Of course we shall never really understand cats. Between us stands the eternal barrier of silence, and though it may be argued that eyes and hands (or paws) are more eloquent than tongues, the lack of speech is a drawback. I have often fancied, on meeting some wise old cat, that I would like to sit down and have a gossip with it about its experiences and thoughts, especially its thoughts about us.

For as surely as we have opinions about cats, they have opinions about us, like the two old men in James Whitcomb Riley's poem, "Jim havin' his opinion of me, an' me havin' my opinion of Jim." Of course cats have ways of expressing their feelings, but one would like to go more deeply into things with them.

In our man-made world cats have played many parts. They have been worshiped as gods, tortured as the familiars of witches, loved as companions, valued as mousers, pampered by the fireside, left to starve on the streets, and never really understood. But humanity is learning. We cannot probe the mystery of the cat, but we are beginning to know the needs of our cats, to realize that since we have subdued them to our uses we owe it to them to give them good care. And we are learning to pity the homeless cat.

One finds this pity sometimes in the most forlorn human beings. Once on a dingy by-street in New York I met an old woman, and by the look of her I knew she had no home and that the bundle under her arm, wrapped in a torn newspaper, held all her worldly goods. But in the crook of the other arm she carried a cat, one of those starved and wretched strays that haunt the alleys and snatch a precarious living from the garbage cans. She told me she was taking it to "the Shelter," and that she picked up one or two almost every day.

"I has a feelin' for them," she said. "Of all the creatures in this world, cats an' women has the hardest time."

ELEANOR BOOTH SIMMONS.
NEW YORK, N. Y.,
September, 1935.

PREFACE

I - The Adaptability of the Cat
II - The Responsibility of the Owner
III - The Care of Mothers and Their Young
IV - When You Buy a Kitten
V - The Right Feeding of Cats
VI - On Grooming a Cat
VII - Things an Indoor Cat Needs
VIII - Colds and What They Lead To
IX - More about Respiratory Diseases
X - Distemper, Tuberculosis, and Infectious Enteritis
XI - Troubles of the Digestive Tract
XII - Worms and Hair Balls
XIII - Diseases of the Nerves and Brain
XIV - The Soul of the Cat
XV - Skin Disorders
XVI - Concerning Fleas and Other Pests
XVII - CONTENTS Diseases of the Eyes
XVIII - Diseases of the Ears
XIX - About Operations
XX - The Importance of Nursing
XXI - On Neutering Cats
XXII - Dangers That Await Our Cats
XXIII - When Cats Grow Old
XXIV - The Sacred Cats of Egypt
XXV - Christ and the Cat
XXVI - The Domestic Short-haired Cat
XXVII - About Persians and Angoras
XXVIII - Shows and Long-hair Standards
XXIX - The Royal Siamese
XXX - The Mystery of the Manx Cat
XXXI - How the Manx Came to America
XXXII - The Myth of the Rabbit Cat
XXXIII - The Japanese Kimono Cat
XXXIV - Employed Cats and Their Pay
XXXV - Literary Cats
XXXVI - Cats Who Go Down to the Sea in Ships
XXXVII - Cats as Traveling Companions
XXXVIII - Feline Characters in New York City
XXXIX - Witch Cats and Cat Ghosts
XL - Cats and Birds
XLI - The Case of the Homeless Cat

Cats are such unobtrusive creatures that never, except perhaps in ancient Egypt, have they had the honor that is due them. Yet consider what they do for us. They kill the rats and mice that would destroy our food, our clothes, our libraries, and our homes; and what does it matter if, as their critics say, they do it because they want to and not because we want them to? The point is, they do it. But this service shows only the practical side of the cat's character; what cat-lovers really treasure them for is their charming adaptability as pets.

Modern life has crowded many people into city apartments, but it has not killed the human desire for a pet around the place. Occasionally a reformer announces that pet animals must be banished from cities, but one can imagine what a riot there would be if he tried to do it. Now cats, though they are essentially liberty-loving animals, can be kept healthy and happy in an apartment. They are naturally clean, they can get sufficient exercise inside four walls, and they have a philosophy that enables them to get endless entertainment from just sitting in a window and watching what goes on in the street.

