cat as a subject; Teniers and Brouwer have left us cheerful caricatures. Teniers mostly tried to paint musical productions by cats and depicted, among other things, half a dozen cats sitting on a table, earnestly trying to sing from a music book open in front of them, an owl sitting on the upper edge in mysterious majesty; a grumpy tomcat looks in from the window and two monkeys sitting in front of the table playing flutes. Two other pictures depict a town guard and a barber's shop.

Breughel also composed cat concertos. Another cat lover who also painted a few cat pictures was the actor Rouviere. One day he met Carlin, the comedian of the Italian comedy, who, in his praise of his many cats, claimed to have learned a lot from them and to be their pupil. This may seem paradoxical, but if you observes their play and the harmony of their movements, doesn't it seem as if nature had taken special care to shape their bodies, giving them that special advantage that is so highly valued by humans: the possession of a physiognomy. Their faces always bear an expression of delicacy, of cheerfulness, and their mysteriously sparkling eyes obey such a rapid impulse in their movements that you must, to a certain extent, be a bit of a cat yourself to dare to portray her overall expression. It is therefore understandable that Rouviere and Carlin learned from their cats, for in no other animal are the feelings reflected so quickly, so definitely and so magnificently as in the cat, and I believe that for many actors and non-actors alike the study of cats would be more worthwhile than the conventional indoctrination of certain art schools which have little more to do with art than the shell has to do with the core.

If I were to list all the great men who had cats as their favourites and who proclaimed their beauty in words and pictures, my book would be larger in size than that of the Seven Sages of Greece. I must therefore content myself with recalling the intellectual heroes mentioned above, all of whom can rightly be described as cat lovers, but I would consider myself happy if you, dear lady, were to convert to this group of privileged people, then one of the main purposes of my letters would be fulfilled and your friend would lay down his pen with the inner satisfaction of having celebrated at least a small triumph.

SIXTH LETTER

Where there is much light, there is a strong shadow.
Goethe.

Dear friend, in our previous letters we have illuminated the fame of the cat in history, legend and art in a way that will satisfy everyone who, like us, has an understanding of the cat's merits in their flesh and blood; but believe me, the impression will be a lasting one even on their opponents! After all, as you know, there are stubborn, doubtful minds who deny outright the traditions of venerable antiquity; others, slaves to their youthful impressions, lack the necessary respect for this animal, they remain as cold as icicles towards its brilliant past, and in the face of these doubters we have no other way out than to bring the cat of today into the fray and to convert or shame their enemies by demonstrating their virtues.

The cat family, the lion, tiger, panther, leopard, puma, the American panther cat, the lynx, the wild cat, etc., occupy the most noble position in the animal kingdom; they are the most perfect robber barons, the most perfect animals, and in the second rank of mammals are what man is in the first. The symmetry between limbs and body, the regularity and harmony of their structure, the grace and elegance of the individual parts, meet the requirements of our sense of beauty to a high degree and allow us to recognize, in our domestic cat especially, the representative of the whole society.

The body is strong and graceful, the head carried on a strong neck, the moderately tall legs with thick paws, the long tail, and the soft fur are well-known features. The cat's weapons are appropriate to their purpose; the teeth are terrible, and can apply truly devastating force, yet the teeth are not their actual weapons of attack, but rather their claws, in which they possess even more terrible tools for killing their prey or for defeating the enemy in battle. Their broad, rounded feet are distinguished by their comparative shortness, and contain very strong, extremely sharp, sickle claws, which, when at rest and in ordinary walking, are held by the last joint of the toe on which they rest; but when angry or at the moment of use, an ingenious mechanism causes them to shoot forward and transform the foot into the most terrible paw. Their inaudible gait is due to the flesh-padded soles of the feet, and as the claws never touch the ground, the animal is able to move with a silence that far exceeds even that of the supple snake winding through the grass. All cats walk finely, but slowly and cautiously and quite noiselessly; they run quickly and are able to make horizontal leaps that are ten or fifteen times the length of their own bodies. Almost all cats, with the exception of some of the larger species, are good climbers and, although they generally hate water, they are good swimmers. (73)

The Plymouth Journal 1828 reports the following about a cat catching fish: "In the Devils Point Battery, one of the fortifications near Plymouth, there lives a cat who is very adept at catching fish. Fishing has become a habit for her; she dives into the sea every day, catches fish and carries them in her mouth to the sailors' watch room to lay them down there. She is now seven years old, has always been a good mouser and it is suspected that her hunting of water rats has taught her to dare to dive for fish, which she is known to love very much. Water has now become indispensable to her, like the Newfoundland dog; she makes daily walks along the rocky shore, ready at any moment to dive into the sea and catch her prey."

Cats are strong, extremely agile animals; their movements show as much graceful agility as strength, and in this respect almost all species of the family are similar. Of the cat's senses, hearing and sight are the most prominent; it is hearing in particular that provides the most important service on their forays, for they are able to perceive and judge noises from great distances and to discover even unseen prey through the slightest footstep or faintest rustle in the grass.

"I have often observed her," says Lenz, "when she is lying in wait and see that she has several mouse holes all around her. She could just sit down right in front of one of the holes at the edge and easily see them all; but she does not do that. If she sat in front of the hole, the mouse would also notice her more easily and would either not come out at all or would quickly retreat. She sits right between the entrances and turns her eyes and ears to the something that is near to stirring under the ground, sitting in such a way that the creature that comes out must turn its back on her and is grabbed all the more securely. She sits so motionless that even her normally very active tail does not move; its movements could frighten the mice that want to come out from behind her. If a mouse appears in front of the cat, it is caught in an instant; if one comes out behind it, it is caught just as quickly. Not only does the cat hear that it is out, but it also turns around as quickly as if it could see where it is, and never fails catch it in her claws."

Elsewhere Lenz says: "Not long ago I sat down on a bench in the shade of the trees in my yard in the warm, still air and wanted to read. Then one of my kittens came over, purring and wheedling, and climbed onto my shoulder and head as was its habit. This was disturbing when I was reading; so I put a pillow designed for this purpose on my lap, put the kitten on it, pressed it down gently, and after ten minutes it seemed to be fast asleep while I read quietly and the birds sang around us. Suddenly it jumped backwards with tremendous speed. I watched it in amazement. To the north of us a little mouse ran from one bush to another over a smooth stone pavement, where of course it could not make any noise. I measured the distance at which the little kitten had heard the mouse behind it; it was a full 44 feet by local measurements!"

The cat's eyesight of cats is less acute than its hearing; it does not see great distances, but its sight is very sharp close-up. Their senses of touch and sensation are both very fine. The Englishman Wood tells of his wife's favourite cat that when she placed one of her hairs on its back, the cat would curl up under it as if in great pain and roll on the floor until the hair was shaken off. The hairs on the cat's upper lip, the so-called whiskers, and those above the eyes are of the utmost importance for hunting in the dark. They are organs of touch, which are attached to a bed of densely packed glands under the skin, connected to the nerves of the lips, and although these long, stiff hairs are in themselves insensitive, the slightest contact with an external object is felt very quickly and finely. The end of each hair is a sort of nervous bulb, which in the lion is as large as a small pea, and the distance from hair to hair is in exact proportion to the size of the body, both in the lion and in the domestic cat. For night-time hunting, which begins and ends in darkness, these long hairs are the surest guides. They immediately inform the animal of any obstacle that stands in the way of their advancing body, and enable it to approach prey within jumping distance, without making any noise, even through the thickest undergrowth.

All cat species are very similar in their habits: they live in forest and the undergrowth, with the exception of domestic cats of course, and only visit forest clearings and plains when driven there by hunger. By nature they are carnivores, but they do not hunt like the wolf, which follows the scent of game; instead they lie in wait or sneak up on their quarry and then jump on their victim in one or more leaps, striking it in the neck or sides, dragging it to the ground, grabbing it with their jaws and biting it several times in quick succession. They then open their mouth a little, but without letting go of the animal they have seized, and bite again if there is any sign of life. This manner of attack is the same in all cats, whether it is a tiger attacking a buffalo or a house cat attacking a mouse - a full force impact of the body, a mighty blow of the paw, a half-biting, half-sucking movement of the throat accompanied by a roar and growl, which expresses comfort, greed or anger equally, are the recurring phenomena of these mighty predators everywhere.

Smell and taste are the most secondary senses, but smell is probably the more developed of the two. Despite their rough tongues, most cats are very receptive to tasty treats and enjoy lightly salted and sweet foods, especially animal fluids such as blood and milk.

The cat's mental abilities are not as great as those of dogs, but the difference is not as great as is generally assumed. This is demonstrated by our domestic cat, which, if well treated, is very capable of training and intellectual refinement. Many examples of loyal devotion and great intelligence have amply demonstrated this. Mrs. Helvetius had a cat that never left her for a moment and mostly lay sleeping at her feet. It was a very docile animal, understood almost every command and, like a dog, knew how to carry various objects in its mouth. During Mrs. Helvetius's illness, the faithful animal did not leave the room, and when it was forcibly removed after the death of its protector, it was found lying dead on her grave a few days later. In the notes of Miss Knight, a companion to the Princess of Wales, the following well-authenticated incident is related: "Some years ago a woman who died in Ireland left her entire fortune to her nephew. During her lifetime she had a cat which was very fond of her, was always in her company and could not be separated from its dead mistress. The heir had attended the funeral and, after the will had been read to him in the adjoining room, was about to go into the mortuary when, as he opened the door, the cat jumped at his neck, bit him severely and could only be removed with great difficulty. The man died about eighteen months later, but first confessed that he had murdered his aunt in order to gain possession of the fortune."

