Mr Harry Styan, inspector of R.S.P.C.A., took a unique case before the Carmarthen county bench on Saturday. It was one in which a farmer, named Thomas Rees, Garreg-goch-issa, Llanarthney, was charged with revolting cruelty to cats at the end of last month. Mr H. Brunel White appeared for the prosecution, and Mr J.F. Morris for the defence. The evidence was extraordinary, and went to show that the defendant had tied cords round the necks of two cats with slip and granny's knots, and then fastened them tightly to two stakes 30 yards apart, evidently for the purpose of scaring crows. The preparations were silently witnessed by two concealed water bailiffs, who described the harrowing scene that ensued when the farmer sneaked away for the purpose of letting his work have effect. The witnesses, seeing the cats writhing in agony, essayed a rescue, but, either through fear of the cats or from a desire to get a conviction, they kept at a respectful distance, and eventually got P.C. Davies, of Llanarthney, to see the sight. He slackened the cord around the neck of one of the cats, which was almost unconscious, but the other animal was too mad to touch, and the harder she tugged the greater was the danger of being throttled. The farmer, hearing of the official visit, subsequently liberated the cats himself, but, although he attempted to prove an alibi, he had to pay £2 1s 8d and receive a severe lecture from the bench.

THE MOST REMARKABLE CAT SHOW HELD IN CHICHESTER. MINISTERING CHILDREN’S LEAGUE – SUCCESSFUL BAZAAR.
Chichester Observer, 3rd March 1897
A most excellently arranged and happily conducted bazaar took place in South-street Gymnasium Wednesday, under the auspices of the local branch of the Ministering Children's League. [. . .] Great interest and fun was excited by “The most remarkable cat show held in Chichester,” which proved to be two mummy cats brought from Ombo, Egypt, and the notes of explanation recorded that cat worship was traced to 4,000 B.C. There was also the remains of cat in fossilised form, said to have been found under a very large foundation stone of an old house in Drury-lane about 300 years ago. These objects were lent by the Rev. Chancellor Parish.

CAT WITH EPICUREAN TASTES.
Served With a Course dinner Daily, So The Chef Says
The New York Times, April 11, 1897

“Tom.” the prize-winner at the cat show, held at Madison Square Garden last year, was not then afforded scope to display his choicest attainments. He is epicurean in his tastes, and each day partakes of a course dinner at precisely noon at his home, in a restaurant. 530 Eighth Avenue.

The chef there avows that the big white feline can tell time by consulting the clock over the cashier's desk. His reason for so believing is, that as 12 o'clock draws near, he receives a visit from the cat, which purrs and gyrates until a plate of soup is served to him. After this follow fish, and in order, entrees, and a roast with side dishes of vegetables. “Tom” skips the salad though he is partial to mayonnaise dressing. Fruits and nuts with his dessert delight him. Coffee is withheld, but it is the boast about the place that he will yet acquire a taste for a demitasse and a cigarette.

BANK OFFICERS MOURN A PET
The (N.Y.) Times, April 30, 1897

Citizens’ Trust Co. Officials Offer A Reward For Their Trilby - Was A Feline Financier - Her Duties Consisted Chiefly Of Scattering Money About And Interfering With Correspondence - How She Came To He Adopted By The Trust Company — Her Loss A Sad Blow.

The officers and attaches of the Citizens’ Trust Company, from president down to runner, are bemoaning the loss of a wonderful cat which is a feline financier of the shrewdest sort. But tabby has been gone almost a month, the building in which she resided has vanished, and her admirers, despairing of ever seeing her again, caused the following advertisement to be inserted in last Sunday’s papers: “$15 Reward. April 1st, a large black and white cat strayed from 1408 Chestnut street, where buildings are now being torn down. Return to The Citizens’ Trust and Surety Co, 1425 Chestnut Street.”

The chief occupation of Tabby’s life at the Trust Company’s banking house was handling money, overseeing the business and prying into the secrets of the officers’ correspondence. Catching mice was a minor industry, although she proved herself most expert in this trade when she was loaned by the company to a neighboring hair-dresser who was plagued with the vermin. And even though pussy handled thousands of dollars in gold, silver and crisp hank notes, and knew many of the financiers' business secrets, her friends scout the idea that she is an embezzler or that she has betrayed her secrets and turned traitor. Instead of thus accusing her they bemoan her absence as if she was a dear friend.

Tabby’s childhood is shrouded In mystery. When the Trust Company moved, about two years ago, from No. 716 to No. 1408 Chestnut street, pussy was a waif of the streets a dirty, bedraggled, starved and clumsy kitten. One day, as a customer hurried into the banking house from the wintry streets, pussy slipped in after him. She warmed her cold feet at a steam radiator, and gave such a pitiful look when an attendant took her up to put her out, that the old man’s heart was touched, so he carried her over to the paying teller’s window, showed her to the clerks, and finally thrust her through the brass grating so that they could fondle her.

It was a busy time of day and money was being passed out rapidly to waiting clients. Tabby watched the rolls of bank notes, the piles of silver, the shiny gold rushing past her, then leaped forward and began to play with them. That decided her future. She was born to be a financier, and financier she must be. She at once became a petted member of the bank’s family.

There was considerable debating during idle moments about her name. She would probably have been disowned and outclassed by both Thomas and Maria felines if entered at a cat show. But after she had been washed, her “altogether," and especially her beautiful white feet were fair to look upon, and inasmuch as her past life had been Bohemian, her history a sad one, and as at that time the name of Du Maurler’s most famous heroine was on everybody’s lips, they called her “Trilby," and she reigned as queen henceforth in the bank’s serene and conservative precincts.

She lived royally. The old gray-haired attendant who had discovered her brought her soup and dainties every day from his home. Every month the president made out a voucher for the boarding expense, and this was cashed and invested in new milk thick with cream, and toothsome morsels of raw meat such as average pussies only taste in their cats’ heaven. Under such luxurious nursing she grew more and more beautiful every day. Her black and white coat glistened like silver and ebony, she grew to an enormous size — as large for a cat as the original Trilby was for a woman. She slept in the cellar, and the attendant who cared for her found Trilby watching for him at ' the grated window every morning when he came to the bank. She oversaw the cleaners in their labors, and when the officers arrived and the front doors were opened to the general public her work began in earnest, and from then until dark she was very busy indeed. She climbed to the top of the wood and glass partitions separating the offices and walked along them from department to department regarding the clerks and officers with critical eye. When an officer was busy writing at his desk she leaped down to him, played with his pen and seated herself upon the unfinished letter. Then the officer would fondle her, or make a ball of paper and throw it across the floor to the infinite enjoyment of her feline majesty. When she left the desk he resumed his work. She had her favorite leather chairs, too, where she took a luxurious nap every now and then, and when she leaped upon one of them no one thought of disturbing her. But the consuming passion of her life was money, and her favorite loafing place was beside the paying teller. She delighted in playing with coin and notes just as she thought the clerks were doing, and watched the piles of silver by the hour with evident satisfaction.

Thus her busy business life passed uneventfully until about a month ago. The company had to move, as their building was to be demolished to make room for the new "sky-scraper" at Broad and Chestnut streets. The workmen first tore up the offices in the rear of the bank, so as not to interfere with business. This disturbed Trilby very much for, cat-like, she had become attached to the place just as dogs are said to become attached to people. She walked about with a dazed expression, and whether she supposed her home was to be destroyed, or whether, as some suggest, she was the victim of some feline Svengali, her trancelike condition became more and more alarming every day.

Then came catastrophe — Trilby disappeared! Her friends were disconsolate. Three “Knights of the Pen," her greatest admirers, searched everywhere for her. They inquired among the surrounding business buildings, they searched the cellar of an adjoining store where they heard she had been seen. One clerk even suggested that a tour of the neighboring backyards be made in hopes that Trilby might be discovered, still under the influence of her feline Svengali, singing “Ben Bolt" or some heart-thrilling cadenza ditty to the moon. Finally, as Trilby’s absence lengthened from days into weeks, her admirers began to despair, and inserted the advertisement offering a reward for her return.

FASCINATED CATS.
Evening Express, 1 May, 1897

Considering how wonderfully active, quick of hearing, and alert cats are, it is absolutely surprising what an immense number of them are killed on railway tracks where dwelling-houses abut upon, a railway. The writer became greatly interested in the question at one time, for no day passed but he saw, along a, stretch of line where he dwelt, two or three dead cats. As a result of watching, it was observed that a swiftly moving train seemed to have a fatal fascination for a cats - the latter seemed utterly unable to get out of the way, and in some cases actually sprang upwards in front of the passing train. Repeated observations fully confirmed this, and there can be 'no doubt that a smoothly running train first perplexes and then dazes the average feline.

CATS WITH RABIES. PUSSY TOO WILL HAVE TO WEAR A MUZZLE.
Evening Express, May 15, 1897

A good deal of excitement was caused in Birmingham on Wednesday night by the vagaries of a cat affected with rabies. In view of the recent death from a cat-bite in Birmingham, the appearance of the animal created the utmost consternation, and for three hours a continual, chase after it was kept up. The animal entered dozens of shops, and was forced out of an outhouse by means of a burning newspaper saturated with paraffin oil. At length a police officer succeeded in capturing and drowning it. A medical examination showed that, its stomach' was full of pieces of brick and straw, and that it was clearly suffering from rabies.

[SOCIETY NEWS]
Lebanon Daily News, May 31, 1897.

Mr. and Mrs. John W. Booth, of New York, arrived in this city and are guests of Mr. and Mrs. G. O. Booth, Ninth and Guilford streets. Mrs. John Booth brought with her two handsome cats which she has presented to her niece, Miss Alta Booth. One is a coon rat, called "Christopher Colombus,” and has been exhibited at cat shows in New York and Connecticut as the king of cats. The other is a week old Angora kitten, called “McKinley,” whose father took first prize in the cat show at Madison Square Garden, N. Y., while the mother took first prize at the state cat chow at Hartford, Conn. Mr. Booth returned home today and Mrs. Booth will send a brief visit here. The kittens are of a rare species and much appreciated by Miss Alta Booth.

CAT WALLOWS IN INK.
Fayetteville Observer from Fayetteville, North Carolina, June 3, 1897

"Bullion," the big Maltese cat of the American Express company, created an unusual stir in the general agent's office in Chicago the other morning. When "Bullion” leaves oil nabbing rats and mice in the basement he curls up on a carpet mat on top of the agent's desk and goes to sleep. The clerks operate a mimeograph machine on a table drawn close to the desk, and when they are moving the big roller the cat shows a disposition to jump on the machine with all four feet. The clerks often tease the cat to the point of jumping, when he is headed off. The other morning in an unguarded moment, just after the apparatus had been freshly smeared with ink, "Bullion" made a leap for the ink bed a id landed squarely on the machine. Then, catlike, he lay down and began to hug the roller. Before the operator could interfere his paws and hairy coat had absorbed all the ink on the roller and its bed. Then "Bullion'' started on a mad caper all over the office desks, jumping from one to another, leaving the prints of his paws in purple ink on all kinds of papers, some of which stuck and were dragged over the floor. Not content with this measure of mischief, "Bullion" leaped over into the lobby, and, picking out a man whose trousers were lighter than the weather warranted, he rubbed his ink-smeared side back and forth on the stranger's legs. Finally the porter caught the animal, and after being "treated" with benzine, soap and water "Bullion" purred himself back to his accustomed quarters. Now a wire screen has been built around the mimeograph.

A TALKING CAT. Wakefield Free Press, 3rd July 1897
A friend of mine has a large black cat that talks. I have never been heard anything of the kind before, but this animal certainly expresses its wants and feelings by certain tones and inflections which sound marvelously like human words. The way the creature came into this family, and its whole conduct and bearing at the time, showed an amount of discretion and tact which would have done credit to the wisest and best-bred mortal. The family bad a very handsome pet tabby cat. Tabby introduced into the house a friend in the shape of the black cat of which I speak. The stranger was allowed to remain in this home during the day, but was always turned out at night, not being recognised as one of the family. It was a wild, romping, rather vicious creature, with all the characteristics of the street Arab, and manners begotten of an early education in vacant lots.

One day a fatal accident befell the tabby - it was run over by a grocery wagon. The cook, whose special pet the tabby was, became inconsolable. She vowed she never could love a cat again; but as the black one had been a friend of her pet, she treated it with distant kindness and hospitality. Here it was that the black cat showed its wonderful tact and judgment. It seemed to reason with itself thus: "Now here is a fine opening for me. If I play my cards& properly I may step into this luxurious position, be allowed to sleep In all the easy chairs in the house, have milk three times a day, and fresh meat bought for me especially at the butchers; but I must act with caution. Its whole manner at once changed. It became quiet, orderly and considerate, and was consequently soon settled in the position of its departed friend, and from that day to this has never turned aside from the line of action laid down for itself at the start by any unseemly conduct.

It was about the time of the funeral of the tabby that Nig (for so the cook christened it) first showed its wonderful gift of talking. If asked if it wanted something to eat it would answer with a prolonged “Y-e-o-w;” but if questioned as to some that it did not want, it would reply with a short, almost snappish "wow!” Sometimes it would utter a sentence of two or three words with so much feeling and variety of inflection as to be absolutely startling. Of course it la impossible to spell these cat words, but perhaps Y-e-o-w wow; ugh-r-r!” may give an idea of one of its sentences, which in English would mean, °Oh, leave me alone; I don’t want to he bothered.” We all know how expressive the different utterances of a dog are, which, aided by the language of the tail, give him quite a wide conversational range, so that he can say anything. From “How do you do, old boy,” or “Excuse me, sir, but you have the advantage of me," to "Get out of this, you rascal; I know you're round here for nu good." But for a cat to express its thoughts as this cat does is something altogether out of the common, and if the language is not our, it answers the same purpose.

CONCERNING CATS.
Pussy Growing in Favor as a Pet - Angora» and Persians in Fashion
The Chatham Record, July 8, 1897

No person in this city, perhaps, is better acquainted with cats than Dr. Rush S. Huidekoper of the New York College of Veterinary Surgeons; says the New York Sun. He knows all of their wiles and moods and ways, and says to know them is to love them. When asked if there was a fashion in cats, Dr. Huidekoper answered: “Yes; just as much as there is in dogs. Any dealer in cats will tell you that the most expensive species are the Angora and the Persian, and therefore they are the most desired. Angoras cost all the way from $10 to $100 each, though §50 is regarded as an excellent price by most dealers, even for a perfect specimen.