Cats are dignified, and they will not truckle to anybody. That is why undiscerning persons consider them deficient in sense and loyalty. But take a cat and give it good care and sympathetic companionship, and unless it is an uncommonly inferior specimen it will reward you by being very much of an individual, loving and responsive. I used to know a black cat in Sutton Place, New York, originally an alley kitten, but so improved by prosperity that he was called the Sultan of Sutton Place. For eight years he shared the home of his mistress, a businesswoman. Then she died, and from that hour he refused to eat and fell into such a pitiful state that he had to be destroyed.

It is not true that cats love places better than people. There are many homes where the cat is merely tolerated - fed when the owner thinks of it, but seldom noticed. So what is there for the cat to be attached to but the place that shelters it? And to the cat, as to the dog, it means a great deal to have a place of which it feels, "This is my home, this is where I belong." However, cats can make excellent travelers. One of the characters of the suffrage campaign was a cat who toured the United States by automobile for "the Cause." The women whose mascot he was called him Citizen because he belonged to the sex which had the vote, and during the entire trip he lived up to his position with great dignity, riding on a specially constructed seat in the car, and watching the crowds at the street rallies without a trace of nervousness or fear.

There are various ways of acquiring a cat. Frequently it is thrust upon you. You are walking along the street, and you see a forlorn kitten, one that has probably been dropped by some heartless person, and you take it home, intending to turn it over to a humane society immediately. But the poor mite laps up the food you give it so gratefully, it finds a spool and plays with it so amusingly, it curls up on your knee and goes to sleep so confidingly, that you put off sending it away, and before you know it you own a cat.

Such waifs may be healthy and of good blood, or they may not, but right feeding and regular grooming will do wonders. People who have frequented recent cat shows in New York will remember Sarah and Jane, two white cats who never failed to carry off prizes and were said by the judges to be remarkably good in build, coat, and intelligence. Yet they began life as flea-bitten kittens abandoned in a garbage can, from which they were rescued by a small boy who had heard in a "kindness to animals" talk in school that all homeless cats and dogs should be taken to the nearest humane shelter.

If you set out to acquire a kitten, choose it with care. If you wish a thoroughbred, Persian or Siamese or Manx or pedigreed short-hair, go to a reliable breeder. A good honest alley cat is better than a doubtful thoroughbred. But wherever you get your kitten, see that it is healthy and well formed. Select one with bright, clear eyes, for weak, watery eyes indicate a cold, or distemper, or congenital eye trouble. Make sure that the baby's bony structure is good. Each breed has its own standards as to shape, but whatever the breed the bones should be firm and well knit. A normal kitten is eager for play, and its breath is sweet.

Avoid taking a kitten from its mother until its strength and its ability to eat are well established. The longer the baby is with the mother the better start it has in life. There is some magic in the maternal contact for which no amount of care from the owner can make up.

Right feeding is the most important point in caring for a cat. Wrong feeding is at the bottom of many diseases, both digestive and of the skin. There is a superstitious belief that meat makes cats vicious. That is nonsense. Cats are carnivorous animals, and though some will adapt themselves to unsuitable diets, the cat that eats raw beef, varied by cooked lamb and fish, non-starchy vegetables, milk, and stale brown bread stands the best chance of attaining a ripe old age.

A cat needs some attention beyond feeding. It should be groomed every day, else in cleaning itself it will swallow hair, which will form balls in the intestines. If kept in an upper apartment it should be protected from falls by screens at the windows. It needs a log on which to exercise its claws, growing grass to nibble, fresh water to drink, and love and petting. If sickness develops, a veterinarian should be consulted. Unless you are able to give these attentions to your pet, do not keep a cat.