Another interesting incident, which not only testifies to the cat's loyalty and affection but also to its courage, is told by a London police report: A drunkard mistreated his wife and, in a fit of drunken rage, threw her to the ground in order to strangle her. The house cat, probably attracted by the woman's screams, saw its friend's distressed situation and threw itself on the man, tearing his face to shreds with its teeth and claws, so that he was forced to beg his wife, whom he had just mistreated, for help.

Scheitlein, this fine animal expert, has gathered thorough knowledge of the spiritual nature of the cat. "The cat," he says, "is an animal of a noble nature. Its very physique indicates excellence. It is a small, neat lion, a tiger on a smaller scale. Everything about it is uniformly built, no part is too big or too small; therefore even the smallest irregularity is noticeable. Everything is round; the most beautiful is the shape of the head, which can also be seen in the bare skull; no animal's head is more beautifully formed. The forehead has a poetic arch, the whole skeleton is beautiful and indicates an extraordinary mobility and dexterity for undulating or graceful movements. Its curves do not form zigzags or acute angles, and its turns are hardly visible. It seems to have no bones and to be built only of light dough. Its sensory faculties are also great and entirely in keeping with its body. We usually think too little of cats because we hate their thieving, fear their claws, value their enemy, the dog, and cannot love opposites unless we can resolve them into a whole. Let us now turn our attention to their main characteristics. The first thing that strikes us is their agility. Body and spirit are skilful, both of the same mould. How adeptly they spin in the air, even if they only fall a few feet with their back downwards. Even the slight resistance of the air enables them to spin, as with birds. How adeptly they hold on to narrow edges and tree branches, even when these are shaken vigorously.

She shows less ability in recognizing time. It is well known that she knows the time of day, because she comes home at the right time. But because of her freer life on the hills and her night vision, she needs a sense of space and place more than a sense of time and hour. She does not lack a sense of colour, a sense of hearing, or a sense of tone. She knows people by their clothes and their voices. She wants to go out the door when she is called; she has an excellent sense of location and is practicing it. She wanders around the whole neighbourhood, in all the houses, rooms, cellars, under all the roofs, on all the wood and hay lofts. She is completely a local animal.

Her courage is extraordinary, even against the largest dogs and bull-dogs, despite how unfavourable her proportions are in terms of size and strength. As soon as she sees a dog, she arches her back in a very specific arch, the cat's hump. Her eyes glow with anger or sudden surges of courage, along with a kind of disgust. She spits at him from afar; she may want to escape, flee; she jumps onto the cornice in the room, onto the stove, or wants to go out the door. But if she has young, she will rush at him when he comes near the nest, and in one leap she is on his head, scratching his eyes and his face most grievously. If a dog attacks her during this time, she will raise her paws with her claws outstretched and will not move away. If her back is still free, she is at ease, for she can protect her sides with her blows; she can use her paws and claws. Five or more dogs could surround and attack her, but she does not give way. She could jump far over them with one leap, but she knows that she would then be done for, because a dog would catch up with her. If the dog finally retreats without having attacked her, she often sits quite calmly, expecting ten more attacks if the dogs dare, and withstands them all. Others see an advantage and quickly climb a nearby height. Then they sit up there, crouched down and look at the enemy with half-closed eyes, as if they thought that whoever carries his treasure safely in his heart can look calmly upon the play of the lower world. She knows that the dog cannot climb and cannot jump so high. But if a human

Cats that are being chased in the open country will, if they feel strong, turn around immediately and attack the dog. The dog then flees in fright. Some cats jump out of absolute hatred against all dogs, cling to their heads and always poke their claws in the dog's eyes. There are cats that only live in the kitchen and never come into the living room. They certainly won't let a dog into the kitchen for a moment: they want to be the masters there!

Their courage includes their love of fighting, their great inclination to fight amongst themselves. This is due to their love of playing and their mischief; they are night rascals. During the day they fight on the roof, tear each other to pieces, and roll with each other, twisting and rolling, over the roof and through the air down to the street, even wrestling in the air; nevertheless, they wage war mostly at night, the tomcats among themselves, for the favour of the females. At certain times of the year, many a tomcat comes home almost every morning with a bloody head and dishevelled coat; seemingly convinced he wants to stay at home, but not for long, because he forgets his wounds as quickly as they heal, and then falls back to his old sinful ways. The tomcat often lives outdoors for weeks in boundless freedom; he is thought to be lost, then unexpectedly he reappears. The female has more of a sense of home, a sense of nesting, than all other species of animals. The brawlers are not always the strongest ones, and the tomcats are not always the worst brawlers; there are also female swashbucklers, wild women. They run after all cats without distinction, are not afraid of the strongest tomcats, challenge them all with words and actions, and strike fear into everyone along the whole long street, as far as they can get from roof to roof without having to cross the street.

Her courage is accompanied by her fearlessness and presence of mind. You cannot frighten her like you can a dog or horse, you can only scare her away. Those have more insight, the cat has more courage; you can't amaze or astonish it. Much is said about its cunning and guile: and rightly so; she waits cunningly, dead silent, in front of the mouse hole, she makes herself small, waits for a long time, her eyes are already sparkling - the mouse is only half out - and she still holds on. She is master of herself, like all cunning people, and knows the right moment.

She has only a weak sense of feeling, pride and vanity; she is not a sociable creature, but a solitary creature; she does not rejoice in victory and is never ashamed. When she is aware of doing wrong, she fears only punishment. If she has been scolded and beaten, she shakes her fur and comes back undisturbed after a few minutes. But she feels more than a little flattered when she is warmly praised after her first hunting masterpiece, a mouse that she brings into the room and places in front of people. She then comes into the room with her loot every five minutes and shows off her skills each time. The sense of pride seems to begin in the cat family. The cat family is now found in all parts of the Old World and in America; its main food is meat, which it takes from all four classes of vertebrates, especially mammals, but also birds, fish and insects. For the wild cat, the numerous species of rodents, especially squirrels, hares, hamsters, and also the tireless burrowers, marmots and moles, are very welcome prey; yes, in its leisure hours it even catches rats and mice and plays a very dangerous game with these subjects. Birds also providesmany a good morsel for the ruler's table, and neither the majestic heron nor the graceful tit are overlooked, but the chicken species are sought after in particular. Reptiles are also represented; a lizard scurrying across the ground is capable of serving the hunting ruler as the object of his lust for prey. As a skilled swimmer, the wildcat often finds opportunities to turn its attention to the inhabitants of the watery element. When the streams have dried up in summer and the fish have been confined to individual pools, the wildcat lies down by them, even in them, wagging its tail in delight and joy, throwing the beautifully speckled trout, pike and perch onto the sand with its front paws and eating the cold-blooded creatures with philosophical calm. When she was young, she also liked to play with the sylphs or little winged cupids, namely with the Ballet Chorus of Butterflies. So, just like at home..

Cats are the enemies of the rest of the animal kingdom, and are therefore often denounced as "cruel, wild and bloodthirsty". This is especially true of the larger species, almost all of whose families live in countries that have an abundance of rich prey, so that without lions, tigers, leopards and leopards, there would be such a proliferation of ruminants that it would exceed the damage caused by these predators. In the case of the smaller species, the benefit is evidently greater than the damage they cause.

Tschudi found the remains of twenty-six mice in the stomach of a wild cat, and Brehm says of the house cats: Anyone who has never lived in a dilapidated house in which rats and mice do their thing to their heart's content has no idea what a good cat means. But if you have lived with these vermin for years and seen how helpless people are in the face of them, if you have suffered harm after harm and are annoyed by these hideous animals every day, then you gradually come to the conclusion that the cat is one of our most important domestic animals and therefore deserves not only the greatest protection and care, but also gratitude and love. The well-known story of the young Englishman who made a great fortune in India with his cat is not at all improbable to me, because I can well imagine how deeply pleased the king, tormented by rats, must have been when the stranger's cat inflicted such a cruel defeat on his previously invincible enemies. The mere presence of a cat is enough to upset the cocky rodents and even force them to flee. The predatory animal that stalks them at every step with its eyes that glow so eerily at night, the terrible creature that has grabbed them by the neck, inspires fear and terror in them and they prefer to leave such a well-protected house; if they do not, the cat will deal with them in other ways. It is incredible what a cat can do in exterminating rats and mice. Numbers prove it; Therefore, I want to share the result of Lenz's investigations and observations here: "To know what a cat can do by way of destroying mice, I used the year 1857 which was extremely fertile in those small animals. On the 20th of September I enclosed two small half-Angora cats, with brown tiger stripes on a fawn background, and aged forty-eight days, in a small box arranged for such experiments. I gave them daily bread and milk, and in addition I gave them four to ten mice, which they never failed to devour completely. After fifty-six days, I only supplied them with milk and in this interval fourteen adult or at half-grown mice. The young cats ate everything without rejecting anything, doing very well on this diet, and having the same appetite the following day. Soon afterwards, the mouse eaters in question having been released, I locked up a young tri-coloured half-Angora cat, aged five and a half months, at about nine o'clock in the evening and I gave him nothing to eat for the night. The young animal initially showed sadness at finding himself shut up and deprived of his youthful frolics. The next morning I gave him, for the whole day, a mixture of equal parts milk and water. I had a supply of forty freshly killed mice, and from time to time I gave him a number of them.