“The Persian and the Angora are very much alike. The Angora has a finer, more delicate, more domestic head, and its fur is very heavy at the base of the tail, which runs to à point. On the other hand the Persian has a bolder, fiercer, stronger head, and its tail has heavier plumage toward the tip, making a brush. In a white cat blue eyes are preferable to yellow ones, and no one should select a cat which has one yellow and one blue eye, as is often the case.

“A common cat should be distinct in color, no matter what that color is, to be of value. If it is spotted the spots should be distinct, or if striped the stripes should be clearly defined and should not merge into one another. If a mixed cat is preferred, purchasers should remember that too much white spoils the animal for the mixed class. White paws and a little clearly delined white about the throat are all that is necessary. Cats, I believe, are more used as pets at the present time than ever before. The average life of a cat which has been well taken care of and has not met with accident is from twelve to fifteen years. The oldest eat whose age is authentically known is given as twenty-four years. There are no hospitals exclusively for cats in this city, but cats are received at almost all of the veterinary hospitals, where they are cured of many diseases and well eared for.”

Dealers contend that the cat business is booming. One of the most successful fanciers said: “Nearly all of the cats sold in New York are imported. Dealers handle some Maine cats, but we have found that they will not bear captivity. They die very quickly when caged or housed, because most of them are bred in a wild state. We get our cats from England, and it is almost impossible to secure more than six or seven fine specimens at a time, and I easily dispose of that many in a week. It is quite a fad for a man to give a woman a fine cat for a present. The Christmas sales were enormous and they are always large after every cat show. The Angora is the favorite. It is a rather delicate cat, and has a tendency to stomach troubles.

“When a woman loves a cat I believe she is even sillier over it than the average woman is over her dog. Some women annoy me nearly to death when their cats fall ill. When the cats get their legs broken the mistresses want them set in plaster or splints. If a cat’s leg is broken is there anything to do except to kill it? Why, certainly. If it is a bad fracture, the most humane thing to do is to kill the cat painlessly; but that is not always necessary by any means. When a cat breaks its leg it is generally better not to splint it nor put it in plaster, but to let nature take its course. The cat is exceedingly light on its feet, and no animal knows how better to take care of an injury.

HORRORS OF AN AMERICAN PULPIT (GORDON STABLES, M.D. R.N.).
Burnley Express, 7th August 1897

Rev. W. Laufman, of Cadillac, Michigan, recently advertised that certain Sunday he would, to illustrate an anti-tobacco sermon, kill two cats in the pulpit of a local Methodist Church. A packed congregation rolled up to see the show. Prominent on the pulpit were packages of fine-cut chewing tobacco. At a selected point in the tirade an assistant brought up the cats, and a Dr. Miller administered nicotine to them. The first cat died, squealing and screaming, in a minute and a half. The second died a minute and a quarter after having a second dose. Then this blackguard announced the thrilled congregation that next Sunday he would kill some more cats to show the evil effects of alcohol [. . . ] What an unmitigated and cowardly ruffian must this fellow Laufman be! But is Dr. Miller any better? Or the thrilled congregation of gaping idiots? I read it to some my lady friends. "Oh," cried one. "I could not keep my fingers off the fellow in his own pulpit.” “I would assist lynching him," said another. "What would you do, doctor?" asked a third. "I would willingly pay," I replied, “£5 to the Cats' Home to have an interview of three minutes with the scoundrel on my back lawn." [3 minutes being the length of a boxing round]

[We British] don't desecrate our pulpits by murdering poor cats in them, in the useless, cruel and idiotic way the Rev. Numbskull Laufman does; nevertheless, I say boldly that the cats in this country are treated with systematic cruelty. For one church-going woman who is kind her pussy there are nine who starve her, turn her out at night, and lead her a life that it shocks one to think of.

SHOT AT BANKER'S CATS
Sons of a New York Lawyer in the Toils of New Jersey Law.
The New York Times, August 7, 1897

NEWARK, Aug 6. - Col. Edwards of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals made complaint to-day against Alfred Sidney and A. Bell Malcolmson, sons of A. B. Malcolmson, Jr., a New York lawyer, who resides at Llewellyn Park near Orange. He charges them with having shot two valuable Angora cats belonging to Alfred Carr, a New York banker, whose place adjoin s the Malcolmson residence. The families, it appears, having not been on good terms for some time, owing it is said, to a dispute over a strip of land lying between their residences.

it is alleged that on July 10 the two cats were enticed with food to a point some distance from the Carr residence and both so badly wounded by rifle bullets that they had to be destroyed. Mr Carr alleges that he is afraid that the mother of the two dead cats, a valuable animal, will also be shot. The boys will have an examination on Wednesday next before Justice Ropp of this city.

CATS CAUSE A FIRE.
One of Them Upset a Lamp and Johnson's Store Was burned.
The New York Times, September 22, 1897

GREENPORT, L.I. Sept. 21. - Fighting cats caused a fire which last night completely destroyed the butcher's shop of James Johnson, in the rear of the Shelter Island Heights Hotel. After the store had been closed for the night, Johnson heard two cats, which he kept about the place for mice, fighting in the rear of the shop. He was unable to sleep, and with a lighted lamp in one hand and a club in the other, went into the room to quell the disturbance. One of the cats took time by the forelock, however, and before Johnson could use his club it sprang at the lamp. The light was knocked to the floor, and the fire was the result. The damage was about $1,500 on which there was but a $500 insurance.

A CAT THAT GOES CYCLING
Various, August 5, 1897

Chicago boasts of a feline cyclist. He is Dixie Norton, of 4011 Drexel Boulevard, and as his mistress, Mrs. Leland Norton, spins down the boulevard he stands erect in a fanciful Indian basket that hangs from the handle bar, and watches the sights with all the eagerness of a happy child at a carnival.

“How did Dixie learn to ride? Why,” said Mrs. Norton, “he was always crazy to go out, and one evening last summer I picked up his basket and held him at arm’s length while I rode around the block. After that he used to perch on my shoulder, but as his avoirdupois increased, I was obliged to swing him from the handle bar.”

The query, “Dixie, darling, do you want to go to ride?" is sufficient to send Dixie bounding with delighted squeals headforemost into his basket, where he wriggles and twists until “heads are up," when he sets up a piteous howl. When taken from the wheel his vocalization is something terrific, and he frantically clutches and claws everything in reach. Mrs. Norton believes he is equal to a hundred mile run, and some day a gold century bar may rest on the snow white breast of Dixie Norton. — New York Commercial Advertiser.

FOR CATS AND DOGS.
Mrs. Paillard Provides a Nightly Free Lunch, but in the Morning They Die by Gas.
The New York Times, August 13, 1897

All homeless cats and dogs are cordially invited to the side yard of Mrs. Mary B. Paillard's home, at 341 West Forty-fifth Street, at any time after dark, and partake of a liberal free lunch. This consists of stewed calves' liver, cut in small fragments, and for side dishes calves' lungs on calves' heart treated in the same manner. Milk in abundance supplies the place of a wine list for this meal, and for feline and canine teetotalers dishes of cool water are provided. Mrs Paillard feasts them, but the next day comes the ambulance of the Society fo the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and they are hustled into a gas tank where they bid farewell to earth.

Mrs Paillard dwells in a house abundantly furnished with statuary and articles of vertu, although their owner complains that her resources will not permit her to do as much for the feline and canine pariahs as her heart urges. She is a sweet-faced woman in the prime of maturity, with rippling hair of the copper bronze tint that is so fashionable.

"When I was at my old home," (she formerly lived at 334 West Forty-fifth Street,) "I used to keep two or three cats overnight in the basement, but here I don't have to. The cats don't want to run away. Why should they?" and going to the window she showed several tabbies curled comfortably on newspapers and purring in the contentment of a stomach filled for one. The newspapers, mrs Paillard explained, kept off the chill of the ground, and were popular with her guests. From another window the protector of the homeless exhibited other cats. On other newspapers was spread the free lunch, plenty of it, and nearby were the pans of milk and dishes of water. Around the yard runs an iron rail fence which is easily entered by the famished felines.

Not until it is dark does Mrs Paillard spread out the viands. During the day if gaunt felines arrive they receive attention, but the hour of the banquet proper is late. Sometimes the children, who know the woman's tenderness, bring her cats, but she will only accept them from the girls - boys need not apply - and then only when the little girl is known to her, and she feels sure she is not taking any one's pet. On an average of thrice a week, Mrs Paillard writes to the officers of the S.P.C.A. and the ambulance visits her home, collects the cats, and takes them to the gas tank.

"Of course, we cannot expect the society to feed and keep the cats," Mrs Paillard said, "but they are put to death in the most merciful manner. We ought to have many such ambulances, and have every homeless cat taken from the streets."

TOWN INVADED BY CATS
Huntington Citizens Had a Very Bad Hour and are Looking for Two Men
The New York Times, August 20, 1897

The business part of the town of Huntingdon, L.I., was much disturbed yesterday by a phenomenon which was without precedent in the annals of local tradition or the memory of the oldest inhabitant, consisting of a rain of cats. Late in the afternoon, while business was proceeding as usual, James M. brush, President of the bank, was surprised to find his store in the Brush Block full of cats - half-grown cats, with their tails in the air, trotting in many directions, and apparently a good deal surprised and perturbed by their surroundings. Mr. Brush with great presence of mind shouted "Scat!" and began an energetic onslaught upon his visitors.

As he steered three or four of them through the front door he stopped amazed. The street was full of felines. The few he had driven out scurried away and fifteen or twenty more rushed in. Every business man in the neighbourhood was hard at work chasing cats. Tthe creatures were everywhere in infinite varieties of shapes and colors.

Citizens who had cautiously refrained from mentioning the fact that the entire community looked to them to be alive with cats, took courage as they edged along toward the drug store and saw the druggist with a broom hard at work trying to chase out the cats that were inside and to hold back the tide of would-be-invaders moving upon his premises.

For more than an hour the community was engaged in a unanimous battle, hunting out, dislodging, and pursuing. Nobody pretends to say how many they numbered. Everybody was sure that the meteorological eccentricities of the season had culminated at last in a downpour such as had never before occurred, even on Long Island, where the air is likely at any time to yield strange things. Showers of toads, grasshoppers, small snakes, and fish are not infrequent there, but a cataract of cats was new, and the superstitious began to search dream books and the prophecies to discover what the visitation portended. Telephones connecting with near-by towns were rung, and the central office and people who were called up filed indignant protests and inquiries whether everybody in Huntington had gone drunk or crazy, because there was a steady stream of questions from that place, "Is it raining cats with you?"

The cats disappeared almost as suddenly as they had arrived. The Huntington people did not know what to do. They could not disbelieve the evidence of their senses, but their experience at the telephone taught them that both their insanity and their veracity were likely to fall under serious suspicion. Mr. Brush had captured and kept one cat, and proposed to have it placed in evidence, but it was argued that one cat would not be accepted by a critical and suspicious public as proof that it had rained cats. Real estate men suggested various schemes for making the occurrence a means for advertising and booming the town and promoting the sale of lots, but there was serious doubt whether the reputation for having cats descend upon it in showers would be for Huntington's advantage, even were if it was the only town in the world where such a thing happened.

In the midst of the debate, which was disturbed at frequent intervals by scuffling and whooping resulting from the discovery of another stray cat, Cashier Conklin of the bank let the cat out of the bag. He said he had seen four men drive up Main Street in a wagon containing filled bags and go to a side street, where they opened the bags and released from them scores of cats. Then the men drove rapidly away. Nobody but the cashier saw them and he did not know them, but he realized that a big practical joke was being played on the town and had been silent and enjoyed his laugh by himself as long as possible. It is not known where the cats went, but they presumably went to their various homes in obedience to their proverbial instinct. The perpetrators of the joke evidently spent much time and some money. The probably exhausted the available cat supply of half a dozen Long Island towns.

A CAT STORY.
The Westminster Budget, September 17, 1897

To the Editor of The Westminster Budget.
Sir, — We have a cat in the stables which faces and destroys any rat she encounters. Recently she became more predatory than usual in her habits, in consequence of having a family of kittens, and we made every effort to find out where these were, without avail. At last, by accident, the gardener heard an unusual sound over the dining-room window in the middle of a thickly-spreading ever¬green clematis, which has grown nearly to the top of the house. In its branches the cat had concealed her five kittens, and there she had nurtured them until they have grown to a considerable size. It is more extraordinary because the creeper is close to the windows of the house, and to a walk leading to the garden. The cat used to sit on the lawn below, as if ready to attack anyone who would meddle with her; but no one guessed that her kittens were so near. To-day I saw her spring up the stem of the clematis in order to attend to her maternal duties, her brood being nestled in the branches of the creeper like so many birds. It was a curious sight, and I thought it was not unworthy of your notice as a proof of the instinctive wisdom of a dumb animal. —I remain, Sir, yours, &c., September 4. - M. . H.

THE CULT OF THE CAT.
The Westminster Journal, September 24, 1897

One half the world does not know how the other half lives, nor what interests the other half. Not many of our readers, for example, can be familiar with those extra¬ordinary cat notes of the “Ladies' Kennel Journal.” Here are a few extracts :

I have heard of the deaths of several noted cats this month. “Southampton Ghost” succumbed to a ball of hair in the stomach. Mrs. Greenwood laments him deeply. Mrs. Marriott has a fine young orange male coming on. "The Seraph,” Mrs. Marriott’s Chinchilla kitten, purchased at the C.P. Show last year, has grown into a big, solid cat. Mrs. Waldegrave Brodie evidently does not suffer from want of buyers for her kittens, for she wrote me, “I sell my kittens almost too rapidly, as some unborn are already sold.” She has put up a delightful cattery. We also learn that this lady “has bought a; daughter of the well-known Tom Esau.”

Next we find the chronicler congratulating Mrs. H. Woodhouse, “who has a litter of five blues from Lobelia, by Kingfisher”: The Hon. Miss Montague has been most unlucky, she tells me, with her cats this last two years, losing several with influenza. She has now a lovely lot of eight handsome kits, bred by the famous Wooloomooloo. She is thinking of selling her litters and keeping only Mousie. The kittens are priced at 35s. each - quite a giving-away price, but Miss Montague says she must sell them.

After a few pages of this kind of thing it is no surprise to learn that the same journal has a “Births” column (“1 shilling for two lines or less “).