Some of the visitors to a huge animal hospital in New York City are surprised when they see, under the heading "diagnosis" on the cards that are tacked on the cages of the ward patients, such terms as enteritis, pleurisy, laryngitis, keratitis, otitis, cystitis, and spinal meningitis. Especially if the patient is a cat. That cats are subject to most of the diseases which afflict human beings and have nervous systems which render them acutely susceptible to suffering are facts that have been slow to penetrate the human mind.

Veterinary science has been strangely backward in the matter of the cat, and of the dog also, but this century has brought a great improvement. In the old days, especially in the country, there would be perhaps one veterinarian for many miles around, and he a horse doctor, who if you asked him to help your sick cat would most likely give you a horse laugh. Even now this is the case in some rural districts, but the number of qualified practitioners who specialize in the diseases of small animals is growing, and there are more animal hospitals and clinics than there were. Not all hospitals are good, not all veterinarians are competent, but it is generally possible to obtain expert treatment for a sick cat.

But many of us do not take the trouble, or do not take it till it is too late. A cat's sickness should be dealt with at the start. We must learn to know the signs, for our cats cannot say to us, "My stomach aches" . . . "My throat is sore" . . . My ears hurt." Perhaps they would not tell us these things if they could, for cats have a tendency to draw away into corners when they suffer and to endure in silence.

When a cat loses interest in its usual pursuits, and mopes with its head tucked down, and sleeps n great deal, it is sick. Refusal to eat is generally a sign of physical disturbance, though in hot weather or after overeating a cat will sometimes decline food simply because it knows it ought to, and taken into a strange place it may lose its appetite temporarily. But a cat that is not overfed and is in condition ought to have an eager appetite for its meals. Sick cats lose interest in their toilets; they cease to wash themselves, and their fur gets dull and spiky. This symptom does not hold so much with Persians, for they usually leave their valeting to their owners, and their long fluffy hair is not so quick to indicate sickness as is that of the sleek, short-haired breeds. However, any
serious illness will cause a Persian's coat to deteriorate.

A healthy cat's eyes are bright, its gums are pink and its teeth white, and its breath is never foul. A healthy cat has a normal elimination of the bowels once a day; and a tendency toward either constipation or diarrhea is a danger sign, possibly at first a slight one, but one that should not be neglected.

There are several important "don'ts" to be remembered when your cat is sick. Don't go to a drugstore and ask for medicine for a cat. A pharmacist's license does not qualify a man to prescribe for a cat. Don't attempt, without expert advice, to worm your cat. There are several sorts of worms, and the treatment differs according to the kind; anyhow most of the popular remedies are too strong and do more harm than good. Do not administer any castor oil, for it is irritating to a cat's intestines.

For mild ailments home treatment is good if intelligently applied, and even a severe attack may call for first aid before the veterinary can be reached. It simplifies matters to have a cat's medicine kit, with these things in it:

Absorbent cotton.
Orange sticks or wooden toothpicks.
Narrow cheesecloth bandage.
Gelatine capsules.
A rectal thermometer.
White vaseline.
Oil of eucalyptus.
Milk of magnesia tablets.
Liquid paraffin.
Bismuth subnitrate.
Aspirin tablets.
Argyrol (5% solution).
Calcium lactate.
Bicarbonate of soda.
Sweet spirits of ammonia.
Boric acid powder.

Vaseline is needed for hair balls; eucalyptus, aspirin, and argyrol for respiratory troubles; milk of magnesia and paraffin for constipation; bismuth for diarrhea; calcium for rickets; sweet spirits of ammonia for prostration; bicarbonate of soda for cleansing the mouth; and boric acid for the ears. Detailed descriptions of the uses of simple medicines are given in the chapters on the various diseases, and in the chapter on "The Importance of Nursing" will be found directions for administering remedies to cats. An ordinary clinical thermometer may be used, but the special rectal thermometer for cats is better.