"At nine o'clock in the evening, and consequently after twenty-four hours of captivity, the prisoner had eaten twenty-two mice, half of them mature, and the others half-grown. The animal rejected nothing, and continued to do well. During the whole of the year my cats were occupied night and day in catching and eating mice, and nevertheless each of them ate a further seven mice on the 27th of September, in the space of half an hour, which I gave them in addition. From these experiences I admit in a positive way that in the years when there are many mice, every half-grown cat eats on average twenty mice per day - that is, seven thousand three hundred mice a year. In the years when those small rodents are less abundant, I estimate this same total at three thousand six hundred and fifty, or an equivalent in rats instead of mice "

Moreover, it is clear from the observations just given, as well as from others which can easily be made with owls and buzzards which are fed, that mice give very little food; otherwise they could not be swallowed in such enormous quantities.

Just how much people would lose, and mice and rats would gain, if cats were completely eliminated can be judged from the following experience. The inhabitants of the island of Placida were given strict orders to get rid of all cats so that the pheasants, which were kept for the amusement of the King of Naples, would multiply more quickly. But this order had been followed for hardly two years when the rats became so rampant that they gnawed everything in the houses, even the organ pipes in churches. The food supplies of the island's owners, the corpses, even the children in their cradles, finally became victims of this devastating swarm. The inhabitants were in the greatest distress; in despair they threw themselves humbly at the feet of the monarch and begged until he allowed them to reintroduce cats.

In 1857, a whole shipload of cats was taken from England to New Zealand, where rats were devastating whole areas and making them uninhabitable; the cats performed a great service, because in a very short time these devastating rodents were eliminated.

But cats have another use too; they eat harmful insects, cockchafers and locusts, and even kill poisonous snakes, such as the terrible rattlesnake. More than once, says Rengger, I have seen cats in Paraguay pursue and kill rattlesnakes on sandy and grassless ground. With their characteristic dexterity they give the snake a blow with their paws and then avoid their opponent's strike. If the snake coils up, they do not attack it for a long time, but walk around it until it gets tired of turning its head towards them. Then they give it a new blow and immediately jump to the side. If the snake flees, they grab it by the tail, as if to play with it. By continuing to strike with their paws, they usually kill the enemy, after an hour has passed, but they never touch its flesh.

Villamont reports from the Cap delle Gatte (Cat's Cap) on Cyprus that a monastery there was destroyed by the Turks, in which there were cats that waged very effective war against snakes. "The snakes on this island, he says, are black and white in colour, at least seven feet long and about six to eight inches thick; they are hunted and killed by the cats belonging to the monastery. At midday a bell from the monastery calls these bold hunters to their meal, but as soon as they have eaten their food they immediately set out again to pursue their enemies."

Female cats usually give birth to one to six kittens, most of which are blind. So one cannot use the trite phrase - applied a thousand times to famous and obscure people - that young cats "see the light of day" - at least not at the hour of birth. But in some species the young are born with sight. A mother cat with her kittens is a very charming spectacle; tenderness and love are expressed in every movement and every sound; care and attention gives them no chance to rest, there is always cleaning and grooming to be done. She defends her young against enemies with a courage and a daring that is rarely found in any other animal, and with the smaller species she often has to protect her offspring from their own father, who is unfortunately very voracious. When the little ones grow bigger, they start to play happily, the adult completely forgets her dignity, becomes wildly childish and tries to outdo the little ones in madness, this is as true of the lion mother just as well as our own Miss Kitty. But the wild and happy games gradually take on a certain character, and one increasingly sees in them the preliminary exercises for their future life. And a few weeks later, small hunts are carried out, the adult drags small animals that are still alive, lets them loose and the young ones make their first attempts at their predatory trade. Then the adult, or in some species both parents, takes them to the hunting grounds and it is astonishing with what talent for education they teach their young cunning, tricks, calm prudence, self-control, the whole art of robber baronship; only when the young have become completely independent do they leave the adult and go their own way, wandering around alone for quite some time.

Many naturalists consider the wild cat (catus ferus) to be the ancestral species of our domestic cat; others are of the opinion that it originates from the Egyptian cat, but there is no definite evidence of this, although more precise observations and comparisons do not support the former assumption. For the wild cat is considerably larger and stronger than the domestic cat, its body is shorter and thicker, its tail is stronger, evenly thick and ends in a tuft, whereas that of the other cat gradually tapers to an end. An adult wild cat is about the size of a fox, i.e. a third larger than a domestic cat, from which it also differs in its thicker hair, thicker whiskers, wild look and sharper teeth. The tail is also black-ringed and a special feature is the yellowish-white patch on the throat. The fur is thick and long, grey, black and yellowish; four parallel black stripes run from the forehead between the ears, and the two middle ones join together and run along the back to the tip of the tail. From this stripe, many washed-out looking horizontal stripes proceed down the sides towards the belly, which is yellowish with a few black spots. The legs have black horizontal stripes, the paws are yellowish and the face reddish-yellow. The wildcat is widespread throughout Europe, with the exception of Norway, Sweden and Russia, and lives mostly in wooded areas, mountains and, more rarely, lowlands. It lives alone, more rarely in pairs and, like most of its species, is entirely nocturnal and, like our domestic cat, begins its hunting expeditions at nightfall, where, if chance permits, even deer and fawns are attacked. For this reason, it is greatly hated animal by hunters and is subjected to the most fierce persecution. Hunting it is not without danger, especially if the animal is wounded, it will fearlessly attack humans.

The feral domestic cat is also often considered to be a wild cat, although the former is much smaller and, as already shown, also differs from the wild cat in other ways. Its tendency to roam freely and the chance consumption of live game often causes a cat to exchange its civilized home for forest and field, but it only rarely stays outside; most often, especially when winter approaches, it seeks out human dwellings again.

Modern naturalists are increasingly inclined to the view that the Nubian cat (felis catus maniculata) is the founding parent of our domestic cat.

Rueppel discovered a cat in Nubia on the west side of the Nile that most closely resembles our domestic cat in its proportions and markings. It can be assumed with great certainty that it is the same species that was tamed by the ancient Egyptians to become a domestic cat. And in fact the cat has something Egyptian in its nature; the reserved, mute, prescient quality that Hegel says is common to many animals is particularly noticeable in it. Only the serious and patient Egyptians could have succeeded in taming this animal so completely, in making it a domestic animal, and it was the work of centuries. Through many generations of this animal, the Egyptians developed the shy, wild cat, whose species seems least suited to domestication, into our current domestic cat, which clings closely to us, through the influence of tender, loving care. We can therefore assume that this great outlay of strength and perseverance on the part of the Egyptians, as well as the rarity and usefulness of the cat, were the reason for its sanctification; and thus religious superstition would have benefited culture for a time, instead of harming it - as is usually the case. But it was fortunate that the further spread of the Egyptian cat took place before the end of the Roman Empire and before the onset of the Islamic storm; otherwise, with the destruction of all of ancient Egypt and the downfall of its religious ideas and customs, the extinction of this domestic animal would have occurred and it would perhaps never have been replaced.

From Egypt, the cat spread to Arabia and Syria and later via Greece and Italy to western and northern Europe; its spread was greatly aided by the immigration of the rat from Asia at the time of the Great Migration, which wreaked havoc on cellars, storerooms and homes in Europe. But it was not until the end of the Crusades that the cat became more common in Europe. The mice, which increased in number with the spread of grain farming, made it very sought after and valuable. In the tenth century it was almost unknown in northern Europe, as can be seen from a compendium of laws for Wales; a regulation by Howell Lebon (Howel the Good), who died in 948, states that the value of a young cat that had not yet caught mice should be set at two pence, but that of a cat that was already catching mice should be set at four pence - a very high price for that time.

At present, domestic cats can be found in almost all countries where people have permanent residence. In Europe, they are at home everywhere; in America since its discovery, in Asia and Australia they are fairly common, and they are least common in Africa. In Abyssinia, they are still so valuable that a girl who receives a cat as a dowry is considered a rich heiress, and in California, a cat trained to catch a certain type of rat is worth as much as a horse.

A cat exhibition held in London, in the Crystal Palace, was of great interest; it included more than fifty species from different zones and parts of the world. There were blind cats from North Hava, tailless cats from the Isle of Man in the Pacific Ocean*, red Angora cats weighing 15 pounds, lion cats from Persia, a cat with a kind of buffalo skin that won a prize, white cats with blue eyes, long-haired Persian cats of a rare violet colour, wild and domestic cat hybrid crosses from the London Zoological Garden, a beautiful smoke colour tomcat, etc. A curious sight was a mouse-grey domestic cat that weighed no less than 23 pounds. -
[*the Isle of Man is in the Irish Sea!]

You see, my dear friend, what attention and care even modern cultures devote to cats. Unfortunately, we Germans are somewhat behind the English and French in this respect; but we can hope that Germany will not be left behind when it comes to cats.

The study of man - is woman.
"I still love women; when I was cut off from all female contact in Goettingen, I at least got myself a cat."- H. Heine.

Cats, dear friend, have one particular advantage over other animals: their cleanliness. The wise men of antiquity already recognized this; in their works they describe the cat's aversion to bad smells and the delicacy with which they know how to evade our eyes whenever they are subject to the compulsion of a call of nature. (74) This is said quite frankly - way of life, and not, as with other animals, the result of an upbringing imposed by force, but with the cat it is a gift of nature. If, as may well happen, she commits a bad act through thoughtlessness or bad mood, it is not necessary to resort to insults and threats to bring her to herself; the simple word "cat" or "puss" is enough and she immediately becomes aware of her wrongdoing, she feels the full gravity of her disgrace, she cannot bear the reproachful look that exposed her misdeed, and as if chased by furies she flees to the solitude of her rooftop world to surrender to the bitterest pangs of conscience.