LADIES' COLUMN. CHAT ABOUT CATS. – LOUIS WAIN
Dundee Evening Telegraph, 29th September 1897

[By Our Own Lady Contributor.] How often have we all smiled over Louis Wain's cats? Cats at a ball or at a tea party ; kittens at school, or tabbies at a mothers' meeting ! The artist is the very Landseer of the cat. If he has not discovered the species, he has at least interpreted it to the British public as no one in this country has ever attempted to do. Only Henriette Ronner, and she a woman, and a Frenchwoman, deserves to be named in the same breath with him. It was early in the eighties when Wain's black and white work began to be seen in the illustrated papers. His first hit, he tells an interviewer in the “Young Woman” for October, was a double-page of a "Cats' Tea Party," which appeared in the “Illustrated London News.” This gave him a start and a place on the staff, and orders poured in from all parts, at home and abroad. Mr Wain's success was well deserved, for he has spared no pains to make himself master of his subject. He is literally “at home" with it, for he has a noted collection of cats of his own, is a past President of the Cat Club (how many people know that there is such a thing ?—ay, and a Cats' Stud Book, too), and a knowing judge of the points of the beast much in request at all great shows.

Mr Wain had much that was interesting to say about the technique of his art. He tells us, for instance, "that the man who takes up animals has harder work than the man who draws figures, because he is practically always drawing the nude. He has to be very accurate over his anatomy, and very accurate over his form;" which surprises us perhaps at the first reading, but a moment's reflection shows to be right. Rather a novel point in the interview refers to the “health-giving properties" of the cat. Mr Wain is a strong believer this. He says:-

“I look upon the human being a large electrical battery and the cat as a smaller one, and on contact the larger battery absorbs the electricity of the smaller one, while the smaller battery attracts electricity from the atmosphere, every point of the cat's fur being a conductor of electricity for the time being, and thus the loss is made up. The well-known fact that you can get electrical sparks from a cat's back goes to show that this is not an idle theory of mine. The cat is not only a stronger animal than the dog, but is a more refined animal, and is certainly electrically stronger.”

The idea of the cat as a peripatetic galvanic battery is a novel one. It is a pity that Mr Wain does not indicate more clearly in what manner the virtue is to be assimilated. Does living with puss confer any electrical benefit, or must there be contact? And must the cat be black, and stroked in a dark room on a frosty night?

There are cats and cats, and Mr Wain has all their points at his finger ends. It is interesting to know what he thinks the best types. His own favourites are the Siamese species. He says they are the most intelligent. “But,” (he adds) “the good English tabby is an excellent animal. The best type is noticeable for its arched neck, high forehead, and good frontal development generally. In fact, his head is built so that there will be room for his brains. Leaving alone the sandy-coloured creature that they worshipped in Egypt, we can roughly divide the species generally into what I may call the savage cat - not necessarily the wild cat - and the domesticated. In the undomesticated - very plentiful they are, too - we get the long nose, the rakish thin head, and the big ears, and then there follows the wiry body, lank and lean, characteristic of a housetop tile-wandering cat. The same animal domesticated develops into a plump round ball of fur; the eyes, instead of being almond-shaped, are now complete circles; the cheeks have filled out, and have given the face the appearance of being formed upon a series of circles - all of which are signs of refinement in cat-life.

The Persian is by far the most amiable of the foreign cats. The pure white and orange-coloured are the best kind. The Siamese cat, the most distinct type, and one which not to be found anywhere else the world, is most carefully looked after by the Siamese, who believe in the transmigration of souls. The royal cat of Siam, with its rich brown-coloured head, legs, and tail, its cream coloured body, and its light mauve eyes, is fast becoming a rarity. Russia sends us many a novelty in the way of cats - some enormous creatures, and some very small. Most of them are of a rich blue colour, and possess a great wealth of fur. Strange it may seem, every part of the United Kingdom has its own peculiarities and phases of cat life. In the southern counties the species known as ‘silver blues’ predominates; in the west we find the long-haired variety grown to immense proportions. The most intelligent cats come from the Midlands, having big heads, and wearing a look great wisdom.”
- Marguerite.

LADIES' COLUMN. CHAT ABOUT CATS. – HOW TO TREAT CATS.
Dundee Evening Telegraph, 29th September 1897

[By Our Own Lady Contributor.] The following hints to treatment and training are very practical:-
“Cats should never struck. You can sufficiently frighten a cat by the tones of your voice, and the very alertness of the animal's intelligence in most cases tells it that it is doing wrong when you admonish it. Though you pet a cat, always keep it in its place. Give it a basket to sleep in at night. Cats do not like orange peel, and they won't attempt to scratch the flower-beds where orange peel has been put. Always have a patch grass for pussy, even if it be in a flower-pot, for this is his medicine. “

I have often noticed the aversion of cats to orange peel, and have wondered at the reason of it. Can the acrid volatile oil which is sprayed out of the skin as you peel it have anything to do with the prejudice? I don't know, but anyway the hint ought to be useful to gardeners, amateur or otherwise, who have often to tear their hair over pussy’s depredations in their flower beds. It has the additional advantage of finding a use for the orange peel. - Marguerite.

HER LADYSHIP THE CAT.
Westminster Budget, October 1, 1897

Cats, as everybody knows, are fashionable. The Countess of Jersey keeps dozens and scores, to say nothing of the Countess de la Torre, who for years past has fought the battles of her innumer¬able malkins in private and in public [note: the latter was a notorious cat hoarder.]. The great authoress, who is paid a fortune for every novel she writes, is photographed, by preference, with a great Persian cat on her knees ; the eminent scientist makes his tabbies the companions of his study and his laboratory, and the poet’s fine frenzy is stimulated by the purring of a white kitten. And so the world, which rather would be led than lead, even where its domestic favourites are concerned (since it is much easier to adopt the “ideas” of other people than to start any of your own), follows suit, and raises Grimalkin from the low estate into which she had sunk since the days when she figured majestically as an Egyptian goddess.

Seeing that cats are thus “coming to the fore,” it was an excel¬lent idea of the Editor of the ‘Young Woman’ to despatch an inter¬viewer to Mr. Louis Wain, the man who knows probably more about cats, and who can draw them with more spirit and grace, than any other artist in England, and to obtain Mr. Wain’s opinion on the important subject of cats. Mr. Wain, while being interviewed at his pretty Westgate home, was drawing diligently, after the manner of artists, under the hands of some of whom we have seen the most fascinating sketches grow while, half absently, the artist was being cruelly cross-examined by the all-absorbing journalist. Two of the sketches thus obtained — there are ever so many more in the article itself — we reproduce by kind permission of the Editor of the ‘Young Woman’.

Mr. Wain has a delightful theory concerning cats. He says : “ I look upon the human being as a large elec¬trical battery, and the cat as a smaller one, and on contact the larger battery absorbs the electricity of the smaller one, while the smaller battery attracts electricity from the atmosphere, every point of the cat’s fur being a conductor of electricity for the time being, and thus the loss is made up. The well-known fact that you can get electrical sparks from a cat’s back goes to show that this is not an idle theory of mine. The cat is not only a stronger animal than the dog, but is a more refined animal, and it is certainly electrically stronger.” The latter part of which pretty speech will be as honey to every lover of a cat. Next followed the inevitable question : “ Is the cat, as a pet, dying out or progressing ? ” And in the answer to this there is yet another whole jarful of honey for the friend of the “ little electric battery. ”

“ Progressing, and very rapidly, too,” exclaims Mr. Wain emphatically. “ The cat has not been properly developed until recently. ; It used to be merely the old maid’s pet, and it is only of late years that decided progress has been made in giving it a real status in family life. It used to be confined to the kitchen, but, now the long-haired species have come into vogue,” it takes an honoured place in the drawing-room.” And not the long-haired species only, we may add, but observation teaches us that any species of cat whatever, whether its hair be long or short, its colour blue or white or tor¬toiseshell, is taken into the heart and the “ front seats ” in homes of every class.

There is a great deal of information about the “ intelligent foreigners” among cats in this entertaining article. Thus the Persian is by far the most amiable of the foreign cats. The pure white and orange-coloured are the best kind. The Siamese cat, the most distinct type, and one which is not to be found any¬where else in the world, is most carefully looked after by the Siamese, who believe in the transmigration of souls. The royal cat of Siam, with its rich brown-coloured head, legs, and tail, its cream-coloured body, and its light mauve eyes, is fast becoming a rarity. Russia sends us many a novelty in the way of cats — some enormous creatures and some very small. Most of them are of a rich blue colour, and possess a great wealth of fur. But Britons may be proud of the fact that “ the most intelligent cats come from the Midlands, having big heads, and wearing a look of great wisdom.” The following are some of: the signs of the “ perfect ” cat : Eyes round as circles, fat cheeks, a short nose, and a forehead in which there is room for brains.

CAT SHOW TO BEAT THE BAND.
A Provincial Feline With One Head and Two Bodies.
The Daily Republican, October 18, 1897.

From The New York Herald. Mr. Norman B. Mackenzie, druggist, of Newcastle, N.B. has a cat of which he is justly proud. Mr. Mackenzie never tires of telling of the many evidences she has given of superior intelligence and wisdom, and especially of foresight in caring for the financial success of his establishment. A short time ago the cat presented her owner with a litter of kittens. It was apparent, however, from the peculiar mewing and perturbed mental condition of the mother that the domestic relations between her and her children were somewhat strained. An investigation soon revealed the cause. Two of the kittens had but one head between them. There were two perfect bodies dove-tailed together in the most surprising manner, with the fore legs of one of the kittens protruding through the back of the other.

The monstrosity, when discovered, was making a grand effort to preserve its equilibrium. The two legs which shot out in opposite directions to the other six were making a great struggle to establish their right to a resting place on terra firma. The others were equally determined to maintain an even keel. The destiny of the two was soon settled, however, for soon the monstrosity began to perambulate on all sixes and the two legs were left to claw the air.

Mr. Mackenzie was not long in realizing he had a freak that would bring fame and fortune to him, and took great pains in his efforts to bring to the kittens health and strength. Under his tender care they waxed fat and scratched muchly. But the mother cat evidently repented of her attempt to go into the show business, for, after sullenly contemplating her dovetailed prodigy for a day or two, she suddenly seized them in her mouth, and with her fore paws endeavored to tear them apart. The violent surgical operation was fatal to the “combine.” The kittens were killed, and when the mother saw they were dead she contemptuously tossed them aside.

Mr. Mackenzie, however, was determined that such a curious work of nature should not be lost. He had them stuffed, handsomely mounted, and placed in a glass case. The freak is now exhibited gratis in Mr. Mackenzie’s store, where it was the wonder and admiration of many American tourists who passed through the beautiful Miramichi Valley this summer in search of health and sport. To these Mr. Mackenzie with pride narrated the circumstances of the birth and sudden taking off of the kittens.

Mr. Mackenzie has been offered a handsome sum for his curious freak of nature, but has declined to sell.

[ELEVATION OF THE CAT] various, 22nd October 1897
The Cat Show of last week will be followed shortly by a dog show, organised by the Ladies' Kennel association. The attention directed to cats lately has brought shout a great change in the estimation in which these home favourites are held. Instead of harbouring any vagrant animal that chooses to make its way into a house and remain there, ladies carefully select their pets from distinguished families, so that they are eligible for prize competition at a show. Mixed races are not to be tolerated. The taste this year is for long furs, and fine markings of the fur are indispensable. The stranger within the gates of the Cat Show was the cat of Abyssinia, which is being domesticated, but not with its own entire approval, in England. The Abyssinian cat is solemn, and by no means disposed to make friends of masters and mistresses. To the uninitiated in matters it may be well to mention that a first class cat ought to have fat cheeks, even so plump as to have a tendency to droop. There are several great ladies who have superior catteries of their own, with recreation grounds and every luxury provided for their pets. The Duchess of Bedford is one these beneficent cat lovers. A very nice cats' home has been established in one of the suburbs of London, and during the summer absence of owners the domestic pets can be received as paying guests. Of course, the more valuable are the cats the better care will owners take of them, and perhaps the time may come when the wretched homeless creature deserted by its owners for several weeks at a time will be no more seen.

MR. CHURCH AND THE KITTENS
From Leslie's Weekly, reprinted in The New York Times, October 24, 1897

Among the painters in America there is none with a more well-defined personality than Frederick S. Church. This personality expresses itself not only in his exquisite poetical works, but in his manner, his talk, and his attittude toward the world. To some, mr. Church is chiefly known as the creator with pigments on canvas of maidens so divinely beautiful that the beasts of the forests become as suckling doves in their presence; to others he is known as a humorist who can so depict animals that they speak with a plainness and vigor rarely given to men; to others, again, he is known as a quaint raconteur and a writer of original things in a most original way. But to all Mr. Church is known as one of the best exponents of an art which is as original as any given to the world by any first-rate American.

Mr. Church is so modest a man that he will probably not like that this should be said aobut him. His modesty was illustrated several years ago when he was invited by a colleague to dinner. At the dinner were some other guests, who were inclined to make a lion of Mr. Church. He could not resent this, but after dinner he found some kittens in the hall, and taking them to the drawing room he sat on the floor and played with them till it was time to go home, meantime ignoring everything else.

BOARD BILL FOR CHICAGO CATS - Cook County Charged $6.20 for the Felines that Kill Rats

The New York Times, October 28, 1897

CHICAGO, Oct 27 - A requisition was received by Superintendent of Public Service Northam tod-day from County Agent Olsen, asking for the payment of a bill of $6.20, expenses incurred in boarding two cats for twenty-one weeks. This novel requisition will have to be passed upon by the fifteen Commissioners of the County Board, who draw salaries of $3,000 a year for attending to the county's business. The bill was contracted by the man who has the sole care and custody of the cats at the main office on Clinton Street. it is necessary to keep the cats in the County Agent's office to prevent the rats from gnawing holes in the cornmeal and flour sacks.

VEGETARIAN ANIMALS.
The Sketch, 3rd November 1897

Visitors to the Vegetarian Exhibition at the Memorial Hall found nothing to try their faith so severely as the Vegetarian Cat. It was not present in person, for the sufficient reason that it has been dead these two years; but its portrait in oils shows it to have been a more than usually comely specimen of its kind. Miss Whitfield, its owner during the fourteen years of its earthly career, asserts that the likeness does no more than justice. Queen Mab was a tabby, long-furred and finely marked. Her infancy was spent under the best auspices, her mother being a Persian, and her birthplace a clergyman's house in Shropshire. She came into the care of Miss Whitfield at the age of three weeks, and since then till her lamented death remained under that lady's roof, not even proving inconstant, as some flesh-eating breeds do, when the household removed from Shropshire to Thornton Heath.