It is fortunate for cats that they take better care of their health than dogs do of theirs, for they are more difficult patients once they fall ill. Dogs, especially puppies, are impetuous about eating and sometimes devour food that is tainted, but watch how daintily a cat sniffs at things before tasting them, and how definitely it rejects them if they are not right. Cats are also more careful about getting their feet wet and less impulsive about rushing into danger.

But cats are fatalists, and when disease attacks them they seem to feel that there is no help for it, that the only course is to submit. So much more independent than dogs, they must love and trust you very much before they will ask for aid; their natural dislike of being handled by strangers is intensified when they are sick. Because of this it is wise to nurse a cat at home, except for the surgical and contagious cases that are best dealt with in a hospital.

A petted cat is like a child: it feels safest and so is most likely to recover in its own bed and among the people it knows. But, since it is often a bad plan to carry a sick cat back and forth for treatments, and since the veterinary visits may be expensive, a good animal hospital may be a godsend for the owner of a cat.

This book makes no attempt to deal with breeding as a science or as a business. Breeding is a big subject, and individual owners, keeping cats as pets or mousers, hardly need to go into its complexities. But pet cats and mousers do hive kittens, and there are basic facts and simple rules which all owners of female cats should know.

A veterinarian who served for years in the clinic of a large animal hospital told me that he always tried to discourage owners from letting their cats breed, for so often it is the beginning of a vicious circle. Mrs. Puss has kittens; the owner keeps them till they get to be in the way, then gives them away to friends, to the butcher, to the grocer; the kittens perhaps stray away from their new owners and breed in their turn; and so the army of homeless cats is increased.

If you have a female cat, follow one of two courses. Either have her spayed, an operation which with modern methods is attended by little risk and which makes of her a quiet, satisfactory pet, or resign yourself to some annoyance when she is in season, and guard her from wandering at these times. With proper precautions breeding as a hobby is all right, and should raise the standard of pet cats.

When your cat desires to mate she shows it by great restlessness, by crying, and by treading the ground with both hind legs. Some cats begin to call at seven or eight months, but if you want your pet to develop into a strong cat and to produce strong kittens do not mate her till she is one year old. The male should be at least a year old too. Stud cats are at their best between one and three years of age.

Queens, as breeders call female cats, differ very much as to the frequency with which they come in season, but the average is about three times a year, and the period lasts from three to fifteen days. Some cats are almost unbearable at these times; others make very little fuss. Spring is the best time for mating. Then the kittens have the benefit of ripening warmth and sunshine. Breeding in the autumn is a mistake, as the winter is a bad time for growing.

If your cat is of a definite breed and color, say a Persian blue or cream or orange, a domestic short-haired white or Maltese, a seal point or a blue point Siamese, get a sire not only of the same breed but of the same color. It takes an expert to experiment successfully with color crosses. If your female is deficient in any point, choose a male who is strong in that point. Suppose you have a Persian whose head is too long and narrow. Be sure that her mate has the broad head and short, blunt nose of the best Persians. By following this rule you stand a better chance of getting kittens of the right type.

Be sure that your cat is in good condition, and that the mate you pick is healthy. If you want the service of a pedigreed stud cat you must be prepared to pay, for it takes money to raise these cats. But with an unpedigreed cat of one of the fancy breeds you never know what weak points your kittens may inherit. Domestic short-haired cats are different, they have the strength of the peasantry, an elemental beauty, and some of the finest specimens come from the so-called alley cats.

Mating should take place from three to five days after your pet begins to call, and afterward she should be kept quiet, not handled much, and not allowed to roam. Pregnancy, which may be assumed when she ceases to call, lasts about sixty days, but kittens have been known to live that were born as early as the fifty-eighth day and as late as the sixty-sixth. Never feed a queen so much as to make her fat. She needs about the same amount of food as usual for the first half of the time, only a little more raw beef. Three or four weeks before the event it is well to add to her breakfast and supper a meal at noon and a nightcap of warm milk.

Most of these little future mothers are quite normal, except that they drink more water. It sometimes happens, however, that a sensitive cat will be listless, develop nausea, and take dislikes to certain foods. But a little humoring will generally bring her through.