Others claim that it is a vain desire for beauty, and I have to agree with this view, because of all creatures there are three that spend the most time on their toilet, namely: women, cats and flies. A cat has to be groomed, smoothed and combed all day long. All the hairs from the head to the tail must be in exactly the right place. The paws are thoroughly groomed, the head carefully washed and the whiskers twirled with the coquettishness of a lieutenant of the guard. Women have a lot in common with cats, they also love cleanliness, finery, frippery and play, and know how to find dry places with their cute little feet like cats when they have to cross the street on rainy days.

The sleep of women, like that of female cats, is not as deep as that of men, because men are awake in the world during the day with a clearer, more intense awareness. This is why the degeneracies of sleep, such as lethargy, somnambulism, etc., are almost exclusively found in the fairer sex. The same applies to premonitions, by which we understand certain inner forebodings of future happiness or misfortune. Female beings are also more subject to these dark, inexplicable feelings.

When the earthquake struck in Messina in 1783, a local merchant noticed the unusual behaviour of his cats before the first shocks came. These animals anxiously tried to dig through the floor of the room and when the door was opened for them, they ran into the street and out of the gate. The merchant followed them into the field, where they began to dig and scratch again. Soon afterwards he felt the strong tremors and was horrified to see many houses in the city collapse, including his own. Similar phenomena have also been observed in Peru. Before the earthquake strikes, the cattle stand wide-legged in the pasture, as if they did not want to be knocked over by the earthquake. The Kantians teach that all divination arises only through inference from previous perceptions and that feelings do not provide any safe premises, and that when an animal carries out actions relating to the future, and thus seems to have a presentiment, only an unconscious instinct is at work in it. The presentiment of animals during an earthquake is explained by a preceding change in the air, so that the animal acts from feelings if it has not yet had any experience. After this, however, it can make inferences.

De la Croix relates the following remarkable incident: "One day I had a cat under an air pump to demonstrate the observable truth that we cannot live without air and breathing. Several pulls had already been made with the pump rod when the animal, which began to feel ill in the increasingly rarefied air, finally realized where the danger came from; for it placed its paw on the hole and thus prevented further air from escaping. I then let new air into the vessel and when the cat felt this, it immediately withdrew its paw; however, whenI repeatedly tried to extract the air, it always blocked the outlet hole. All the spectators applauded the animal and it was necessary to free the animal."

Women and cats are usually afraid of thunderstorms and are generally very dependent on the weather. On cold, wet days, the former are often in a tearful mood, and this is where the expression "changeable mood" came from*.
[*wetterwendische Laune - weather-turning mood]

The way in which cats understand the art of using the extraordinary mechanism of their fur to suit their own needs is extremely interesting. If the weather outside is such that they want to shelter themselves, their hair lies close and firm against their skin; if, on the other hand, the weather suits them, they swell up with pleasure, so to speak; their hair stretches out and stands almost shaggy, but well-ordered against their skin. This allows the air to circulate freely, which seems to do them particular good. And these arrangements suggest positive knowledge of weather changes, which has sometimes seemed more reliable to me than the uncertain and ambiguous oracles of our human weather prophets.

The Japanese say that their cat's nose is usually cold, and only warms up when a storm approaches. This is a strange phenomenon that I have never noticed in our domestic cat; its nose is more warm than cold. In general, cats love warmth, like to lie by the stove at the feet of their beautiful mistress, preferably in her arms, and one could envy them for this, especially if the mistress were to live for a thousand weeks. But cats also seek the warmth of the sun. They like to lean against the chimney wall, lying on high roof gables, sunning themselves, seeming to slumber, and yet secretly watching with a blinking eye the flight of hovering swallows, the jumps of hopping sparrows, which not infrequently fall victim to the cat. I understand that this tendency to catch birds may be very unpleasant to some people, but is it not very forgivable if the cat sometimes feels the urge to eat the nightingale when it sings? The excellent singer of the groves must seem particularly delicate to her. Why should she be satisfied with the song, with the incomprehensibly sweet harmony, when people eat as many nightingales and larks as they can get hold of? - I will tell you a nice anecdote about cats and the warmth of the sun.

One very hot summer day, Mr Fox and the Prince of Wales were strolling through a street in London when the former proposed a wager to the Prince: that Mr Fox would see the most cats up to the end of the street, although the Prince was free to choose which side of the street he wanted to walk on. The Prince agreed, but lost the wager, for when he reached his destination, Mr Fox had seen thirteen cats and the Prince had not seen a single one. "But how does that work?" asked the Prince. - Fox replied "Your Royal Highness chose, as I assumed, the shady side of the street as the more pleasant side, and so I had to choose the sunny side, which cats prefer to visit."

The Chinese use cats as clocks. The missionary Honk tells us that in China native naturalists pointed out to him how cats can serve as clocks. The closer the sun approaches midday, the more the cat's pupils shrink, so that at midday they are as fine as a line; then the pupils expand again. Many investigations have produced the same results. I do not know whether similar experiences have been made with women; but I do know that, even though their eyes are not exactly a clock face, sometimes you can tell from them "what time the clock has struck."

Cats usually fall on their feet; they know how to keep their bodies in balance with great skill. To break the weight of their fall, a very fine mechanism is at work, which could not be devised more finely. When a cat falls downwards, it arches its back, stretches its legs out as far as it can, and thereby changes the position of the centre of gravity so that, while describing a semicircle, it ends up on its feet. To protect the brain against violent shocks, there is a kind of septum in the skull, which extends quite far from the sides towards the centre. A high content of animal magnetism and electricity is another of the cat's characteristics. Electricity is particularly evident to the observer in the dark and when the animal is excited. If you want to see this phenomenon, place one hand on the cat's neck, gently press the shoulder bones and at the same time stroke the back with the other hand, and you will soon feel light electric shocks. The sparks that appear, the so-called "cat-fire," come from the cat's sweat, because this contains sulphurous particles that ignite when they are set in motion by rubbing. The ignition cannot be violent, however, because the amount of moisture present in the sweat prevents this.

In the last century, instead of resin, sulphur or glass cylinders, cylindrical cat skins were used in electrical machines, thus making use of their electrical power. Black cats are said to be the most electrical. This abundance of electricity seems to me to be a major similarity with the fairer sex.

Love, the only true passion to which we owe our existence, has also taken up its throne in the animal kingdom, and from the smallest insect to the elephant - not to mention humans - everything is obliged to pay tribute to it. The love of animals is not always impulse or instinct; rather, it often looks at beauty, worthiness of life and grace, but differs from that of humans because it lacks reason. Animals do not reflect on love; they love as they eat and drink, but nevertheless every animal has an ideal of beauty within itself, and the more refined an animal's upbringing, the more refined its inclinations are expressed. Animals are guided in their inclinations for one another by something similar to that ultimately indefinable reason that determines human choice. Sometimes, however, one should doubt this when one sees that our views of beauty do not seem to count for anything; for not infrequently, creatures of various kinds that we consider ugly in comparison with their peers outshine those that are beautiful according to our ideas. Then again, similar, astonishing examples from the human world come to mind and we are satisfied with the conviction that one can be lovable without being considered beautiful. Among female cats there are also shy and coquettish ones, so that the heart of the young tomcat faces the same pain and torment as humans have to go through in their sweet youth. Declarations of love, assurances of love and scorn often have the worst consequences among animals too, for animals are also very sensitive to jealousy. There are Othellos, Werthers and Siegwarts, and the proverb "Old love never rusts" is familiar to them in practice. I had a pair of cats who lay inseparably behind the stove or on a soft cushion during the day and went on roaming together at night. One day, when the crocuses and anemones were raising their heads, Abelard, who had succumbed to the culinary desires of a roof poacher, did not return home. Faithful Heloise wandered restlessly and neither caresses nor delicacies could console her. And the abandoned one became quieter and quieter until one spring morning I found her quite still in the garden - she had died of a broken heart. -

The time of love, i.e. of cat love, is very interesting. When two cats meet, they bow deeply and earnestly, what is known as arching their backs. This type of greeting expresses something completely different in the interaction between these animals than it does in human interaction. We understand it as sycophancy, unprincipled behaviour; but in the case of cats, it means well-being, expectation, and marks the transition from a blissful still life to the active display of inner vitality, especially in early spring, "when all the buds have burst," and also in autumn, when "the leafless plants all around mourn, blown through by the cold wind." After this act of greeting, the opponents crouch down and closely observe each other's movements, until they are about ten paces away. Miss Kitty lets out one of those peculiar primal sounds that sounds like howling to humans, but says much more to her companion than we could express in a long speech. Mr. Tomcat then only responds with an awe-inspiring gesture, takes a few cautious steps and shows his full size.

At night the ceremony is different. The tomcat is wild then, the females sit around him, occasionally hitting each other in the face with their fists, and the very females who have sought him out do not want him to come near them.