Queen Mab was a vegetarian not by education, but by instinct. From the time when she deserted Nature's sustenance she developed an extraordinary passion for vegetables of all kinds. Her favourites were peas, beans, and Brussels sprouts, but nothing came amiss. She would go out into the garden and eat strawberries off their beds. Beetroot and dates she revelled in, though those are not uncommon feline tastes. In the case of potatoes she made a distinction. She would devour them with avidity so long as they were not boiled. With that exception, she had no particular views about cooking. For beverages she preferred milk and cocoa. Her singular diet did not affect her health, for she lived to her mature age in the best of condition and temper.

On coming to the ticklish point of Queen Mab' s vegetarian principles, it is necessary to make a qualification. Vegetarians, as we know, consist of more than one sect. Queen Mab may be called a vegetarian of the second degree. She was not averse to washing down a cauliflower with cream, and she would eat meat at a pinch. There was no compulsion. During most of the cat's life Miss Whitfield was not a vegetarian and even now that she is, she keeps Queen Mab's successor, who does not share that gifted animal's tastes, well supplied with the product of the butcher. Queen Mab's predilections were manifest from the first. When she could get vegetables she would not eat meat, and so the animal element was gradually dropped out of her bill-of-fare. At no period of her career would the cat's-meat man, a functionary not known at Thornton Heath, have elicited a single miaow of gross appetite, though she no doubt welcomed the greengrocer with all the enthusiasm of her feline nature. Most of her peculiar tastes were acquired during her country life, when a large garden ministered to her every desire and after coming to town her mistress made a point of seeing that the daily cabbage was not diminished.

Did Queen Mab catch mice? The truth will out now and again, but rarely, she lapsed to that extent. But not in malice. “She would play with them," said Miss Whitfield. Let us hope that the mice went safely home after the sport, and that if Queen Mab, in a moment of inherited weakness, ever toyed overmuch with a sparrow, there was some asparagus-bed or cucumber-frame handy to divert the claims of appetite. One last word, and it is a saddening one. Queen Mab's daughter and only descendant has succeeded to her place in the household. She is a voracious meat-eater.

Speaking of cats (writes a correspondent), I may draw attention to the pussies' home on Haverstock Hill. It is a charming villa, by the way, and as unlike the usual "refuge" as can well be imagined. The honorary superintendent, “Mrs. William," gave me an interesting account of her work on behalf of lost and starving cats, and showed me some wretched-looking animals just brought in by her servants. These would be restored to health, if possible, and new homes found for them if not, they would be sent to Battersea to be painlessly removed, and their bodies afterwards cremated. With reference to one nice animal which attracted my notice she had a comical story to tell. We take boarders in sometimes," she said. "That is an exception, however. Charlie belongs to an old woman in the Hampstead Workhouse - Mrs. Gifford, I think, her name is. She was on the out-relief list, but the Guardians thought it desirable to get her into the ‘house.' Mrs. Gifford was quite willing to go with Mr. Wheatley, but only on condition that he took care of her cats. The Relieving Officer, like enough, was in a quandary, and sent me this letter. I consented to look after her two pets, and so here they've remained ever since, free of charge, of course for the Guardians won't pay for them, and the poor old woman cannot. She comes to see them, though, every week, in her poke-bonnet and blue frock. She always brings some milk and fish or other food with her, and the three of them renew their old relationship over the meal, which generally lasts, I am sorry to say, a couple of hours or more."

That is an excellent idea the executive of the Paris Cat Show have hit on for their next exhibition. The new attraction will be a mouse- hunting competition, to be held in the Palmarium of the Jardin d'Acclimatation; first prize three hundred francs, and second a bronze statuette entitled “La Victoire” a trifle heroic, perhaps, but we need not quarrel with that. It is a happy conception, and should produce beneficial results on the “gate” but what I want to know is how they are going to arrange that mouse-hunt. The obvious plan would appear to be to “draw” the pussies and slip them in pairs, as in coursing but there is a clause in the conditions which seems to mean that this plan will not be adopted; “Three francs entry for each cat; a reduction for kittens which accompany the maternal parent." It displays thought for the future of the French rising population of felines, but if whole families are to be slipped in that Palmarium, I am afraid the competition will degenerate into a cat-fight.

THEY LOVE THE CAT.
Chicago Tribune, 5th December 1897

Good Stories of Chicagoans and Their Feline Pets.
Made Lively Baggage. Dr. Clinton Locke’s Experience with a Kitten on a Train.
Holds a Traveling Record. Low-Born Puss Which Has Crossed the
Atlantic a Dozen Times.
Are Becoming The Dogs’ Equals.

THERE are many prominent people in Chicago who are devoted to the feline race, and among them Mrs. Clinton Locke is conspicuous not only for her fondness for cats but for her catorium, which contains animals of the highest degree.
Besides being remarkable for their blue blood, these pets are developed to the highest possible state of cathood cultivation; they have all the necessary points. They are blue-eyed, brown-eyed, yellow-eyed, according to the color called for by their coats, which are white, red, and blue respectively. The red cats are of Spanish extraction, the blue cats English, and the white, blue-eyed felines come from far Persia. As to the tails of these wonders, so long, fluffy, and bright of color are they that one might imagine them line ostrich plumes of brilliant dye.

But Mrs. Locke’s fondness for cats does not stop at the tabulated ones of the tribe. Last summer the Locke family spent several months at their country place, Lock Haven, and a pretty, intelligent puss made itself so indispensable by its ways that Mrs. Locke determined to bring it back to Chicago when the time for departure came. Dr. Locke objected to the cat as a traveling companion or to it as part and parcel of the baggage, but his objections were flnally overcome, and when the luggage stood waiting on the platform for the train, a bandbox with many airholes and bearing the legend “This side up with care,” was a part of it.

When the journey was half over an excited brakeman burst into the parlor car. “Is Dr. Locke in this car?" he asked. Dr. Locke rose with dire forebodings.

“That cat of yours is loose in the baggage car.” shouted the man, “and I guess you'll have to see to it."

Dr. Locke followed the brakeman to the baggage car, and there, in the interstices of some trunks and boxes, two glittering green eyes were perceptible. On the floor, wild with excitement, two hunting dogs were leaping and baying and making frantic efforts to reach their enemy. Dr. Locke told the man to catch the cat and box it again with excessive care. Then, pressing a half dollar into his hand, fled to the parlor car.

At the next long stop the reverend doctor stepped on the platform for an airing and walked down to see if the cat had been successfully reincarcerated. A group of men were talking in front of the baggage car. The doctor approached and found the brakeman the center of attraction and emphatically declaring that he never in his life “did see such a devil cat as that yeller cat of Dr. Locke’s.’’ Dr. Locke turned away, pondering deeply, for the mild, well-mannered grimalkin that Mrs. Locke had shipped to Chicago was gray.

Mrs. Ela’s Cat Tobey.

Mr. and Mrs. John W. Ela are the possessors of a fine white cat of the Maine Angora variety, which answers to the name Tobey. Tobey has a leonine head, massive shoulders, and a supple, athletic body inherited from a long line of arboreal, possum ancestors; at least it had an athletic build - but that is the story. Some time ago Tobey was stricken with pneumonia and Mrs. Ela not only called physicians for the animal, but herself ministered to its wants with the devotion of a trained nurse. Tobey overcame the disease at length and was soon recovering strength under a comfortable regimen of chopped beefsteak and cream three times a day.

Mr. and Mrs. Ela then went South for a few months, commending Tobey to the care of trusted servants. On their return, instead of the gladsome Tobey bounding to them with loud purrs of greeting, a huge white animated roll of fur dragged itself in with a blasé air and sat stolidly looking about. It was Tobey.

The beautiful, graceful body had assumed Aldermanic proportions and the whilom massive head appeared like that of a kitten in proportion. The secret of Tobey’s embonpoint was the invalid diet of cream and beef which had been continued for three months by the caretakers. Needless to say Tobey was soon banting on lean meat and milk, and in a short time was again the Tobey of the past.

Boston a Cat Heaven.

Bostonians are great cat lovers, and a prominent woman of Chicago tells the following instances of devotion to the race which she observed on a recent visit there.

One day while walking on a thoroughfare she noticed a crowd round a small shop. The people were all looking at something with great interest and there was a continued going and coming. Her curiosity aroused, she waited until the crowd thinned a little and saw, seated on the doorstep, a huge tortoiseshell cat with great, green eyes.

“I’m sorry you're so late, ma’am,” said its master, the proprietor of the shop. ‘”He won't shake hands with you today. An hour a day is all he'll do.”

While walking through a suburb of Boston the same Chicago woman saw a middle-aged woman sitting in the garden in front of her cottage with a large cat slung about her neck very much as fox boas are worn, head and all. She thought that it might possibly be a cat boa, and was so startled at seeing the tail move that she spoke to the woman.

“I alluz wears him when I have the rheumatiz in my shoulder,” the woman said in reply to the question.

Returning to Boston in a train the Chicago woman counted no less than four people who were carrying pet cats in baskets, bags, and arms.

Mrs. James L. High brought a fine specimen of the Maltese Angora from Maine three years ago. which speedily became a great pet. Its Intelligence and sweetness of disposition were unsurpassed. Unfortunately Prairie avenue and Twentieth street, where the High family lives, is infested by dogs of great fierceness, and such is the mortality among the cats of the neighborhood that, in a two years’ residence in Chicago, Kitty High never once was allowed outside the house. Thinking that its health would eventually suffer from such close confinement, Mrs. High carried it back to its native Maine woods, where the family spends the summer, and there it roams at its own sweet will in a dogless paradise.

Most Traveled Cat in Chicago.

The most traveled cat in Chicago belongs to a rich widow who lives in a hotel. The cat is a Londoner by birth. Five years ago the widow and her daughter were staying in London, and the daughter found a poor, homely, starving cat in the street. She picked it up and took it to the hotel. After a liberal diet Tom took on flesh so rapidly and showed such cleverness and affection for its benefactress that it was adopted into the family, although of personal charms it was absolutely destitute.

The cat suffered greatly from “mal-de-mer” on its initial trip to America and required the entire attention of the maid, whose stateroom it shared. The next year its young mistress died, and since then it has crossed the ocean eleven times and developed into a passable sailor. It is said to enjoy greatly the bracing effect of the salt air and becomes more than ordinarily frolicsome on the high seas. The cat has several times revisited its native heath.

Cats are the fashion of the day. A revolutionary era has begun which promises to place the cat and the dog on an equal “pawing” in the minds of all people who think.

News comes from England that will rejoice all the friends of the feline race. An association has been formed in London to aid abandoned cats; cats who have been left behind by people moving, or pets who are allowed to forage for themselves for several months while the family is out of town, leaving no provision for them, or cats who have been thrown into the streets as kittens to make their own livelihood. A house of refuge has already been rented at South Park road. Hampstead, and gifts are pouring in. The patronesses of the institution are the Duchesses of Sutherland and Bedford and the Countesses Warwick, Dudley, and Munster.

CARGO OF CATS FOR PHILADELPHIA.
The New York Times, December 12, 1897

WATERVILLE, Me., Dec. 11. - A twelve-hundred-dollar shipment of cats has just been made to a Philadelphia merchant who proposes to place them on sale in a big department store there. The shipment included 100 kittens, and they are of all kinds and colors, the Angora variety predominating.

A MONOLOGUE UPON CATS.; With Several Incidental Digressions to Other Subjects.
The New York Times, December 12, 1897

She was talking about cats. "Isn't he handsome," she said, looking at the family pet. "I am going to get a kitten while I am here to take home, I didn't expect to be here just at this time, but I did not go away in the Summer as I expected. We were going down to the end of Long Island and had our rooms all engaged. They were splendid rooms, two front rooms on the second floor. We sewed six weeks steadily getting ready to go, and then my brother was taken sick and we couldn't go after all. That is why I am out here now. It is pretty late in the season, but the air is very nice. The cook has promised to find a pretty kitten down in the cellar for me and get it all weaned so that I can take it when I go. A friend of mine was going to get me one. She lives down where I went to get the flowers for my sister’s birthday party. She charged me well for them, too, 50 cents a dozen, but then they were Marechal Neils, and they were beauties. They had a splendid litter of kittens, but they were all promised, and so she said that if I would only come down when they had another litter she would have a kitten all ready for me to take away.

“ They have had some more since, but I didn’t go down, and I guess she has given them all away now. I had one given me in the city, but it wasn't just the kind of a cat I wanted. It was a very handsome cat, and she knew a great deal. She would go around and get up in first my lap and then in my sisters lap, and one evening when my brothers were home she got up in, each of their laps, and even in my little niece’s lap, and she is only four years old . She would say ‘mi-ouw,' ' miouw’ as if she was trying to say, 'You know me, don’t you? ' But she was a. great howler. There was another cat in the neighborhood who looked exactly like her. You couldn’t tell them apart, only the other cat had a blue ribbon around its neck and a bell.

“ We have to have a cat, for we have so many mice. You should see the tabIe where my sister serves afternoon tea. There must have been a few crumbs left on it one night, and It was just covered with mice tracks in the morning. I tell you mice know how to get enough to eat. One morning my sis ter had been getting breakfast. She was cooking some cakes and she was going to the kitchen from the dining room and just as she stepped in the little alcove between the two rooms there was a great noise and a great piece of the ceiling fell. If she had not stepped out of the way just as she did she would have been killed. Why, to tell you how heavy that plastering was, there was a wooden table standing there and It was split clean in two. We would have had a good suit for damages against our landlady if she had been killed. She was only just saved by an inch. And there in that plaster was a whole great quantity of nuts and empty shells. Those little mice had carried them up under the roof, and we didn’t know anything about it.

" We used to leave the cellar window open so that the cats could catch the mice, but we found we couldn’t do that After a while the dampness would come in through the window, so we shut it. Still, there was one cat that kept staying around the house. I caught her one morning, and I gave her such a hit with the broom I was sweeping off the steps with that I nearly knocked over a bicycle. We have three bicycles in our house, and my sister has such a pretty suit and my niece has one also. No one knows what the bicycle has done for that child when she was a little girl, that was at the time when the children were their hair braided down their backs and my little niece called after a little girl on the street, ‘Ching Ching, Chinaman!’ and all about a pigtail, and the little girl hit her, and she fell down and hurt her hip.