Like the provident creatures they are, cats begin in good time to look about for a proper cradle for the kittens. If they are left to themselves they are as likely as not to pick a bureau drawer with your best silk undies in it, so keep your bureau drawers shut, and provide a comfortable box in a secluded spot, not too warm, not in a draft, and shaded from the light for the protection of the babies' eyes. Line it with newspapers, which must be changed every day, and a clean, soft blanket of smooth material, free from fuzz.

Healthy cats rarely have any trouble when their kittens are born, and it is best not to interfere with them. Just watch to see that the first babies do not get cold and that the mother does not lie on any of them. But cats are careful mothers. Difficult births sometimes happen to cobby Persians if their pelvic bones are too close together, and then you will need a veterinarian in a hurry for a Caesarian operation. But to normal cats motherhood comes easy unless their vitality has been exhausted by too much breeding. One family a year is enough for any cat.

When the kittens have arrived, leave the mother alone with them for a few hours, then coax her from the box with some light food, say warm milk with an egg beaten in it. Pretty soon she will be eating eagerly, much more heartily than when she was a carefree spinster. Give her plenty of food. And a cat should not be expected to nurse more than four kittens; if she is debilitated one or two are enough. To guard against accidents it is a good plan, if the kittens are valuable, to have a wet nurse ready, a healthy cat who will not mind taking foster children with her own. If the strangers are smeared with her milk and slipped in when she is not looking, she will accept them and tend them as her own.

If the kittens are not valuable and you are not sure of good homes for them, the humane act is to destroy them, leaving one to nurse the mother and prevent caked breasts. Newborn kittens have hardly any sensibility, and a few drops of chloroform or submersion in warm water will end their troubles before they begin.

Speaking of caked breasts, if for any reason they occur they ought to be treated promptly, for they are painful and dangerous. Massage them gently till you have drawn out what milk remains, then cleanse them with warm water in which bicarbonate of soda or boric acid has been dissolved, and, finally, rub them with camphorated oil.

A wet nurse, we know, is the best substitute for the mother who cannot care for her kittens, but wet nurses are not always on call, and kittens can be raised by hand. Miss Doris Bryant, proprietor of Doris Bryant's Cat Specialty Shop in New York and a breeder of Siamese cats in her spare time, told me that she fed four orphaned kittens for the first six weeks of their lives on a formula she worked out, and they lived and became lusty cats. The formula consisted of two heaping teaspoonfuls of Squibb's Dextro-Vitavose mixed with one cup of whole milk. This she brought to a boil, adding a tablespoonful of limewater when it cooled. She gave the babies as much as they wanted, feeding them with a medicine dropper at three-hour periods, night and day at first. By degrees the intervals were lengthened. At four weeks they began taking beef juice, and at five weeks a little scraped beef. Even nursing kittens are better for some extra nutriment. Miss Elsie G. Hydon, of Bogota, New Jersey, whose Persians are famous, favors Mellin's baby food, prepared as for newborn infants; Cream of Wheat well cooked; and unsweetened evaporated milk, one part milk to two parts water, mixed.

At about nine days the eyes of the kittens, who are born blind, begin to unclose. If, as sometimes happens, they fail to open, they should be bathed with warm water and gently manipulated. Adhesion of the eyelids for an abnormal period is called ankyloblepharon, and sometimes an operation is necessary to correct it.

The box for the kittens' nursery should be roomy enough so they can crawl around in it freely. When they adventure out of it, give them a safe and pleasant place in which to mature. Some people think that cellars are good enough for kittens. I wish such people might be shut in cellars themselves. A garden is ideal for kittens in warm weather, but they can be happy in a room with a sunny window. If they have a good mother, and most cat mothers are efficient, she will attend to their manners, but if you expect her to housebreak them properly you must have the sanitary pan, with its clean sand or torn paper, near their box.