Then the concert begins; he in the middle growls his deep bass, the females sing tenor, alto, soprano and in all possible voices that have not yet been classified. There is a method in this music. Usually an elderly, extremely dignified cantor begins the symphony, then there is a pause and the choir joins in in all nuances from piano to fortissimo. Now, as if at a time signature, the crowd spread out across the whole roof suddenly falls silent, now just as unexpectedly one of the singers lets her voice ring out in the fastest recitative, and thus choral and solo performances alternate in a way that delights the crowd.

The actual reason for these mass concerts is not yet entirely clear. Even the older people's opinions are divided on this. Some see this singing as the effect of blind jealousy, which makes the cat act too lively; (75) others think of a cause which is difficult to express, and make a Semele out of the she-cat and a Jupiter out of the tomcat. (76) Accurate authorities on ancient philosophy consider the cat concert to be the triumphal song of love, and this opinion is based on an assumption of Aristotle, (77) which shows that cats have more temperament than their men, but also show a devotion that is a long way from any prudishness.

The real origin of these wild songs is, I believe, to be found in the caution of a cat who was deeply in love. It was one spring night, when the rendezvous was on the roof of an old monastery, and in the arms of her lover she was to "perish from his kisses," when, it is true, a mouse appeared at the very wrong time, and the heroic lover could not refrain from chasing after it. But the she-cat, deeply hurt by this - and we don't joke with love - devised an effective means of temporarily interrupting the sweet caresses of the rendezvous with sighs from the depths of her soul, in order to be protected against such insults for all time, in order to keep the mice at a suitable distance. This wisdom was generally accepted and has borne the noblest fruits to this day. Certainly, many a beautiful woman would be happy if no other means than this were needed to protect her lover from distraction and indifference.

In the first days of the wonderful month of May, Miss Kitty begins her labour, usually in hidden places, in the attic, in the hayloft, and once she even made her confinement bed under an altar in Cologne Cathedral. She watches over her young with the greatest care, and the slightest danger causes her to take her new generation, carrying each individual animal very delicately in her mouth, to another place. They are wonderfully pretty little animals with a strikingly soft voice, very similar to that of a child, charming stubborn little ones, possessed by a restlessness that makes them, even when they are still blind, crawl out of the nest, where their mother, with inexhaustible patience, carries them back, puts them back in place, licks and caresses them until general slumber brings long-awaited peace. But when the little eyes open, they are very surprised, and the peace is over. Now they go on voyages of discovery, searching everywhere for toys and anything that rolls, flaps or moves is a welcome pastime. The mother's tail is the preferred plaything, but if their own has grown long enough, they pull it and play with it, and even bite it in the way that small children put their fingers or even their toes in their mouths, bite them and then cry to express their astonishment when it hurts. -

A young cat is the joy of the house; it makes the most droll jumps, the most graceful turns, it entertains us for hours without repeating its tricks. Every day there are new performances, new farces; it is a born mime and does not need a large apparatus for its solo pranks, no dramatic decorations are necessary, it is self-sufficient, it is not a virtuoso with art in its fingers, it has it in its head and therefore it can set up its stage anywhere, at any time, and the most primitive objects are sufficient as props; a piece of paper, a feather, a fly, even its own shadow is enough to show it to us as a perfect clown. Nothing can be more amusing than a young kitten in front of a mirror for the first time. It seems surprised and delighted, makes the most comical attempts to touch its new acquaintance, moves back and forth, ducks, approaches the glass and then retreats again, then sits quietly, looks thoughtfully at its reflection, and finally, realizing that the glass separates it from it, it creeps up to the mirror with indescribable complacency, makes a lightning-quick leap behind it - and a more comical astonishment cannot be imagined when it does not find its double. Then it is confused; now it looks in the mirror, now behind it, now it stretches out its right paw, now its left paw, but its investigations become ever more cautious and conscious, finally it understands that it is sitting in front of its reflection and now it turns its back on it for ever, for it will not be deceived any more.

Even when at rest, it is very interesting; its whole expression is one of complete happiness. The sweet self-forgetfulness of the closed eyes, the legs comfortably tucked under one another, the little head hanging to the side, even down to the little mouth - everything is begging us: let me sleep, I am so happy!

The large ears are very notable in young animals, and the way they sit and move on their small heads is surprisingly comical. She wants to see everything; she catches even the slightest noise and is on her feet with a childish, clumsy jerk. She has to know everything: who is ringing the bell, who is coming and going, who is eating and what is being eaten, who is playing music, who is painting; she has to follow the movements of the brush with her head and sometimes can't help dabbing the paint with her little paws. Most of the time it was the red colour that attracted her, but she also seemed to love other lighter colours; animals are generally able to distinguish colours. This burning curiosity that drives her everywhere is one of her dominant abilities and sometimes leads her to ruin.

When the organ in Westminster Abbey was being repaired, a dried-up cat was found in one of the pipes, which had been out of tune for a long time. There is something peculiar about the expression of a dead cat's head; each one has its own story, and in no other animal have I found such a fine characterization of the last moments of life. On one face is painted all the despair of a struggle carried on to exhaustion; the brow is deeply wrinkled, the open eyelids show the staring eye of terror; the sharp hairs of the upper lip, the retracted lips, the exposed pale teeth tell all the horror of a violent death; on the other there is peace and quiet. It was a young kitten, roaming harmlessly through the hedges, when the shot of a brave sportsman suddenly destroyed its young life. Death had left the calm of innocence on his childlike face, no fear, no pain, it had distorted his features and in his eyes there was a sincerity, a naive surprise that seemed to say: why have you caused me this suffering? - This ability to express oneself after death is something that the cat's physiognomy has in common with the human face, for even the corpses of those who have met a quick death in battle, by their own hand or in some other way show a fundamentally different expression in their eyes than those who have died a slow death as a result of illness.

The fate of animals is not a meaningless one, the human being shares it with it; because for every human individual there is something, something incomprehensible; one calls it predestination, another coincidence and many call it bad luck, but whatever you call it, life remains a serious, deep dark riddle, from the first kiss of the mother to resting in the cool earth - it always depends on which mother hugged us first, how many trump cards we are dealt, how our dice roll. One takes on the hostile life, fights like a hero - and his life was a doomed life; another man stumbles around with his eyes closed, immortalizes a princess's pug, receives a state position and honorary title because of his achievements. Good fortune and misfortune whirl around in a colourful jumble, all the elements are let loose against us and whomever they want to elevate must go to the stars, even if he were frozen in the mud; one person's life is a chain of endless misery and the other knows misfortune as a word only.

The same is true of animals. A tomcat returns from thousands of battles and dangers with his skin intact and, at an advanced age, breathes his gallant life's last breath in the arms of an old maid, and a young kitten, which follows the flight of a butterfly for the first time in a meadow of brightly coloured flowers, is overtaken by a quick death. One cat is born in a stable, is pursued everywhere with beatings and abuse, never receives a kind word and ends up with a rope around its neck; the other rests on a silk cushion from the first days of childhood, is fed to death with caresses and tidbits and receives a marble stone as a tombstone, like the cat of Madame de Lesdiguieres, whose tombstone bears the inscription:
Here is a pretty cat
Her mistress, who loved nothing,
Loved her to the point of madness.
Why do you say that? - You can see it clearly. (78)

Regarding the above-mentioned curiosity of the cat, especially of kittens, Jean Jaques Rousseau is the one who makes this point. in his "Emile" he rightly pointed out how, in this respect, the child is similar to a cat. When they enter a room for the first time, everything must be examined, touched, and they do not rest until they have seen everything; they are clever, enterprising scouts; they go on adventures in cellars, attics, palaces and churches. The highest roofs, the steepest trees do not frighten them. When a cat climbs a tree, it does so calmly and cautiously; it climbs steadily from branch to branch, checking the branch here and there to see whether it is strong enough to support its body; it wants to go up because it wants to look around. Finally it reaches the top of the tree, it can go no higher, but also not go back, it begins to feel afraid and meows pitifully. If no ladder can be put up to free it, it stays up there until hunger forces it to return; then it will go down backwards with a heavy heart, sliding over the branches with incredible caution, digging its claws in painfully deep. -

It knows space and distances exactly, as well as slanted, crooked and vertical surfaces. When it wants to make an unusual jump, it measures carefully, then compares its strength and skill and tests itself. If it succeeds in the attempt once, it will succeed again; but if it fails, it tries again later with more advanced strength and skill.

Cats are geographers par excellence, they have a well-developed sense of geography and astronomy. They find their way around the earth without maps, compasses and quadrants, and the most astonishing thing is that they travel with complete certainty through a country that they have never seen before. An English traveller tells of a cat in Jamaica that was carried five miles in a sack to a new owner. The cat's home was separated from the starting point by two wide, raging rivers that could only be crossed by boat. The cat was delivered, but escaped through a window and two days later was found back in its old home; it had thus swum across both rivers and, in addition, covered five miles through an almost impassable region.

A kind old gentleman in F., a small town six hours from Munich, gave me a very beautiful cat. It was a magnificent animal, unusually large, very intelligent in appearance and, what I particularly liked, a promising mother. I looked after her very well, but did not let her out of the house until she had given birth to three promising sons, of which I killed the weakest to spare the mother. The kittens were about 14-16 days old when one morning the whole group disappeared. Day after day passed, all my searches for the whereabouts of the escaped kittens were fruitless - then I received news from my friend in F. that my cat had arrived there safe and sound with one kitten, but very emaciated. In all probability the other animal must have died on the way. I cannot explain how the faithful animal - as well as the fact that it always had to carry its young in its mouth - was able to find the way back, a journey I had travelled with it by train.