“ They were just getting ready to go South, then, for her mother had lung trouble, and so they went, and she had to be doctored all the way. And then she didn’t get better, and they had to bring her back, and the doctor put her in a plaster cast, and then he said get her a velocipede. And so she had a veloclpede, and then she had a bicycle, and when she outgrew that she had another one. ‘That’s all you get from me for a long time,' her father said. But she wanted a new suit and a camera, and so he got them for her. There's nothing too good for that girl. She’s the only child. And so now we haven’t any cat, and the cook here is going to pick me out a nice little kitten, one with sort of red spots" - and then she stopped, for some one called her away .

WANAMAKER’S CAT SHOW.
The Sun (N.Y.), December 17, 1897

Fifty Beautiful and High-Bred Pussies All The Way From Maine. Thousands of women and children went to Wanamaker's yesterday to see the Christmas cat show that is now in progress there. The pussies came all the way from Maine, and comprised what is said to have been the largest single shipment ever made to New York of high-bred mousers. They were purchased by Mr. Wanamaker expressly for the young people of Greater New York and of Philadelphia. The original happy family consisted of 100 aristocratic members. It was divided after purchase, fifty being sent to Philadelphia, the rest taking first-class passage for this city. Although they were bought in Maine on the cat farm at Waterville, these pets represent the highest type of Massachusetts blue blood and respectability, being the product of the Walnut Ridge breeding farm. They were sent to Maine as soon as they were old enough to travel.

The cats are of all sizes and all types, each possessing, however, the fluffy tail and long silken fur of the Angora family. They are or many colors, but mainly jet black, snow white, tiger striped, Maltese and silver amethyst. Their eyes are as various hued as their beautiful coat, being blue, pink, gray, green and brilliant black. The cats are exhibited in pairs in large wire cages, decked with pretty ribbons. About the necks of the pets are other ribbons. There is a cat doctor in constant attendance upon them. Over the cages hang innumerable cages of singing birds.

Of the entire collection the silver amethysts are the bluest blooded, and are the especial favorites of the women folk. They look like great fur muffs, and are of very gentle and affectionate disposition, The idea of a cat show of this kind is a decided novelty in Metropolitan trade. “It originated with the Philadelphia house," said Manager Ogden yesterday, “and was in the nature of an experiment. It has made a bit, though, if we can judge by the popular interest it has attracted,”

It was stated that two of the Angoras, a black and a yellow and white, had been purchased for the Central Park Zoo. The Zoo folk are to breed the pair, and the colors wore selected especially to secure a much desired hue of coat. [I believe this may be part of the scientific attempts to breed male tortoiseshells.]

MORE ANGORA CATS SHIPPED TO WANAMAKER.
The Semi Weekly New Era, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 25th December 1897
A shipment of 100 pure-blooded Angora cats was made on Tuesday from the Linda Vista, Maine, Angora cat range to John Wanamaker, in Philadelphia, except about ten pairs, which went to a New York house. These cats are all of fine colors. The shipment was made in three large crates, made expressly for the Linda Vista farm. This lot makes nearly five hundred cats which have been shipped from Linda Vista during the present year.

PROF. D. G-. ELLIOT LECTURES
He Tells About Cats at the Natural History Museum.
The New York Times, January 7, 1898

The first lecture in a series to be given under the direction of the L1nnaean Society in co-operation with the American Museum of Natural History, was delivered last night by Prof. ‘David Giraud Elliot in the large lecture hall of the museum. “ Cats, and the Lands They Inhabit," was the subject discussed, and in a talk of nearly an hour, punctuated with elaborate stereopticon views, Prof. Elliot gave the history of the feline family, and a graphic glimpse of the different countries where cats are found. The lecture was not of a technical nature, and many of the views given were from actual photographs taken by the professor in his work as Curator of Zoology in the Field Columbian Museum. Other lectures of the course will be given at intervals of about a month.

CAT THAT ADOPTED DOGS.
Kansas City Journal, February 13, 1898.

Patrician Favorite at the New York Cat Show Who Cared for Deserted Puppies. Among the patrician favorites at the Cat show, Honey, exhibited by Miss H. G. Titus, of No. 166 West Seventy-ninth-street, well deserves her name, as being, according to popular verdict, just “too sweet for anything.” Honey received her name, primarily, from her coloring and from a fondness for a honeysuckle bush under which she used to bask in the warm summer sunshine, but though the honeysuckle bush now stands bereft of beauty and fragrance, Honey, by her sweet, domestic virtues, is still an honor to the name.

Last summer she adopted three little dogs, whose mother had turned them adrift. She slept with her little proteges, brought them mice, which, alas, they refused to accept, and protected them from the big setter dog. But now three little pussies of her own have come to gladden her maternal heart, and are on exhibition with their mamma at the Cat show. Their names, chosen with an eye to color, are Klondike (gold), Tiger (striped like her namesake) and Sylvia, a beautiful silver gray. Tip, who keeps a paternal eye on the three little beauties, is a black tomcat 3 years old, who has the proud distinction of having taken a prize in the first National Cat show.

BOYS STEAL CATS FOR SALE.
False Report Leads to the Loss of Many Pets in New Brunswick.
The New York Times, March 12, 1898

NEW BRUNSVVICK. N, J., March 11. – A report became freely circulated among the boys of this town that the National Music String Company of George’s Road would pay 15 cents for every cat brought to its factory. The result is that pet cats are missing from many households, and boys with bags full of cats have been making pilgrimages to the factory ever since the rumor was circulated, only to be told that the company is not buying cats and never did buy any. The report probably originated from the fact thha.t the company makes musical instrument strings from cat guts. These, however, are purchased already cured.

[Note: cat gut is made from sheep intestines]

ON THE EDUCATION OF CATS.
From The Spectator. (Reprinted in The New York Times, March 13, 1898)

There is only one piece of evidence that in ancient 'times the cat was trained - an Egyptian painting showing a. cat bringing wild fowl to its master from a papyrus bed - and very few instances are on record even of its being trained to retrieve in our day. A visitor to one of the monasteries on Mount Carmel states that when several Monks went out, gun on shoulder, to shoot game for the pot, he saw their cats marching out after them, to aid as retrievers; but he did not witness the sport. There is no doubt that cats can be trained to follow, like dogs. A working man in the North Midlands recently owned a small cat which followed him all day, and when tired was carried in a large pocket in its master’s coat. So also a navvy some years ago owned a cat which had followed or accompanied him to work in most parts of North and Western England, sometimes following him on foot and sometimes carried in the white washable bag in which navvies keep their Sunday clothes. But as a rule it is much easier to teach them not to do things than to do them.

Recently in a large London engineering works there was some regret that the " best foundry cat ” was dead. The sand used for making casts in the foundry is mixed with flour. Mice come to eat the flour, and spoil the “ molds.” It is not desirable that rats and mice should be about in this loft, so cats are kept there. The cats have to be taught not to walk about on the molds or scratch them up, and this "best foundry cat " was absolutely perfect in this respect.

WILD AND DOMESTIC CATS
Manchester Times, 18th March 1898
K. E. G. forwards me an interesting paper on this subject. My correspondent informs me she has been a successful exhibitor at some of the principal cat shows in America, and was much interested in recent remarks in this column on "Wild Traits in the Domestic Cat." K.E.G. writes that it is quite true, as stated, that cats have been less influenced by domestication than any other species of animal, and this she considers will always be so, seeing that all kinds of domestic cats are descended from "one or other of the branches of the fiercest and most untameable species of Felis the world has produced, namely, the wild cat." 'There is the wild cat of Western Europe (Felis Catus), larger and stronger than the domestic cat, with a shortish tail which does not taper. The colour of this animal is a yellowish grey, and marked much like the domestic tabby. The Egyptian wild cat (F. Caligata) is a native of Southern Africa [note – odd comment – Egypt is North Africa] and considerably smaller than the European wild cat. It is also of a yellowish colour, but the stripes on the body are not well marked. Then there is, it appears, the American wild cat (F. Lyneus Rufus), which is here described as being very similar to the wild cat of Europe, but "somewhat stronger and stouter." The so-called domestic cats of to-day are evidently, it is agreed, descended from these wild species, existing on the several continents ages ago, when the first members were partially subdued and by breeding in captivity gradually reduced to house pets, or at least to that semi-domestication which rendered them familiar with man and useful for the destruction of vermin or for the capture of game.

The first evidence of the cat's connection with man is to be found on the ancient monuments of Egypt, Babylon, and Nineveh. In the British Museum is an excellent representation of a tabby cat, which seems to be aiding a man who is capturing birds. But the earliest known representative of a cat as a domestic animal and pet is at Leyden, in a tablet 1.684 years B.C., wherein it appears seated under a chair. Then, whether in its wild or domestic condition, what a marvellously constructed animal is the cat, and how wonderfully it appears to have reached a high degree of perfection, in the course of ages, by adaptation to the special natural conditions under which its life has been passed.

Modern Domestic Breeds. The Angola [sic] cat, which has a close relation to the Persian, comes from tile province of Angora, in Western Asia. It has a small head, with a short nose, more angular than the Persian. The body long and gracefully curved, with long silky hair, finer than that of the Persian, and hanging in tufts and clusters, with a slight tendency to woolliness at the base of the hairs. Legs short, tail long, and curving at the end, Colours varied, but blacks, blues, and whites most varied. The Persian is a larger cat, with a larger head and a longer tail than the Angora. The colours are most variable - white, black, blue, chinchilla, smoke, and variable degrees of tortoise-shell and tabby. However, it is held that the tortoise and tabby are not Persian cat colours, but obtained by crossing with English tabby and shorthaired tortoise. The black is the most valued of colours in the Persian. A good, rich, deep black, with orange-coloured eyes, with long flowing hair, and heavy mane, constitutes the most perfect form. The next colour in value is light slate or blue, which may vary much in its shades. Careful selection and breeding in cats has been an object of attention only for a comparatively few years. It is but a matter of half a century since cat shows were in vogue, and that much attention has been paid to these animals. Curious and inexplicable variations of colour occur in the breeding of the cat. It is easy, for instance, to obtain a beautifully marked female tortoise-shell; it is difficult to find a good male tortoise-shell; yet, having found both, and having bred them, while the young females may all turn out tortoise-shells, the average male, will be a red or yellow tabby.

CATS ARE NOT USELESS.
The English Beer Committee Tests Good and Bad Drinks by Pussy's Extremely Resistant Qualities.
From the London Telegraph (Reprinted in The New York Times, April 9, 1898)

At the last meeting of the Beer Materials Committee, the Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery presiding, Mr. Philip Schidrowitz said that a beer brewed from substitutes is not the same article as a beer brewed from all-malt alone, and that some of the substitutes introduced into the beer which are certainly foreign to it. The general idea of the Food and Drugs Act was that a person should obtain that which he required and expected to get; but these "substitute beers" were not "beers," and ought not to be sold as such. [...]

In considering whether the substitutes were directly injurious to health, in conjunction with Dr Tunnicliffe, he had examined the effects of residues of brewing sugars and residues of all-malt beers on cats. In some of the cases where residues of brewing sugars were administered to cats, either actual vomiting or retching was caused within from half an hour to an hour, and in two cases slight ataxia was produced. Seven experiments were conducted with the residues of all-malt beers, the cats having been from eighteen to twenty hours without food. The substitutes were introduced into the stomach in the afternoon of one day, and the next morning all the cats were found to be quite normal, no symptoms of any kind having been observed meanwhile. The cat was chosen for these experiments for two reasons, first, because it is a carnivorous animal, and, secondly, because it is extremely resistant, the latter characteristic rendering it probable that the effects following the administration of the residues ware minimal, and not maximal. He thought that further investigation in this direction was necessary.

THE CASE OF CATS.
From Our Animal Friends. (Reprinted in The New York Times, April 24, 1898,

First as to Food -- Very few of those who love cats give them enough to eat. When in good form, a cat likes a good square meal, but in good health she will never eat to repletion. There is no hard-and-fast rule as to the best sort of food for a cat. Bread and milk, or oatmeal porridge and milk, or mashed potatoes with good gravy some cats will enjoy. But all must have meat, though not overmuch, because it may induce diarrhea. Fish is a great treat, and milk is to be looked upon as food, not drink. Give now and then a morsel of sweet butter. After she has eaten it she will begin to lick herself, and thus cleanliness of coat will be insured.

Drink-Water is a sine qua non if you desire to keep your favorite happy and healthy. Some will drink tea and milk, but water is the drink.

Cleanliness - Almost any out will refuse either food, milk, or water which is not clean, or which is presented to her in a dirty or unwashed dish.

Housing - There is no more objectionable practice than that of turning your cat out of doors at night, and none more certain to engender disease and spoil poor pussy’s morals. If you have taken pains to train your cat to habits of cleanliness in the days or her youth, she will never, while in good health, forget herself. Keep her in at nights then, or rather give her some little dainty as the last thing, and she will come in regularly to obtain it. Cats that are turned out at night bring the whole feline race into disrepute, kill valuable pigeons, tear up and destroy flower beds, and, by fighting and caterwauling, keep nervous people awake. Give pussy a nice bed in a basket, and keep this scrupulously clean.

EASTERN CATS.
The Sketch, 27th April, 1898
Photographs by Charles Reid, Wishaw.

Whether it be due or not to the more lethargic temperament which is fostered by the petting his beauty secures him, we need not inquire; but it is certain that the Persian and Angora cats, as a rule, are less intelligent than the common British tabby. With very little patience you may teach an average short-haired cat simple tricks, provided, of course, that you take its education in hand during plastic kittenhood; but the long-haired cats, though beautiful and affectionate exceedingly, are dull-witted. All allowance must be made for the blue-eyed white Persians, which are so generally deaf. I have been reluctantly compelled to accept the theory of lower intelligence after indulgent study of Persians in full possession of their faculties. Kittens of origin so mean [low-bred] that they almost drop their “H’s” when they hiss at a dog will wait beside hot food apparently conscious that it will cool; whereas all the young Persians with whom I have ever been acquainted burn their tongues and will not look at the dish again.