Weaning, which should not be attempted before the kittens are eight weeks old, may be started by taking them from the mother at night. Soon the saucer can be substituted entirely for the breast. Miss Hydon thinks eight weeks too early for weaning. She prefers kittens to nurse for three months.

A kitten is a charming thing, but whether the kitten you take into your home turns into a charming cat depends largely on you. A kitten is a baby, and the better its care, its food, and its training, the more likely it is to turn into the healthy, happy, well-mannered animal you want your pet to be. It is true that one sometimes meets homeless cats who, with probably no bringing-up at all, are very attractive, but if you invest in a kitten it is best to take no chances.

Though kittens ought not to be weaned till they are eight weeks old, and do best if left with their mothers three or four weeks more, some dealers, anxious to make money, offer pitifully young kittens for sale. So unless you get yours from someone whose word you can trust, examine it very closely for signs of its age. A kitten cuts its milk teeth at about two weeks, and during the period from four to seven months it sheds these and cuts its second teeth. Be sure that the kitten you buy has its first teeth fully developed and can eat solids without trouble, that it is active and sturdy on its legs, and that its eyes are clear.

For delivery of a kitten a rather small carrier is best, and a leather one is preferable to those of wicker, especially in cool weather. As some kittens are timid in a strange place, and any kitten is hurt by too much excitement, it is wise to keep the new arrival quiet at first. Pet it and make it feel at home, but do not play with it much, and if there are other animals do not introduce them till the kitten has become accustomed to its surroundings. If one is six inches long and has been whisked from one's mother's side into the Great Unknown, it is very alarming, on top of all this, to have a huge dog loom up before one. Dogs and cats can make fine playmates, but as their social arbiter you need considerable tact.

Children must be taught how to handle a kitten, for a child, no matter how much it loves kittens, naturally does not understand that they can be injured by squeezing. Kittens and cats should not be lifted without a hand placed under the body to support it. Dangling them by the back of the neck with the legs kicking may injure the intestines, may even cause hernia. They should not be lifted by a leg, and certainly not by the tail, for the tail is a prolongation of the spine, and very sensitive. And do not blame a kitten if it scratches or bites when it is hurt. Its claws and teeth are the only defense it has.

Begin at once to train your kitten in the use of the sanitary pan. This should be of earthenware or some rustless and easily scoured metal, never of wood, and with sides not too high for the kitten's legs. Sand or torn paper is the best for filling. Sawdust is good, except that it clings to the fur and is carried through the house. The only objection to paper is that a cat sometimes will get the idea that it is all right to use paper wherever it finds some lying on the floor. Coarse sand is the natural thing, and if you have a place in which to store it a good plan is to buy a barrelful from a builder. Change the filling twice a day, for a neat cat will not use it when it is not clean.

Show your kitten the pan at the very first, before it has time to get bad habits. Most kittens are instinctively clean, so you will probably not have much trouble. But remember that a journey often upsets these small creatures for a time. If the kitten errs, the best way to punish it is to strike a folded newspaper on the floor beside it. This is alarming enough to a little animal but will not injure it, as a whipping might. When a kitten repeatedly fails to go to its pan it may be that there is some internal trouble, some pain or stoppage or some lack of control that needs a veterinary to put it right.

One generally wants to feed a newly arrived kitten, thinking that it must be hungry after its journey, but it is best to wait four or five hours. Wait till it is relaxed and purring. In purchasing a kitten one must find out what it has been fed, and if a change is desirable it should be made gradually. Kittens that have been eating milk and cereal exclusively may have some trouble digesting meat at first, but a properly fed kitten has had a little scraped beef from the sixth week.

A nine-week-old kitten requires four meals a day: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a nightcap. Breakfast and dinner should consist partly of meat. Buy good round steak, and cut it up very fine. Chopped beef from the butcher's generally has too much fat in it and may not be quite fresh, so it is best to prepare it yourself. As the kitten grows it will enjoy having a long strip of raw beef that it can gnaw, and this is good for its teeth. Other meats that kittens may have are cooked lamb kidney, tripe, and rabbit. When they have dainty appetites they can be tempted with chicken and chicken jelly, but one must be careful that this is free from even the smallest fragment of bone. Their meat should be broiled or stewed, not fried.