Of all the cat's characteristics, this is perhaps the most inexplicable, and since it is not guided by smell in its search for paths, like the dog, it must possess abilities of which "our philosophy cannot dream."

All in all, cats are mysterious animals; their psyche contains wonders and riddles that are still unsolved and, in some cases, even unsolvable; the study of cats requires more effort, ingenuity and powers of observation than that of half the animal world put together. This is why relatively few people show a loving interest in our proteges, for the difficulty of the task deters most and turns love into aversion. But let us be calm, dearest friend, the day cannot be far off when the merits of our protege will be shown in the brightest light; it is impossible that a nation as enlightened as ours, the nation of philosophers among the nations, can continue to ignorantly cultivate an injustice that is so unworthy of us. And does not our cat deserve the fullest recognition? Does it not have the noblest of qualities? Did we not see her as a divine symbol of birth, fertility, light, a model of freedom and independence? Do we not owe to her the most beautiful fairy tales, more than a thousand of the most instructive proverbs, and is she not a friend, a good companion, an admirable mime, an astrologer recognized by the most distinguished minds, a rare geographer, a fine musician - in a word: a wonderful union of talents and adornments?!

So take heart, my friend, the time will come when our cat will be welcomed and sought after in society, in the theatres, on walks, in the halls of the Academy, and even if we cannot yet say with certainty when this age will begin, it will come and then it will deserve to be called the golden age. Of course, blind prejudice must first be defeated by reason - though this is a difficult, time-consuming task, because everywhere the dark shadows of prejudice, false wisdom and superstition oppose the advancing light of reason. But ultimately reason must prevail in this area too and our little darling must gain the recognition and distinction over other animals that it deserves. Then your friend will also find proud satisfaction in the knowledge that he has paved the way for the truth with these letters, and you, dearest friend, will remember the mischievous, teasing words that, coming from your lovely lips, first inspired and prompted me to write these letters in its defence. And perhaps then, if I am blessed with the wonderful fortune of spending wonderful hours with you again on the banks of our Rhine - perhaps then, as a sweet reward for the serious solution of the first literary task you set me, I will receive a second theme that "moves my heart" even more than the demand to help a misunderstood and slandered animal to its rights and to its recognition. -

END-NOTES.

1) The word "catus" appeared when Dacia had already become prey to the barbarians and the Latin language there was isolated. - Pictet and Lenormand provide further research into the origin of the word "cat".
2) Kater, Hinz, Heinz, Peter are partly mythological echoes and goblin names like Heinzelmann.
3) Karl the man, Sorger v?owv, the common man = free man.
4) The ancients write of a close relative of the herring, which the Romans call aurata, that women can catch it by hand when they are in love and, according to Athenaeus, is sacred to Venus. Venus Aphrodite, the goddess of love, represented Aurora and spring in myths (which is why we eat fish on Friday, Freya's day [dies veneris]). On the feast days of this goddess - also known as Holda, Holla - dumplings and herrings were eaten, and the old Yule festivals dedicated to Odin, of which the Christmas fires still remain in the north, were associated with solemn sacrificial feasts, the specific dishes of which have been preserved in all Germanic countries on the three holy days of the twelve nights (Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve and Epiphany Eve) and consisted of herring with millet porridge, herring salad, etc. Herring contributed greatly to the Germanization of the Baltic coast. When in the 12th century it passed along the coast of Pomerania in such dense flocks that one only had to dip the basket in the sea to pull it out full, people eager to catch it flocked from all sides and the Wendish sea towns, especially Lubeck, Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund and Greifswald, grew to great prosperity with incredible speed. But when in the 14th century family feelings diverted the herring from the Baltic to the Dutch coast, the Dutch money bags became ever more corpulent and the herring became the pride of the serious Mynhers. The herring has something in common with the cat in that it too has given rise to wars.

5) Cat music can first be found in the French Middle Ages under the name Charivari. In a decree of the Church of Avignon in 1337, which has the heading: "Against those who play the game called Charivarit or raise other noises at the celebration of marriage, it says the following: "We are pained to have recently heard that in the city and diocese of Avignon a pernicious, reprehensible and highly criminal abuse has grown to such a degree that marriages, which are supposed to enjoy the favour of every freedom, cannot be celebrated in the churches without tumult. For while the marriages of the faithful and the blessings of those about to be married are being celebrated in the churches, criminals raise a clamour against the bridegroom and the bride and those around them, break the poles and lamps, utter shameful and indecent words, rebuke and despise the Church and its ministers, allowing themselves to utter reprehensible and abominable mockery and uttering obscene derision against this sacrament, to the annoyance of many of the faithful. For, adding something worse to what has already been said, when the newlyweds are led to their homes, like robbers, they take things from their houses by force and extort ransom for them, which they use for indecent banter and drinking parties, which they call, in their parlance Malprofich. But when it happens that men and women become engaged and united in marriage for a second time, then they multiply the profane derisions against the sacrament and play shameful games which they call Calvaricum - to use their words - which are indeed displeasing to honourable lips. From this quarrels often arise, and sometimes injuries and deaths have even occurred."

From this statute the relationship of the Charivari to the second marriage emerges, which is to be regarded as its actual meaning. From this regulation one can get a rough idea of how the Charivari is carried out. Obscenity is evident everywhere as an essential characteristic of the game; whether this was expressed only in songs or whether it was also expressed through gestures or dances cannot be determined with certainty; nor can it be determined whether women took part in the Charivari. The whole thing usually boiled down to forcing the mocked couple to buy their freedom.

In Spain, such cat music is called cencerrada and has the same meaning as in France. Old England calls it marrowbones and cleavres (bones and hatchets), probably because of the clattering that is made with these objects. The occasion for charivaris in this country, as in France and Spain, was marriage; however, not so much in the case of a second marriage as when two spouses were notoriously at odds, or when a very old man married a very young girl. Shakespeare is known to have staged a hunt at the end of The Merry Wives of Windsor. In Shakespeare's words:

Fie on sinful fantasy!
Fie on lust and luxury!
Lust is but a bloody fire,
Kindled with unchaste desire,
Fed in heart, whose flames aspire
As thoughts do blow them, higher and higher.
Pinch him, fairies, mutually;
Pinch him for his villainy;
Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about,
Till candles and starlight and moonshine be out.

is based on the same idea as the Charivari. In Italian, the cat music was called Scampanata. In Germany, customs similar to the Charivari were only used at marriages when a great disparity in the ages of the two spouses provoked public opinion, sometimes also when the bride and groom had caused public outrage. An interesting variation of the Charivari is the "Haberfeldtreiben," which has existed in Bavaria since ancient times and which the Bavarian government has not quite succeeded in eliminating despite all its efforts, which in 1834 even went as far as calling in the military; for to this day this type of Vehmgericht [a type of tribunal] still crops up here and there, but it has lost its old, respectable character, since the more orderly legal situation in Bavaria has made this self-help superfluous; nowadays the Haberfeldtreiben is only staged by scandal-seekers for the sake of scandal. In earlier times it was based on the people's sense of justice, which sought to assert itself through self-help in the face of a neglected administration of justice and the outrageous misrule of despotic princes and their courtesans. If one ignores the fact that the original reason for the Haberfeldtreiben isn't the second marriage, it is otherwise consistent with the Charivari. The disguises, disfigurement of faces, mocking rhymes and punishing speeches, as expressed in the coarse, lascivious old Bavarian improvised folksongs, as well as the same noisy instruments and the undeniable similarity between the Haberfeldmeister and the Abbas juvenum, the leader of the French Charivari, make the relationship between these cat music almost unquestionable. In Tyrol the practice of cat music, sometimes called wild weddings, is still in use today and most often the reason is marriage. A wild wedding is held when a betrothal that has progressed to the handshake is suddenly called off by the groom. On the evening of the same Sunday on which the banns were supposed to have taken place, the boys from the whole village gather in front of the bride's parents' house and hold a cat music party for her. A boy steps forward in solemn silence and reads the announcement, which goes something like this: "The sacraments. The dishonourable and unchaste bachelor N. N. (house and nickname) has decided to marry the no less dishonourable Wehaand unchaste maiden N. N., daughter of N. N., and this with our dispensation for the first, second and third time," and now the cat music breaks out with a hellish noise, which, like at the Haberfeldtreiben, is performed with cheering, shouting and singing of mocking songs and the firing of rifles and pistols and with the horrific roar of clappers. Then the wedding customs are parodied in a crude and comical way.

Another form of this Charivari is the moral court carried out by the so-called "night crawlers", which also has its seat in Tyrol.

In connection with the Charivari and its variants are the masquerades, dances and drinking parties which were held at certain times in the churches and churchyards in the Middle Ages. If our feelings are already offended by the choice of locations which were considered suitable for these festivities, our astonishment is aroused even more by the fact that these festivals were celebrated with the participation and leadership of the clergy. The higher church authorities made every effort to put a stop to this nonsense. Hence the numerous regulations issued in this sense in the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, such as the church law of Pope Innocent III, the synodal statute of Bishop Emerich of Worms of 1316, etc. These ecclesiastical masquerades and bacchanalia, which have a predominantly lascivious character, have the same origin as the charivari: both are remnants of old pagan beliefs and old Germanic customs. Given the tenacity with which the ancient Germanic tribes clung to their pagan customs and traditions, it was not possible to persuade the pagans who had been converted to Christianity to abandon their traditional religious practices. Therefore, attempts were made to remove the dangerous character of these pagan festivities and customs for Christianity by allowing them, but giving them a Christian meaning and celebrating them as Christian festivals with the participation of the clergy. This is the common origin of the charivari, the masquerades held in the churches. In the later centuries of the Middle Ages, when Christianity had taken firm hold everywhere, the higher church authorities considered such festivities, for which there was no longer any internal reason to maintain them, to be superfluous and harmful, because they would diminish the prestige of the clergy and the church itself. The common feature that charivari and church masquerades on the one hand and pagan customs on the other have in common is the presence of mummery. For in all these pagan games disguises took place, partly in the forms of the gods, partly in the forms of the animals sacred to them, which themselves were considered to be the coverings or representatives of those gods, just as in the Middle Ages the devil was believed to appear in the form of a goat or a cat.