Persians and Angoras may be considered one variety; for exhibition purposes they are described as “longhaired” cats and classed according to colour. The pure white is usually regarded as the typical Persian cat; but there are black Persians, dark tabby, silver or blue tabby, cream or orange, “smoke,” and cats with variegated coats, which are classed by themselves. Mr. J. E. Dewar’s Le Roi is a splendid example of the dark tabby ; he is the proud winner of fifteen first prizes, two seconds, and forty special prizes, four of the latter having been awarded him as the best cat in the show. His portrait was taken in June, when he was not in coat. The long-haired cats are always at their best during the winter months. It may be natural indolence, but the Persian cat is apt to be careless about its appearance, devoting far less attention to its toilette than the short-haired cat. This shortcoming may be corrected by shutting the delinquent up in a cage for a few days; the prisoner finds time hang heavily on its paws, and cleans itself for the sake of occupation. The habit of washing thus acquired continues after release.

Some Persians will allow themselves to be bathed in hot water, but none that I have ever known will take to water with the readiness of the short-haired and kink-tailed cats of Burma, Siam, and Malaya. I once took a pair of kittens with me from a jungle village, and when the boat reached mid-stream let them out of the basket, thinking my prizes were safe. They went straight to the thwart, and, almost without hesitation, sprang overside. One I caught in the act of “taking off,” the other alighted in the water full four feet from the boat, and swam faster than any dog the forty or fifty yards to shore, where a Burman caught him as he struggled through the thin, deep mud.

A tame jungle-cat, owned by a lady in Rangoon, used to take to water as readily as an otter in pursuit of fish; he was an exceedingly clever angler, and was said to spend the better part of his days by a stream which ran through a jungle-clad ravine, fishing and eating his prey. The common British cat occasionally conquers its aversion to water for the sake of sport: at the Solway Fishery, Dumfries, Mr. Armitstead, a few years ago, had a cat which caught trout frequently in the shallows, and—with more enthusiasm than sense—used to spring at fish that rose within range in deep water. She never, by any accident, caught one by this latter method, but persevered with determination worthy of a Thames trout-fisher, swimming ashore after each failure, and clambering unconcernedly out; another cat had the same propensity.

The Duchess of Bedford’s Goblins is not one of the kink-tailed variety. He belongs to the royal Siamese breed, and his coat is fawn on the back and sides, darkening into a deep brown on the legs and under-parts. Her Grace possessed a pair of these cats, and it is a curious fact that their kittens were always white. A noteworthy point about the cats from the eastern side of the Bay of Bengal, and one of which I have not found mention in any of the books on cats, is the length of their hind limbs. The Persians and ordinary cats stand almost level; the kink-tailed and royal Siamese breeds arrest attention at once by the height of their quarters, which serves in the former varieties, to make their taillessness the more obvious.

FAMOUS WELSH PREACHER.
Herts Advertiser, 7th May 1898
On Monday evening, the Rev. Ossian Davies, a well-known speaker, gave a very interesting lecture in the Spicer-street Congregational Schoolroom. [. . .[ Drawing a contrast between the Welsh newspapers and great London dailies, he pointed out that in the former they had columns of reports of religious movements, but in the big Metropolitan journals they often observed columns in “long primer” devoted to sporting news, and a column of “bourgeois” type dedicated to cat a show at the Crystal Palace-(laughter).

BLUE SHORT-HAIRED CAT. The Gentlewoman, 14th May 1898
It is quite impossible for me to tell you the breed of your cat without knowing more particulars. True bred, short-haired blues are Russian, but owing to their rarity many breeders in England have crossed the Persian, or long-haired blue with the ordinary short-haired, in order to produce them, therefore a short-haired strain is now in existence, which, of course, is not Russian. Was your cat imported? (MELTON, Bromwich).

THE MANAGEMENT OF CATS. The Gentlewoman, 1st October 1898
Your queries are so numerous that I must number them. (1) If she is the only cat of the house you cannot do better than feed her immediately after your own meals with some scraps from your own table. (2) Cats rarely require training to eat vegetables, for which they have a natural craving. (3) Whipping is always out of place with dumb animals. It is folly to handle the coat unnecessarily, and too much caressing flattens the coat. (4) The earth box in scullery is a great mistake. Cats are very easily taught to be clean by never allowing them to be dirty, and by shutting them out at regular intervals. (5) I do not advise the coddling of cats; they are only semi-domestic, and by coddling you make the animal susceptible to ailments. Cats, to be healthy, should live out of doors most of their time, so long as they have a place to sleep in at nights free from draughts; it is far healthier than to keep them in warm rooms. (KISTANEY.)

OWNERS FALL OUT OVER OWNERSHIP OF SHOW CAT
Pall Mall Gazette, 5th August 1898

There were two maiden ladies of Lee, as friendly as friendly could be. But there was also a blue Persian cat, one Roy, and in an evil moment Miss Slater’s eye fell on Roy. Cats and maidenladyhood are a favourite example of the association of ideas, but in this case the evil of speculation, that curse of modern society, blurred the usual idyllic picture. Miss Slater got Miss Harris to join her in a feline syndicate; Miss Slater bought Roy for thirty shillings; Miss Harris paid out twenty-five shillings on a “cattery,” and attended to the cat, and all such prizes and profits as the cat might fetch were to be halved. At least so it has been decided was the arrangement. But whereas the National Cat Club ruled that the prize it gave Roy was to be halved, Miss Slater stuck to all the prizes he scored at Brighton. She was the owner, she said; Miss Harris only the paid trainer. But it is rules that the cat belongs to both, half and half, and therefore the prizes must be split, not the cat. We heard of a split cat with wings in a recent trade-mark case, but the National Cat Club gives no prize for that sort.

DIVIDED OWNERSHIP IN A CAT.
The career of the champion cat "Roy” was incidentally alluded to in the case of Harris v Slater before Mr Justice Stirling in the Chancery Division on Thursday. Mr Godefroi said it was a partnership action, the parties being Elizabeth Harris, spinster, plaintiff, and Annie Slater, defendant, and he moved for an injunction to restrain the defendants from excluding the plaintiff from the business founded on the cat, which was a blue Persian, and from selling or exhibiting the cat without the consent of the plaintiff, and from representing that the cat was the defendant's sole property. The evidence showed that the value of the cat was £100. Mr Owen Thompson, for the defendant, suggested that £20 was nearer the mark. Mr Godefroi said that in May of last year a certain Miss Simpson [later Mrs. Thring] made a suggestion to Miss Slater, the purchaser of the cat, which was then a kitten, and not in very good health. (Laughter). As a result Miss Slater called on the plaintiff and asked her to go into partnership with her in this cat, and plaintiff agreed to do so. The terms of the partnership were that the defendant was to pay for the cat, which was then to be had as cheap as 30s, and the plaintiff was to keep it. The plaintiff spent money to provide a residence for the cat, and kept it about 18 weeks. The cat was then shown at the Crystal Palace show, and carried everything before it, viz., two first prizes, four special prizes, the championship, and a silver medal. According to the rules of the National Cat Club, under which the Crystal Palace show was held, it was provided that the cat should be registered and entered in the names of the owners. That was done, and the plaintiff paid the entry fee. A few days, afterwards the ladies “had some words." The plaintiff demanded half her share, and what followed was this action. Finally the Judge made the order asked for by the plaintiff, holding that the partnership extended to her not only in respect of profits on the cat, but in all other respects.

FAMOUS CAT IN CHANCERY.
Sheffield Independent, 6th August 1898
Mr. Justice Stirling, in the Chancery Division, was called upon to try a singular partnership action, Harris v. Slater, the stock-in-trade consisting of a blue Persian cat named Roy, which was said to be worth £100. Miss Elizabeth Harris, the plaintiff, sought a decree that she was entitled to a half-share in the animal, and that the accounts of partnership should be taken. The cat was purchased when it was a kitten by the defendant, Miss Annie Slater, for 30s, from a Miss Simpson [later Mrs. Thring], the purchaser thinking that it would turn out to be a good bargain, which it eventually did, as it carried off the principal prizes at the International Cat Show at the Crystal Palace in 1897, and was equally successful at the Brighton show. The defendant having bought the cat found she had not sufficient accommodation for it, so the plaintiff took charge of it, and had a house specially constructed for its convenience.—-Mr Godefroi, counsel for plaintiff, said partnership was then entered into between plaintiff and defendant with respect to the animal, the effect of which was that the plaintiff was to have a half-share in the cat, and the prizes which it obtained were to be equally divided between the parties, and also the profits derived from stud purposes. At the show in the Crystal Palace the cat was entered and exhibited in the joint names of plaintiff and defendant, the rules requiring that the names of the owners of animals should be registered. Disputes afterwards arose between the parties, the defendant denying that the plaintiff had any property in the cat- The matter was referred to the committee of the National Cat Club, who decided that the plaintiff was entitled to a half-share in the animal. The learned counsel submitted that their decision on the point was conclusive. The defendant had the cat in her possession now, the plaintiff having given it up to her on the defendant admitting that plaintiff was entitled to a half-share in the animal. Mr. Owen Thompson, who represented defendant, contested that there was never any partnership created. All that was agreed on was that plaintiff, in consideration of her having charge of the cat, should have half the prizes that were obtained at the Crystal Palace show. The learned counsel suggested that it was only after the cat turned out to be a valuable one, though the outside price was only about £25, that the plaintiff set up her claim to a half-share – His lordship said he was of the opinion that a partnership existed between the parties, and therefore he would order that the accounts of the partnership be taken. He also granted an injunction restraining defendant from selling or dealing with the cat in any way prejudicial to the plaintiff’s property in it.

AND THIS CAT CAME BACK
The Inter Ocean, August 21, 1898
Its Name Is Bum But Its Lineage And Price Is Aristocratic

"And the cat came back.”
That’s where it showed its good sense, for tabby never had a prettier nest than Mrs. Edward Craft Green of No. 501 North State street gave her valuable Angora puss “Bum.”

Last Sunday morning, however, Bum, being desirous of doing something to deserve its peculiar name, wandered forth without the permission of its mistress. When Mrs. Green went to get him, an empty collar dangling from a limp cord was all that could be found. Now, Bum is a very valuable animal. Its pedigree is lost in the length of its antiquity, and $125 is the lowest estimate of what it is worth. Moreover, it belonged to the famous stock of Angoras owned by Mrs. Clinton Locke, who gave the cat to Mrs. Green. When Bum's disappearance was discovered Mrs. Green felt deeply grieved at her loss. She spent Sunday forenoon patrolling the neighborhood and begging the assistance of her friends in trying to recover her pet. Up one street and down another she went, peering into the alley and all the nooks and cracks where the cat might hide, but without success. Bum was nowhere to be soon. Then the Larrabee street police station was notified. The officers were requested to look for a large, fine cat with a high-bred, aristocratic air that would distinguish it from any other wandering feline. They did so, but without any satisfactory result. Bum had entirely disappeared. Thus Sunday passed without success in the search, and sorrow settled down upon the Green household. But Mrs. Green would not give up. Bright and early Monday morning she continued to look for the missing Bum. At noon, however, meeting with no better results, she gave her pet up as lost forever.

Monday evening, while the Greens were dining, the front door bell rang sharply. When the maid answered it a child voice said: “Tell Mrs Green that an awful pretty cat is down in the next block.”

Before the maid could deliver the message, Mrs. Green was at the door with her hat on, and she and the small messenger had started to see the cat. And sure enough it was Bum, looking slightly the worse for wear, but nevertheless unharmed.

Bum la a very handsome cat of a tawny color and eleven pounds. The cause of its disappearance is a mystery, and always will be, but, as Mrs. Green said: “What difference does that make, now, so long as Bum Is safely back again.”

CAT CHARACTERISTICS.
Read This and Learn All About Your Tabby.
The Evening Times, September 3, 1898

The chances are that you do not know your cat. You may think you do, but if you read the signs that the feline phrenologist of the Age-Herald tells about, you will feel that a limited acquaintance is all you can really claim. The cat family, says this authority, in which are included the King of Beasts as well as the ignoble panther, the couager [sic], the jaguar and that great spotted cat, the tiger, is renowned for its bad traits as well as its good ones.

A long line of personal characteristics runs down through the tribe finding vent in the offspring of all the branches of the family. It is your hard lot if you choose a pet embodying the bad characteristics; and your good fortune if you get one that combines the courage of the lion, with the cunning of the tiger and the generosity of the cat.

In every family of every tribe there are members that excel for personal goodness. In choosing a pet that is, in its native state a wild beast, it is important to get the good predominating over the evil. After a long research, extending over six years. I have found that a cat's head is as good an index of its composition as the head of a man is an index of the human disposition.

In selecting your tabby look at her nose. A good dispositioned cat will have a nose that is round and stubby, a pug nose you would call it. It will be thick and rather prominent. Avoid a flat nosed cat or one that shows small thin disintending nostrils. A cat that is attentive and dutiful will have thick ears which she keeps straight up or a little ahead of her. A cat that “flecks” her ears too often is apt to be spiteful.

The most satisfactory trait in a cat is a high square forehead. This cannot be too high nor too broad. The best cat I ever saw was in the household of Lady William Beresford. It was a maltese tabby which was sent to her from New Hampshire. The New Hampshire maltese cats are famous for their wisdom and intelligence. This cat showed absolute good judgment. She knew when she was not wanted and when to occupy the center of the floor. If gentlemen called she retired to a corner; if children she withdrew entirely. For young ladies she made herself conspicuous and would jump on their laps at call. That cat had a forehead so expansive that it occupied more space than all the rest of her face.

Projecting cheeks in a cat show contentment. A cat with full jaws will not run away. She has the facial marks of contentment too well planted for that. The bump of home love lies with the cat under the ears and a little forward on the cranium. This gives the fullness known to us as fat cheeks. The higher and fuller the cheeks of a cat the better she will love her home. A pudgy upper lip denotes contentment with food and personal taste. A cat with a full upper lip will not eat offal. She will prefer clean food on a clean plate, and if you humor her she will soon become an epicure. She will lick her chops a great deal and rub them many times a day with her paw.

The mouse-seeking qualities of a cat are told by her eyes. Full, expressive eyes that see all that is going on proclaim the mouser. A cat is naturally quick, and her carnivorous taste makes her partial to mouse meat, but unless she has the sight and the quickness of eye she will not distinguish herself as a mouser. A quick movement of the eyes, a general comprehensiveness of expression, a smiling, earnest glance is the one that bodes ill for mice. The best mouser I ever knew was a big, fat cat with long, expressive eyes that seemed quite human. She would lie motionless for hours watching a mouse-hole. Then, of a sudden, she would spring and it was all over as far as the mouse was concerned. Do not condemn a cat that is a poor mouser. There are cats that do not like mice, and, at certain seasons, no cat longs for fresh meat. Feed your non-mouser milk and she will soon want a mouse. A disposition to purr is an excellent thing in a cat, for a cat that is purring will not bite. A biting cat never purrs.