Fine wheat cereal, well cooked in a double boiler and mixed with milk, is an excellent food for young kittens. Brown bread toasted and broken up in milk is good. Vegetables should be avoided till the baby is three months old, when it may have a little spinach, asparagus, boiled onions, or string beans mixed with its meat. Boiled cod and other fish that is not too rich may be allowed now.

The noon meal and the nightcap should consist chiefly of milk. If it is fresh cow's milk, boil it. An egg beaten up in milk makes a nourishing meal. Some authorities advise evaporated milk mixed with water, two parts of water to one of milk for young kittens, and equal parts of the two later on. At four months the nightcap may be discontinued. Never leave milk or food standing after your pet has stopped eating, for it soon gets stale, and besides, it is not good for a cat to go back and nibble between meals. If it does not eat its ration at once, that shows either that it is not well or that you have given it too much.

The quantity of food needed differs with different kittens. Some are greedy, and some have to be coaxed, so you must watch and judge for yourself how much to give. But it may be said generally that a very young kitten's stomach is the size of a hickory nut, that at three months it is the size of a walnut, and that a full-grown male's stomach is as large as an average orange, a full-grown female's as large as a small orange. And they should never have more at one time than the stomach can comfortably hold.

All kittens need help in building their bony structure, else they may get the rickets, and a rickety kitten never makes a fine cat. Mix limewater with the milk, two teaspoonfuls of limewater to a cup of milk, and also give calcium with the food. A fourth of a teaspoonful of calcium lactate every day is about the right amount, and this should be given till the seventh month, when the second teeth are cut. When a kitten is cutting these teeth it is often, like teething human babies, rather fretful, and does not want to eat.

Give the kitten its own bed and train it to sleep there, and as some kittens will chew wool, a dangerous habit, never use woolen blankets. And for the protection of your furniture have a log, with the bark on, ready for the stranger on its arrival, and teach it to exercise its claws exclusively on this.

Advocates of right feeding for cats are sometimes confronted by this difficulty, that some cats, like some people, appear to thrive on food that has hardly any proper nutriment at all. Just as a debutante will put in a strenuous day of social engagements on a breakfast of orange juice and a luncheon of black coffee and cigarettes, so you find apparently healthy cats who eat nothing but liver, or salmon, or bread and milk, or something else that is lacking in the food qualities that an animal of the feline race requires. But if you follow these peculiar eaters long enough, you generally find that there is a day of reckoning.

I once met a woman who had purchased a handsome Persian male cat. She believed that meat gave cats worms, also fits, and she boasted that she had worked out for her pet a perfect ration, consisting of a raw fishcake, a spoonful of baked beans, and a soda cracker, all mixed together into a paste. This was the cat's dinner, and he never had anything else. He was a year old and seemed in great form. But a year later I saw the woman again and heard that her cat was dead. Some disease had attacked him, and he seemed to have no resistance.

A liver-fed cat may seem all right in fair weather, but it is the beef-fed cat that can resist disease. I have always believed in beef because, long ago, two beloved Persian blues of mine who had started life under a sad handicap (their mother died during an operation when they were born and at first they too were thought to be dead) lived, on a diet of the best round steak twice a day, to the great ages of fourteen and seventeen years.

Nature is the great guide. All feline creatures in a wild state are carnivorous, and you cannot do better than to feed your cat as the big cats in the woods and jungles eat, with the modifications that a confined life calls for. Wild cats run so much that they do not need much roughage in their food, and the little demanded is supplied by the leathers and other stuff they swallow with their game and the grass that they nibble when their stomachs ask for it. Our pets, living in the house, eating trimmed meat, must have more bulk in their diet, so we must mix vegetables with their meat, and provide pots of growing grass for them.