Originally, the essence of the charivari was not a mockery of marriage, but it was nevertheless a frivolity which, as part of pagan worship, could even degenerate into gross excesses. However, as long as paganism existed, even these games, through their direct relationship to the deity, were still supported by a certain religious enthusiasm; but since the latter had to retreat before Christianity, these amusements became more and more separated from their basis and degenerated into crude teasing, the object of which was primarily the second marriage.

Marriage was always surrounded by many festivities, which could not be completely suppressed despite the vigorous prohibitions of the Church; for a long time, all kinds of pagan customs continued, especially the pushing and hitting of the bridegroom or the witnesses during the exchange of rings, as well as the drinking of love by the newlyweds in the church immediately after joining together. In general, escorting the bride home through the streets of the town gave an opportunity for all kinds of mischief, an example of which has been given above.

To address the actual reason for the disdain for second marriages, we should just mention in passing the statement of Tacitus, who says of the Germans that they did not like remarriage. This claim is obviously unfounded, for in pagan times there were cases where people even liked to marry widows. In this respect the pagan Germans were very free-thinking. Apart from marriages between parents and children, all marriages seem to have been permitted. The fact that sibling marriages existed is proven by the union of Nioerdh and his sister. Among the Varnes and Anglo-Saxons, marriage with the mother-in-law was permitted; the Varnes king Hermigisil even ordered on his deathbed that his son Radger marry his widow. Of course, marriages with the widow of a brother, with the sister of the former wife and with a sibling's child were viewed with even less disdain.

The real cause of this disregard is the position which second marriages occupied in the Church's rules. The Church formerly expressed this disapproval in three ways: by subjecting those who had entered into such a marriage to a penance for one or more years, by refusing to grant Benediction to such a marriage, and by expelling from holy orders a man who had been married twice as irregular. This striking manner in which the Church took a stand towards second marriage was calculated to give free rein to the old customs of the masquerade and to make the later mocking character of it appear legitimate. But even under secular law, the second marriage had various legal disadvantages, especially with regard to property relations, of which Johannes de Garonibus lists a total of 76 in his book "de secundis nuptiis." (Philips. Zingerle.)

Linguistic research into the word Charivari has not yet been completed. There are more than thirty forms of it, but the linguistic explanation of the word - whether Germanic or Romance - remains unclear.

6) Plutarch.
7) Bubastis, city on the eastern bank of the mouth of the Nile. (Herodotus)
8) Artemis, a female goddess who brings salvation primarily to the female sex. She is primarily known as the preserver of women's health and is therefore nicknamed . She is particularly helpful to women in labor, during and after childbirth. This explains the reason for the origin of her cult. Above all, she looks after virgins, gives them a tall, beautiful stature and stands by their side during marriage. (Hefter, Mythol.)

9) Sistrum, Egyptian schesch or seschesch, the rattle instrument of Isis. With this, says Plutarch, Typhon is scared away. It has a round tip at the top, on which sits a cat with a human face, but below it, what produced the clattering sound was the image of Isis. The clattering was meant to scare people away, just as one disturbs and scares people away with noise and shouting; the images of this tool show the goddess giving birth and the goddess of birth, who has the cat as a symbol. Typhon creates sterility and desolation, he destroys the generative power, but through giving birth this desolation will stop again, and therefore Typhon is chased away with this image. (Schwenk, Mythology of the Egyptians.)
10) This song was called Hippotauron. (Plutarch.)
11) Maneros, a king's son, died early, and the song named after him contains the lament for him. (Schwenk.)
12) Orpheus brought the religious customs of the Egyptians to Greece. (Diodorus Siculus.)
13) Arion invented the dithyramb [impassioned oration]. (Herodotus 1. 23.) The story of Arion is well known, how he returned from foreign lands with rich treasures that his mastery in the art had acquired for him, excited the greed of the sailors, how they threw him into the sea, how he was saved by a dolphin, etc. (Pindar. Plutarch. Ovid.)
14) These new people of India after having been defeated, coming to ask peace and pardon from men and to bring them gold, did not fail to go and offer as much to the horses with a harangue similar to that of the men demonstrating their hatred for the language of composition and truce. (Monday.)
15) In Indo-Germanic mythology, crickets and cats belong to one and the same class. (The Animals in Indo-Germanic Mythology, Angelo de Gubernatis.)
16) Montfaucon, Les Antiquites.
17) Plutarch.
18) Among the diseases of cats, mange is the most common and the most dangerous because it is highly contagious and often fatal. It is cured with flowers of sulphur, which is spread on a fairly thick piece of butter; this is then cut into cubes and fed to the cat. Tapeworms are expelled by giving it rose hip seeds or a decoction of custo flowers. (Brehm, Animal Life.)
19) when a fire breaks out, very strange things happen among the cats. The Egyptians stand around in a broken line, thinking more of the cats than of quenching the burning; but the cats slip through or leap over the men and spring into the fire. When this happens, there is great mourning in Egypt. (Herodot II b.)
20) Herodot lib. II.
21) Felis.... If anyone kills, willingly or unwillingly, he is almost certainly carried away to his death by a multitude of people who are present, and is punished most cruelly, sometimes even without the sentence of a judge, etc. (Herodot II.)
22) So deeply implanted also in the hearts of the common people is their superstitious regard for these animals and so unalterable are the emotions cherished by every man regarding the honour due to them that once, at the time when Ptolemy their king had not as yet been called "friend" by the Romans and the people were zealously courting the favour of the embassy from Italy which was then visiting Egypt and, in their fear, were intent upon giving no cause for complaint or war, when one of the Romans killed a cat and the multitude rushed in a crowd to his house, neither the officials sent by the king to save the man, nor the fear of Rome which all the people felt, were enough to save the man from punishment, even though his act had been an accident. We relate this incident not from hearsay, but we saw it with our own eyes on the occasion of our pilgrimage to Egypt. (Diodorus Siculus.)
23) After their death, the cats are taken to sacred chambers in the city of Bubastis where they are buried and covered in salt. (Herodot lib. II.)
24) They shave their eyebrows. (Herodot.)
25) Diodorus gives the cost of burying a cat in Egypt as 9000 marcs.
26) Herodotus.
27) When the troubadour Peter Vidal heard of the death of his friend, Count Raymond of Toulouse, he also put on black clothes, shaved his own and his servants' hair, cut off the horses' ears and tails, and grew his beard and nails.
28) For the cats . . . they break up bread into milk and calling them with a clucking sound set it before them, or else they cut up fish caught in the Nile and feed the flesh to them raw. (Diodor.)
29) But not only do they not decline these duties or blush to perform them openly, but on the contrary, as if they had bestowed the greatest honours on the gods, they go around the cities with their own signs, and when it is recognized from afar whose animals they have in charge, they are honored with abominable bowing of the knee and other forms of worship. (Diod. Sicul.)
30) Pelusium, the former Avaris.
31) Polyaemus lib. III. Herodot lib. II. Diod. Sicul. lib. I.
32) In the city of Nabata, a golden cat was worshipped among the Arabs. (Plinius lib. VI.)
33) The mule, the mule ox, etc.
34) Bibliotheque Orientale, cite Kondemire.
35) On August 26, 1715, the last criminal was killed in a sack from the Elbe bridge in Dresden; it was the Goldscheid judge who had suffocated his wife in bed. (History of Dresden by M. B. Lindau.)
36) Ekkehard. (Victor Scheffel.)
37) The priest of Jupiter, Flamen Dial, was not only forbidden to keep a dog in his house, but was also forbidden to mention its name; for the dog, says Plutarch, is by nature a greedy, quarrelsome animal.
38) At the sacrifices of the purification festivals in Greece, dogs were kept away, a custom called Peryscylacisme. (Plutarch in Romul.)
39) Life of Mahomet. (Prideaux.)
40) Socrates considered it a father's first duty to give his children beautiful names. Montagne says about this subject: A gentleman neighbour of mine, esteeming the conveniences of old times, did not forget to take into account the pride and magnificence of the names of the Nobility of that time, Dom Grumedan, Quadragan, Argesilan, etc., etc., that just by hearing them sing, he felt that they had been very different people than Pierre, Guillot and Jean.