Sleepiness is another desirable thing in a cat, as this shows playfulness. A sleepy cat will waken and play with a ball of cord, no matter what her age or how many families she may have raised. She will prove a great source of pleasure and her antics will waken a laugh at the bluest moment.

Then the phrenologist goes on to say that if a family takes a notion to kittens, the mother cat must be selected with a view to her head, which must be much too large for the body. Kittens there are in disastrous plenty — the average city seems to have fifty times as many as it can accommodate — one sees them in the parks and alleys and streets, poor little starved-out mangey things; but whoever sees a cat with an extra large head? Which goes to prove, with respect to the phrenologist, that normal-headed felines must be eligible to family honors as well.

A CAT'S PLUNGE TO DEATH.; Bereft of Her Kittens, Francesco Lost the Love of Living -- Alighted on Her Head.
The New York Times, September 4, 1898

Brooding over the untimely taking off of a number of her offspring, who had been made to shuffle off this mortal coil in a pail of water, a large Maltese cat, living at 200 Mulberry Street and rejoicing in the name Francesco, killed herself yesterday by jumping from a third-story window to the pavement below. She struck on her head, death resulting instantly. A few days ago Francesco became the proud possessor of several kittens. They were her first born, and the maternal interest which she took in them was remarkable. If actions could be taken as evidence of her feelings, Francesco was of the opinion that the sun rose and set only upon the kittens. She went so far as to change her manner of living, foregoing the pleasures of the midnight jubilee on the neighboring backyard fences, so that she might be with her dear ones. Unfortunately, though, Francesco’s eyes were blinded -to the fact that the kittens were not all the mother fondly imagined. The truth was, they had sore eyes and were not presentable to public gaze. Whether or not they might have improved with age is a mooted question; but it seems that Mrs. Antonio Corelli, in whose household Francesco made her quarters when not otherwise engaged, decided to take no chances. The kittens must die. Such was the edict. And so in the quiet of a bright morning early last Week one of the young Corellis, with unpitying heart and hand, took the kittens to a secluded corner where a, pail of water stood ready, and there the young lives were ruthlessly blotted out. Usually on such occasions the life of one at least of the feline batch is spared; but this case was an exception. All went the way of flesh. Now, it chanced that as the extermination process was in progress, Francesco, missing her kittens, set about, the while howling plaintively, to find them. At last just as they were properly dispatched, she came upon them and their youthful slayer. One long, loving look she cast upon the bodies of the slain; one look at the face of the youth who stood over them. Then she turned and, the plaintive cries renewed, went her way. That night she ate nothing, nor would she be consoled. The next day came, and still she refused food and comfort. Alone and unresponsive she sat upon the window sill in one of the rooms on the third story, looking out blankly and dejectedly, brooding over those that were gone. While thus she sat yesterday Policeman Delfor of the Mulberry Street Station chanced to pass. The cat gave a melancholy yowl. The policeman looked up; again the cat yowled. And then, to the amazement of the officer, she rose suddenly to her feet and just as suddenly sprang outward to the sidewalk, many feet below. When Mr. Delfor reached the spot where she had struck Francesco was dead. She had made no effort to “light on her feet," as cats _are always supposed to do. Instead she had fallen, deliberately fallen, to her death. There is mourning in the house of Mrs. Antonio Corelli, for Francesco was beloved by all the family.

THE LATEST IN CATS.
Evening Express, September 8, 1898

A strange freak of nature is reported from Leamington, where a cat belonging to Mr. E. Griffin, of 38, Shrubland-street has given birth to four kittens, all of which, though fully developed, are joined together. One of the kittens has since been killed by the mother, but the other three are alive and doing well. While the heads of two of the kittens are close together, that of the third is in the opposite direction.

PROPERTY RIGHTS IN CATS.
From The Richmond Dispatch. (Reprinted in The New York Times, September 18, 1898)

Not long ago one of the English Chancery Courts had before it a case which involved a very unusual state of facts. The plaintiff, a maiden lady, claimed that she was entitled to a half share in a blue Persian cat, which rejoiced in the pompous name of Roy. She asked that an account of the partnership be taken, and that other complications regarding the cat be straightened out. The defendant, as might have been expected, was likewise a Spinster, and it appears from the evidence that during the kittenhood of the cat she gave the animal into the Charge of the plaintiff, who bestowed upon it all those tender attentions which the pets of unmarried ladies so frequently enjoy.

Perhaps all would have gone as merrily as a wedding bell (despite the celibacy of the litigants) had not the much-fondled Roy developed some extraordinary characteristics. In short, the cat astonished its most ardent admirers by developing an amazing capacity for prize-winning. At all the cat shows the whiskered quadruped became a prime favorite, and many trophies fell to its lot, or, more strictly speaking, to the lot of its owners. It was entered at the Crystal Palace show in the joint names of the plaintiff and defendant under the rule requiring the names of the animals’ owners to be registered. But after the development of the winning streak the plaintiff denied that the defendant had any property in the cat.

The Lord Chancellor, after he had duly scratched his legal pate in consideration of the much-vexed question, decided that a partnership existed between the litigants, and, therefore, he ordered the accounts of the partnership to be taken. He also granted. an injunction restraining the defendant from selling or dealing with Roy in any way prejudicial to the plaintiff’s property in it. The above case might well strike the layman as an absurdity and as belittling the dignity of the Court, but household pets, such as dogs, cats, parrots, monkeys, etc. have so frequently been the subject matter of litigation that a distinct and clearly defined line of decisions concerning them has sprung into existence. The latest encyclopedia on law devotes forty closely printed pages to the subject of “animals,” and cites hundreds of cases which have been decided on questions pertaining to the brute creation. Nor are the principles enunciated by any means simple or frivolous.

CATS AND SHELLFISH
From the New Orleans Times-Democrat (Reprinted in The New York Times, October 24. 1898)

“Did you ever notice the cats about the oyster stands of the city?" asked a gentleman who takes an interest in zoology. "They are invariably as fat as butter. That is because they get plenty of shellfish to eat, and, by the way, the fondness of cats for that kind of diet is a mystery which I’d like to hear some evolutionist explain. A cat will go crazy over a shrimp, and it is all the same whether it's a city cat or a hayseed cat that never saw water except in a cistern. It’s a taste born in them, like their fear of dogs, and the question is, how the mischief did they acquire it? According to the evolution theory, such trails are inherited and traceable to conditions away back toward the beginning of things. That would seem to indicate that the primal cat was a fisher, but how is one to reconcile the idea with the instinctive abhorrence of the tribe for Water? Their craving for shellfish is certainly so pronounced that there must be an excellent reason behind it, and, altogether, it is quite a pretty little problem for some savant. It is too hard for me."

THE EXPRESSION OF A CAT INDICATES ITS HOME LIFE
Pall Mall Gazette, 3rd November 1898
Stimulated by the Crystal Palace cat show, and such like institutions, there are probably an increasing number of people who take an interest in cat-life. It is to such that Mr. Louis Wain appeals in his article on character in cats in Cassell's Magazine for November. " Cats are like children," he says. "Educate them properly and you can do with them and their characters even as you will. One aofthe first things that impressed itself on my mind, on going round to cat shows as judge, spectator, or artist, was the extraordinary difference that exists in the characters of cats coming from different parts of the country. Indeed, the effect that a crowded exhibition and its surroundings have upon different cats is really very strange. Most of those cats which, at home, are rarely drawn out of themselves, and which you see, in an ordinary way, under one or two conditions of expression, immediately develop a new expression; and this typifies the effect home life has upon them. For instance, a cat which has been treated by its master or mistress very lovingly, and has, in normal circumstances, seen a number of people who have praised it, and petted it, and stroked it a great dead, will exhibit au entirely new, smug, contented, and happy expression when it comes before the public. On the other hand, the animal that has lived a life of ease, seeing nobody and nothing beyond its mistress, will exhibit the most striking characteristics of its mistress. Thus, if the character of the woman be, in the main, a sulky or a snappy one, the effect of the sudden change upon the cat's life will be to bring out in the cat a sulky or a snappy disposition also. Another cat will, perhaps, show itself in the highest degree suspicious, taking after its master or mistress again; while a fourth, that has had to fight his way, will quarrel and rush at everything; and a fifth, that has been allowed to roam the country, will ruffle up its straw, get underneath its bed to hide right out of sight, and nothing but force will move it"

ROOSEVELT IN THE BOWERY
Cheers and Dead Cats Express the Variety of Opinion on the East Side
The New York Times , November 6, 1898

Col, Theodore Roosevelt made a tour of the Bowery last night. It might have been called an unmixed political triumph had not the enemies of the republican candidate been awaiting his coming with sticks and stones and that kind of dead cat known to the boys of the East Side as “sun birds” …

Snippet from The New York Times, December 4, 1898 - CHICAGO, Dec. 3 - A cat assisted Mr. Morenhause, a civil engineer, to the solution of a difficult problem this week. Ever since the enormous Coliseum burned a chimney, 130 feet tall, has been standing alone in the midst of the ruin, menacing the lives of all who passed along the street. it has, in fact been the custom to avoid the neighborhood in a windstorm. The company which bought the bricks and iron of the burned and ruined building was under contract to raze this lofty pile, but the problem was difficult, and various plans were proposed, event to the attaching of traction engines which should pull cables in different directions and shatter it. Mr. Morenhause saw a beautiful cat eating a turkey bone at the base of the chimney, and as he entered the room at the base of the structure the cat ran up the ladder inside. She went to the very top, and Mr. Morenhause, being in an adventurous mood, followed. Standing at the apex with the cat, who had ceased to flee, but was purring about his feet, he suddenly conceived the idea for demolishing the chimney from the insied, and plans are now being perfected by which the bricks will be pushed from their places by rams used on the inside of the building. The cat was taken to the home of Mr. Morenhause, where it will be assisted in its civil engineering proclivities - for the engineet gives his white friend credit for his inspiration.

AMUSING CASE - A PRIZE CAT'S BOARD AND LODGING.
South Wales , 9th November 1898
Yesterday at the Croydon County Court Mr Registrar Fox had before him the case of Babb v. Dr. Roper," which was an action brought by Richard Thacker Babb, the holder of a stall at the Crystal Palace, to recover from the defendant a registered medical practitioner, residing at Oatlands, Beckenham-road, Penge, the sum of £1 14s, being 17 weeks' board and lodging for a silver-haired Persian cat.

Mr W. Hood appeared for the plaintiff, who, be said, undertook to take charge of a prize Persian cat for 2s a, week, but while in his possession the animal became ill and died. Before its decease the plaintiff sent several messages to the defendant, informing him that the cat was ill. It died on August 27th, and the defendant subsequently wrote saying he was sorry he was not acquainted earlier of the cat's serious condition, as with better advice and accommodation its life might have been saved. The plaintiff, added Mr Hood, was well accustomed to look after cats, and always exercised ordinary care. As a fact this animal died a day or two after being exhibited at the Crystal Palace Cat Show.

The plaintiff bore out his solicitor's statement.
The Registrar - Where is the cat now ?
Plaintiff - I have the paws.
The Registrar - The skeleton ?
Plaintiff - No, sir the remains.
The Registrar - Where are the remains ?
Plaintiff said he buried them in the Crystal Palace grounds. His own garden was not large enough to bury big cats like that in. (Much laughter.)

Replying to the defendant, the witness said he could undertake to point out the spot where he buried the cat. He had kept the animal in a pen 5 feet long, 4 feet through, and 2 feet 6 inches high. He had kept much more valuable cats in it. He could not say he had promised not to pen it.

The defendant at this point produced the following written document, signed by the plaintiff in April, 1898: “Received a blue Persian cat to take charge and care for for the sum of 2s a week, inclusive. I promise not to use it for stud purposes, or under any circumstances to pen it."

Mr Hood said this document had quite taken him by surprise. He was not aware that there was any written undertaking. In the result the learned Registrar non-suited the plaintiff.

THE CAT REBELLED. Orkney Herald, 16th November 1898
The son of a Baptist clergyman in a village where that religion and the Methodists are the two favourites, has inherited all the traditional baptism-by-immersion principles, and by the close attention given to the ceremony as performed by his fond parent is able to repeat it word for word. A few days ago he filled a tub with water in the back kitchen, and catching the family cat and her two kittens, proceeded to teach them one of the essential rites of the Baptist Church. The kittens underwent the ordeal without protest, but the cat showed her displeasure by scratching the boy's face. Throwing the offending animal down, he said in disgust: "Hang it, then, be a Methodist if you want to!”

SAME CAT
Various, December 1898

First Judge (at cat show) — This is the finest one in its class. There can hardly be two opinions about that.

Second Judge (with tears) — It was that cat, or one exactly like it, that ate my pet pigeon last week. You will never get a prize by my vote, you mean, nasty animal!

PHENOMENAL INSTINCT
The Los Angeles Times, 1st December 1898

[Philadelphia Times:] An instance of remarkable sagacity displayed by a cat in connection with the oil-tank steamer Bayonne, now loading at Point Breeze, is just now the prevailing topic of conversation among officials of the custom-house and the employés of the Atlantic Refining Company. It is a true story and is vouched for by the crew of the Bayonne, the boarding officers and all others having to do with the vessel.

When the Bayonne came to Philadelphia, about seven weeks ago, she had a pet, an ordinary black and white pussy, whose birthplace was far off beyond the Italian Alps. The cat was a present to Capt. von Hugo and. had accompanied him on several voyages. It is, moreover, no ordinary tabby, as it is the proud possessor of a pedigree and an appearance equally remarkable. Italy is not blessed with many cats — in fact, they are almost a rarity. Therefore to the great cat show held last year at Florence there were vast crowds attracted. The mascot of the Bayonne was present and carried off a big gold medal, which Capt. von Hugo personally exhibits to visitors — a tribute to the finest specimen of feline aristocracy represented at the exhibition.

While the big oil tanker was loading her cargo at Point Breeze on the visit mentioned, to the horror of the captain and the consternation of the steward, who was charged with its keeping, the animal disappeared the day after presenting to the ship four beautiful kittens. Well-organized parties searched the tanker from stem to stern, and thoroughly explored the streets and wharves around the oil works, but all to no avail. Pussy was gone, and with much regret Capt. von Hugo was obliged to make sail without his old companion.

Two days after the Bayonne left the prodigal returned. Running down on the wharf it cast anxious glances at the big bark Sternbeck, which now occupied the pier formerly held by the Bayonne. Visiting in succession every ship in the vicinity, the instinct of the cat forbade its boarding any of them, and finally giving up in despair it cast its lot in the watchbox of Watchman Manly, seemingly reconciled to the fact that it must await the appearance of the absent oil ship. During the six weeks in which the Bayonne was on her voyage to Savonia, Italy, twenty other steamers came in and each was carefully inspected in turn by the abandoned tabby. Strange to say, a survey from a distance seemed to satisfy the cat. It was obvious that its former home was not recognized.

At last the Bayonne returned, and then was manifest an unparalleled exhibition of animal instinct. When the oil ship was still far down the stream pussy took her position on the end of the wharf, showing by a thousand antics that the oncoming craft was the one so anxiously awaited for so many weeks. Unnecessary to say, perhaps, that the recognition was mutual, from Capt. von Hugo on the bridge to the big black dog barking on the poop deck, and there was no need to decry the absence of an enthusiastic welcome. To cap the climax, when the Bayonne was yet twelve feet from the pier the cat's impatience reached the limit. With one flying leap it cleared the intervening space and to the surprise of the cheering crew ran directly to the place where her kittens were formerly domiciled. The latter were still on board and in a few moments the happy family were again united.

Capt. von Hugo will now have a picture painted of his celebrated pet, which will ornament his private cabin, and on his return home will have the strangest of tales to relate to his family and friends concerning the phenomenal instinct of pussy, which has already become well known at the home port.

GRANNIE," 18 YEARS OLD, AND TWO OF HER KITTENS.
The Chicago Daily Tribune, December 5th, 1898

Grannie Vixie is not much of a looker, and nobody knows anything about her pedigree, but when she appears at the cat show on Wednesday the chances are the Maltese and the Manx cats will grow green-eyed with envy if they are not already green-eyed. Grannie Vixie holds the cat record for age and number of progeny as far as is known to the cat show managers. She is 18 years old and has brought 111 caterwauling creatures into the world, and not one of them has been drowned or otherwise made way with in infancy. Homes have been found for all.

Grannie spent the first sixteen years of her life in A. E. Ebert's drug store, State street. She was a doughty rat catcher as well as prolific breeder, but the time came when, like the “ole niggah” of the nursery song, “she had no teeth for to eat corn bread, she had no eyes for to see,” and Mr. Ebert tock her home to die. He would ask his wife on returning home every afternoon if the cat was yet alive, but the quiet life appeared to agree with Grannie, and she still sleeps on her rug close to the steam pipes.

No record was kept of Grannie's offspring until she came to be regarded as a prodigy. The last comers have been in great demand. Two live in San Francisco, two in Boston, two in New York, two in Philadelphia, four in Bradford. Pa., and three in South Bend, Ind. The others are scattered from one end of this city to the other.

Grannie and two of her offspring will have a stall at the show. Grannie will not be required to go through her paces. A cat that has lived twice as long as the average tabby is entitled to freedom from annoyance. Her 111th kitten, Muffie, is the beauty of the family. He is a twelve-pounder, though only a year and a half old, black as night, and a prize ratter. He is not plebeian enough to eat rats or even to kill them. He brings them into the parlor as a rule and plays with them until he gets tired.

Jags is the tuck cat of the trio. Without having been taught constant living with human friends has brightened hisintelligence until he knows what is said and does tricks for the pleasure of giving a surprise. He unties Mrs. Ebert’s shoes every night, jumps upon the table toward nightfall and lights the gas by means of a ball and chain attachment, and takes a walk on the mantel among the bric-a-brac without disturbing anything.

Jags and Muffie have their dinner table on the ice chest. They decline to eat elsewthere and refuse to touch anything except raw liver and cream. Grannie’s favorite dishes are turkey and game. When turkey is placed in the oven she posts herself by the stove and refuses to move until it is taker out.

CATS IN HISTORY.
Chicago Daily Tribune, December 11, 1898

Puss Has A Place As Old As Any Records. An Emblem Of Liberty. Many Poets Have Written Sonnets To Tabby. Fondled By Old Romans.

According to tradition, a cat show after a war is a timely affair. In more than one instance the cat has been held as a national symbol of liberty. In the temple of liberty which Tiberius Gracus built in Rome a carved pussy held prominent place at the feet of Artemis, to whom the cat was held sacred. Among the heraldic designs of the first French republic the cat was a common object; Proudhon painted one at the feet of his Liberty; the Dutch chose it as their ensign; the valiant Vandals and Suevi carried one as a model of untractabillty; and the most illustrious European families did not disdain to rear one aloft on the banners of their houae. The white cat and the black cat have been argent and sable on the field of battle. It is, therefore, in the fitness of things that the cat lovers should hold their first show In Chicago at this particular time, and that the lovers of Tabby should find their ardor arise on the tall of war.

It has been put as an axiom of history that the higher the status of civilization the higher the position the cat has held. In Egypt Tabby was a god in the abstract, and when she died she became a mummy in the pyramids of royalty. In the first crude civilization of the Greeks and Romans she fell from her high estate, but she has regained it whenever civilization has followed in the wake of liberty.

Her place by the home fireside is the hotbed of liberty. As Ingersoll says: “Did you ever know a man to shoulder a musket in defense of a boarding-house?" The dog may be tamed by fear, and will be loyal to the most tyrannous Bill Sykes that ever bore a cudgel. But be impolite to “our high lady, the cat,” and she will cut you dead. Up goes her independent tall, and if she concludes to emigrate she will cling to another domicile, while men may come and men may go on the first of every May, but she will leave only when some one interferes with her liberty. The softness of luxury does not compromise her spirit, and she isstill as much an emblem of liberty by the tiled mantel as she was in the days of Rome.

Dignified pose was the spirit of the most cultivated specimens at the cat show. Cristobal Colon, the Spanish cat, which the managers of the cat show allowed to sit brazenly under his national colors, waa probably the only living thing is Chicago that would have been allowed this privilege. It was a tribute to cat independence.

It is on account of this feature of her disposition that the cat has been "sair hadden down,” as the Scotch say. In other words, she has been held down, knocked off the wall and pelted with bootjack» until she has found use for every one of the nine lives with which the laws of evolution have provided for the survival of the fittest. There are two classes of people - those who like cats and those who dislike them. Neither Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Chaucer, Wordsworth, Herrick, Shelley, Keats, nor Tennyson has failed to express a sentiment toward her. One of Tasso's best sonnets was sung in her honor. Even the “green- eyed kitling” which the cat judges say could never win first prize while a blue or amber-eyed feline was around, has found special praise in the French poesy.

The poem of the “Cat in Drink” has been universally discredited by the cat’s friends. But behold at the Chicago cat show there came forth a cat that tipples like a toper. Matthew Arnold shows in his “Poor Matthias” that he is only impressed by the weird side of cat nature. Sir George Lewis spent much time to prove that the Athenians did not know the domestic cat. But an Athenian vase was unearthed which proved that when the Greeks had reached the highest period of civilization they put her in sculpture together with a fugitive mouse.

Outside of literature Pussy has found more friends among the merely influential of the earth. The Mohammedans say that when Mahomet sat in deep thought, probably trying to invent a means of making lead coffins into flying machines, his cat, Muezza, purred himself to sleep on the soft edge of the prophet’s gown. When Mahomet awoke he cut off the sleeve upon which Muezza was taking his catnap and left him undisturbed. Such was his love for cats.

Chateaubriand paid himself the highest tribute in his own mind when he showed points of resemblance between himself and his favorite cat. Richelieu did not care for cats, but he was a slave to kittens. He always kept a batch of them in his cabinet, and when he considered that they were becoming cats at the age of 3 months he had them taken away and a new lot provided. Petrarch, Cardinal Wolsey, Colbert, and Victor Hugo liked cats. Lord Chesterfield, the exponent of ultra-refinement, left pensions to his cats. And. naturally enough, President Lincoln was especially fond of the animal which is the most affectionate friend, but the least satisfactory of slaves.

Scotch poetry shows best the domestic side of the cat, and, naturally enough, many Scotch poets associate her with the spinning wheel. In the Auld Blawthren's sons the cat sings “Three thread* and a thrum, three threeds and a thrum,” like a wheel that runs night and day, and it is an unimaginative reader who can go through the many refrains of this most characteristic of cat poems without feeling a sense of drowsy rest stealing over his spirit. The Chinese look upon the cat from a mere utilitarian standpoint. The Welsh have always been alive to her merits. In ancient days Howel Dha, whom they called the good, instituted laws for her protection, and arbitrarily placed her market price at a figure as artificially high as if there had been a trust [monopoly] on the rat-killing interests.

On the other hand the Japanese and the French are the natural exponents of the dainty and society side of puss, albeit an occasional Frenchman sees in her the weirdness of the green-eyed variety. In the Japanese there is a little tale which found its way into the literature of the French Immortals.

CATS EATEN IN KANSAS CITY.
Italian Produce Dealer Held for Selling Felines for Rabbits.
The New York Times, December 15, 1898

KANSAS CITY, Mo., Dec. 14. – Dominick Shamber, an Italian produce dealer, was arrested to-day for selling cats for rabbits. A woman patron informed Health Officer Shirk that she had reason to believe the Italian had duped her when he sold her what purported to be a cotton-tail. She produced the animal, which she had purchased as a rabbit, and it proved to be an old-fashioned Tom cat. The head, tail, and feet had been removed, but Shirk killed a cat and by comparison with Mrs. Johnson’s purchase, decided that the latter belonged to the feline tribe.

Shamber was promptly arrested and will be tried to-morrow. As Shamber has been engaged in selling supposed rabbits for several months, there is no telling how many tabbies and Tommies have been devoured by the Italian customers under the supposition that they were eating cotton-tails.

LIKE CAT, LIKE MISTRESS.
The Inter Ocean, December 18, 1898

Pussy’s Breeding Shows the Sort of Woman Who Owned Her. Stimulated by the Crystal palace cat show, and such like institutions, there are probably an increasing number of people who take an interest in cat life. It is to such that Mr. Louis Wain appeals in his article on character in cats in Cassell’s Magazine. “Cats are like children,” he says. “Educate them properly and you can do with them and their characters even as you will. One of the first things that impressed itself on my mind, on going round to cat shows as judge, spectator, or artist, was the extraordinary difference that exists in the characters of cats coming from different parts of the country. Indeed, the effect that a crowded exhibition and its surroundings have upon different cats is really very strange. Most of those cats which at home are rarely drawn out of themselves, and, which you see, in an ordinary way, under one or two conditions of expression, immediately develop a new expression, and this typifies the effect home life has upon them.

“For instance, a cat which has been treated by its master or mistress very lovingly, and has, in normal circumstances, seen a number of people who have praised it and petted it, and stroked it a great deal, will exhibit an entirely smug, contented, and happy expression when it comes before the public. On the other hand, the animal that has lived a life of ease, seeing nobody and nothing beyond its mistress, will exhibit the most striking characteristics of its mistress. Thus, if the character of the woman be, in the main, a sulky or a snappy one, the effect of the sudden change upon the cat's life will be to bring out in the cat a sulky or a snappy disposition also. Another cat will, perhaps, show itself in the highest degree suspicious, taking after its master or mistress again; while a fourth, that has had to fight his way, will quarrel and rush at everything; and a fifth, that has been allowed to roam the country, will ruffle up its straw, get underneath its bed to hide right out of sight, and nothing but force will move it." —London Pall Mall Gazette.

BOOK ON CHICAGO PUSSYOLOGY.
The Inter Ocean, December 18, 1898

"Practical Pussyology; or Just a Little About Cats, is the name of a little volume of cat lore published by Mrs. Leland Norton and Jennie Van Allen, prime movers in the cat show just closed. It is a handsome booklet, bound in red covers, and will raise Chicago cats to the dignity of having been written about.

It is probably the first volume ever devoted entirely to society cats and puts them in an enviable attitude before the public. Such high authorities as Charles Dudley Warner and Miss Agnes Reppller are quoted to prove that cats are better than people and a dozen times more entertaining. All the ills that cats are heir to, from mange to pneumonia, are described according to symptoms and the best-known cures prescribed. In all ordinary cases it is unnecessary to call a doctor. If a pet kitten has sore eyes, owners are warned not to rush off and buy spectacles post haste. Try simple remedies, and as a last resort consult an eminent ooculist. If the worst comes to worst, we are told, there is a cat hospital on Twenty-Sixth street, where everything in a medical and surgical line is kept on tap. There are private wards for aristocratic cats who have nerves, or for desperate cases. The light, ventilation, and heat are "perfect,” and pussies are permitted to receive company if the state of their precious healths permits. After reeding "Pussyology,” nobody can ever again be so heartless as to say "the cat had a fit.” Pussy sometimes suffers from convulsions brought on by extreme nervousness, but a well-bred cat does not "go into fits.”

Tootsie Willard is the only cat honored with a chapter for itself. Toots, as everybody knows, was Francis Willard's pet. He was named Gladstone originally. "But one morning,” so it is related in "Pussyology,” "the sorrowful news flashed over the wires that the ‘grand old man’ bad repudiated certain principles dear to the heart of the great temperance leader. Miss Willard's revenge was swift, for instantly she deprived the English statesman of the glory of having the most celebrated cat in history bear his stately name, and she promptly rechristened her precious kit and called him Toots.”

The last chapter in the little book takes on a sorrowful tone, because it tells "How to Kill a Cat.” The authors write that "The simplest apparatus is a wash boiler fitted up as a bedroom. After the doomed kit has been generously fed and becomes drowsy, lay it on the couch of death with a cone of cotton batting saturated with two and one-half ounces of chloroform for a grown cat and two ounces for a kitten, shut the weighted lid and cover with carpet or rug, and in two minutes pussy’s sorrows will be over forever. Wrap the dear dead kittie in a clean white shroud with chloride of lime for a winding sheet and bury it three feet under ground. In a week all traces of kit and her coffin will be gone, which is the only sanitary method of disposing of the dead in a great city.”