42) For the same reason, an old gentleman in the state of Ohio bequeathed his entire fortune; in Rottingdean, England, a Mrs Deen also manages a cat hospital with the same intentions as her American colleague.
43) Mademoiselle de Puis ( 1678) bequeathed a boarding house to her cat and obliged her heirs to visit the cat every week; the court decided the resulting case in favour of the cat boarding house, but exempted the heirs from visiting the cats.
44) The original terrain of the myth, in which the animals play their role, is always the sky. The mythological drama takes place in the sky, which is either light or dark; it is light because of the sun or the moon, dark because of the darkness of night or clouds. The clear sky sometimes takes on the shape of a lake of milk, and this phenomenon gives rise to the idea of a cow; hence the most brilliant forms of the sky are often depicted as herds. All these phenomena were thought to be living and accordingly took on forms in the human imagination which were borrowed from real living beings or were composed of various such beings. The oldest figures in the myths are animals; they are closest to man through fear of their harmfulness or through gratitude for the benefits they bring, and these circumstances were the motives for considering them as higher beings, i.e. as powerful forces of nature which were believed to be hidden in them and which were therefore admired and feared. This is especially the case with the stars. The oldest stars have the names of animals; the zodiac, sun and moon were presented as animals in the oldest myths of the most outstanding cultures. As already mentioned, animal worship was most developed in Egypt and India and the tribes related to it. In German mythology, animals without heads also appear; this is meant to represent supernatural beings. Because animals were believed to be something higher, something divine, popular belief attributed the gift of speech to them; this is also connected with the prophecy of animals, which in Germanic mythology, for example, was attributed to birds, the cuckoo, raven, rooster, but also the cat.

45) Hitopadesa, translated by Max Mueller.
46) Dscharadgara actually means an old ox, then an old fellow in general.
47) Dirghakarna, i.e. long-eared.
48) The Brahmins distinguish four stages of life. The young Brahmin is called Brahmacharya; then he becomes Grihastha, head of the house, then Vanaprastha, forest dweller, and finally Sanjasa, perfect penitent.
49) The Chandrajana vow is based on the moon (Chandara), whereby food is reduced from day to day during the waning half of the moon and increased again during the waxing moon. Manu describes it in Book XI of the Laws, verse 216.
50) Chandala, the most despised class of people in India, who are only used for the most base of deeds.
51) This teaching is often inculcated and, it seems, not without success, since one rarely sees a beggar turned away in India.
52) A sign of abhorrence.
53) Jacob Grimm.
54) The legendary content of this fairy tale is quite old, despite certain changes that it has had to undergo in the course of tradition. (Gubernatis.)
55) Freya, also Frigg, Holla, Holda, Hulda, is the goddess of the domestic hearth. As the goddess of love, she was called Holda, and since the 15th century Venus; the Hoerselberg near Eisenach, where she lives, is called Venusberg. Many aspects of her myth were transferred to Mary. The popular images of Mary have blonde hair like Holda; a fern dedicated to Freya is called Mary's grass, and roses are dedicated to both Mary and Holda. Even the children's fountain takes Mary instead of Holda. (Grimm. Wuttke.)

56) This can be concluded with some certainty from the name Lycanthropia, which is used by both the oldest and modern writers of this kind to transform nature into a mirage of witchcraft and sorcery.
And now too he rejoices in blood and
He becomes a wolf and preserves traces of his old form
The gray hair is the same, the same violence of his face
The same image of ferocity etc. etc.

57) Ante Liberalis met. CXXIX. (Nach Pausanias.)
58) Typhon, an Egyptian god, was considered an evil being. He was believed to be responsible for the destruction of natural life, and was considered the personification of the destructive storm and wild outbursts of nature. In the development of Isis-Osiris worship, in which mourning for nature dying every year found its way into Egyptian mythology, Typhon was considered a god of the unhealthy, evil heat that reigns in Egypt for part of the year. (Schwenk, Mythol. d. Egypter.)

59) Phoebus' sister, in the Cat, was hidden. (Ovid.) In his play Macbeth, a picture of modern witchery, Shakespeare had, after all this, made a very sensible and historically correct use of the cat. Three times, among other things, he has one of his witches say: thrice heard I the cat cry, etc. One of the most ingenious explainers, Johnson, makes the right observation: "The usual form in which the witches' spirits of common legend haunt is the form of the cat. A witch who was executed about fifty years before Shakespeare's time had a cat who called Rutterkin, just as the spirit of one of Shakespeare's witches is called Grimalkin; and when she was going to do any mischief, she used to bid Rutterkin go and fly with her." But once when she was going to send Rutterkin to torment a daughter of the Countess Rutland, the cat neither went nor flew, but only cried, "Meow, meow," a sign that the young countess was not in her power." Comparative Shakespeare, illustrated. Vol. 1. (Horst, Demonomagic.)

60) In the 13th century, the animal metamorphoses were merely vague fantasy creatures that were called werewolves, bear-caps, etc. During the Templar trial, the tomcat and goat metamorphoses appeared.
61) Boiling the sacrificial animals is actually the job of women, as is baking the sacrificial cakes, which often had the shape of gods or sacred animals. Traces of this have been preserved in the baked goods of some German regions to this day. (Weinhold, Women.)
62) The dances performed at the witches' feasts, the consumption of horse meat, drinking from horse hooves and the raising of horse heads clearly point to the ancient sacrifices of the Germanic peoples. (Wuttke, Deutscher Volksabergl.)
63) The violin is the most pleasant of all instruments, the fifth is the most touching string of the violin and the best fifths are made from cat intestines.
65) The Alp or Alpdruecken is a special kind of witchcraft. In German legend it is called Alp (i.e. Elf, Alf) and thus refers to its relationship with the dwarves. According to Dutch belief, the most beautiful of seven daughters had to become a nightmare. She is caught when the branch or keyhole through which she came is blocked, whereupon she becomes a beautiful girl, but after a while she gets homesick and gets her husband to re-open the hole through which she came, whereupon she disappears, but sometimes returns to look after the children. The Alpdruecken often sneaks around in the form of a black cat. (Simrock.)
66) The earliest collection with the year of printing dates from 1487. From this time up to ours, rich treasures have been collected; Agricola, Wagner, Eiselein, Koerte and Wander have compiled detailed proverb dictionaries.
67) This saying seems to originate from the Middle Ages. In German law, this was the term for "settlement on the old part". The father allows himself to be inherited, as it were, during his own lifetime; he gives his property to his children and withdraws into a corner by the hearth, into a small room, where he wishes to spend his last days; he has reserved for himself the free fire, a dowry, and a pension. Item, the older people always give good things to the children and the poor. Landr. van Westerwoldinge, Section 23 (pro exol. 4, 34.) Strodtmann notes about "unnerheerdt": Bench by the hearth in farmhouses; at such a bench there is a place which is called Kattenstie, the cat's place, and the departed Coloni use to say that they will be sent to the cat's place. Several poems of the Middle Ages describe this relationship from the disadvantageous side. (Jacob Grimm, Legal Antiquities.)
68) If anyone kills or steals the cat that guards the barn, the cat is to be hung by its tail, with its head touching a clean and flat surface, and grains of wheat are to be poured onto it until the tip of the tail is covered with wheat. (J. Grimm, German Legal Age. P. 669.)
69) Grimm, German legal historians.
70) Mone, History of Paganism in Northern Europe. Bulletin for the History of German Prehistory.
71) Uhland, Writings on History and
72) The French have the same rhyme:
A, B, C,
Le chat est alle
Dans la neige; en retournant
Il avait les souliers tout blanc.

73) But because cats dread every foul odour, they hide their excrement in a trench previously dug in the ground. (Elian, lib. VII.)
74) They bury their excrement in the earth. (Plinius, lib. XI.)
75) Pliny goes into strange details regarding the love of cats. He says: In cats, the male stands above, while the female lies underneath.
76) Of all cats, the male is the most lustful, but the female is the most affectionate towards her offspring, and the male avoids copulation because he emits very hot, fiery semen, and thus burns the female's genitals. etc. etc. (Elian lib. VI.)
77) Furthermore, female cats themselves are by nature lustful and capricious; therefore they themselves entice, invite, coerce males to copulate and even punish them if they do not comply. (De Mirabilib. lib. I.)
78) In Rome there is also a marble monument on a cat's grave.

Correction. Under the illustration on page 21 should be added: "Egyptian cat mummy."

The main works used for this book are:

Grimm, German mythology.
Simrock, German mythology.
Mannhardt, Germanic myths.
Uhland's writings on the history of poetry and legend.
Wuttke, German folk superstition.
Horst, demon magic.
Koeppen, witches and witch trials.
Henne - Am - Ryn, German folk legend.
Rochholz, German children's song and children's game.
Simrock, German riddle book.
Koerte, German proverbs.
Georg Kruenig, encyclopedia.
Wander's German proverb dictionary.
Zingerle, Tyrolean people.
Kuhn and Schwarz, German fairy tales.
J. Grimm, German legal antiquities.
Mone, history of paganism in northern Europe.
Wurzbach, historical words.
G. Philipp's collected writings.
Weinhold, the German women.
Grimm, German dictionary.
Mayer's heraldry.
Victor Hehn, cultivated plants and domestic animals.
Brehm's animal life.
Scheitlein, animal psychology.
Carpzow, short history of cats.
Gubernatis, the animals in Indo-Germanic mythology.
Schwenk, mythology of the Egyptians.
Hefter, mythology.
Freitag, pictures of the past.
Victor Scheffel, Ekkehard.
Pliny.
Herodotus.
Diodorus.
Tacitus, Germania, translated by Buelau.
Hitopodesa, translated by Max Mueller.
Pantschatantra.
Mahabharata.
Basile, Pentamerone.
Ovid.
Monfaucon, les Antiquites.
Champfleury, les chats.
Champfleury, l'histoire de la carricature.
Ross, the book of cats.
H. Heine, poems.
Chateaubriand.
Moncrif, les chats.
Pictet, Indo-European Origins.