It is said that cats require a certain nutritional property that exists in feathers. A good way to supply this is to give your pet an occasional raw chicken head with the feathers left on.

Breeders do differ considerably in their methods of feeding cats. The Champions, mother and daughters, who came to America from England a score of years ago, and whose Persian silvers were famous, were strong for meat and not very much else. In a manual published by Dorothy Bevill Champion, entitled "Everybody's Cat Book," she wrote, "Cats should be fed strictly on a meat diet; no oatmeal, no rice, no potatoes, and no milk. Milk is a cause of dysentery, and no milk-fed cat is free from worms."

But an English contemporary of the Champions, also successful as a breeder, gave her cats a varied diet including bread and milk; liver, boiled and raw; soaked dog biscuit; raw meat and breakfast oats stewed together; fish with boiled rice, turnips, carrots, parsnips, beans, and peas; and occasional meals of prepared cats' food.

Fanciers, raising cats on a large scale, are in a position to experiment. But it is safer for individual owners of pet cats to stick to a simple diet, and if you accustom your cat from the beginning to eat sensible things you will have little trouble.

From the age of three months, two meals a day - breakfast in the morning and dinner at night - are enough, with a drink of milk at noon (fresh milk or evaporated milk thinned with water, as the cat prefers). Remember that your cat is like yourself: it likes its meals warm and appetizing, and slightly salted to bring out the flavor. Never leave food standing around when it has finished eating, and do not feed at odd hours.

Fastidious cats dislike chopped beef from the butcher's, and there is always a chance that it is not fresh. Buy good beef and cut it up, with scissors or a sharp knife, into fine pieces or long thin strips. Some cats like it raw, and some like it slightly broiled. For a change give broiled, roasted, or stewed lamb, mutton, chicken, any kind of fish that is not too rich, stewed rabbit, and almost any kind of game, but no pork, no fried food, and no fishbones, chicken bones, or chop bones. A plate of chicken bones may seem a great treat for your cat, but they have a bad way of splintering and getting lodged in the throat or the intestines.

With the meat at dinner mix some non-starchy vegetable - spinach, asparagus, string beans, or carrots. For breakfast the meat may be supplemented by brown bread toast, either crumbled and mixed with the meat, or broken up in milk. Nibbling a slice of hard toast is excellent exercise for a cat's teeth, and usually is enjoyed if the toast is buttered. Cereals are all right if they do not prove too laxative, but only as an accompaniment, not a substitute for meat.

Once a week, but not oftener, give a meal of raw liver. Olive oil, a teaspoonful once a day, is good for some cats, and they will take it readily mixed with flaked sardines. With some cats, however, it does not agree. If there is a tendency to constipation, add a teaspoonful of agar (a tasteless substance sold by druggists) to each meal. Bran can be used instead, but agar is less harsh. Remember that milk is not a substitute for water. Your cat's special belongings should include a water dish, and it must be washed and dried once a day and kept filled with fresh cool water. Most cats are thirsty little creatures.

The amount of food a cat needs must be determined, more or less, by the owner. Individuals differ. Of course there are rules, such as the orange test mentioned near the close of Chapter IV. Dr. Hamilton Kirk, the noted English veterinary, author of a standard book on "The Diseases of the Cat," thinks that the daily average for grown cats should be half an ounce of food for each pound of body weight, and that three quarters of this should be meat. But some cats are more active than others and need more food, some are greedy and want too much, some are finicky and must be coaxed to eat. Watch your pet, therefore, and gauge its meals by its condition.

Cats that have acquired a stubborn taste for wrong foods are a problem. Sometimes you can cure them by letting them go hungry for a time, but I have known cats that would starve rather than give in. Diplomacy works better, if you can take the trouble. I once cured a sardine addict by mixing beef with sardines in increasing quantities until, in a few weeks, she was eating beef with only an occasional sardine on the side.

There are many prepared cat foods on the market, but to my mind their sole virtue is that they save owners some trouble. Advertisements tell us that the products contain everything that a cat needs, but nothing out of a can or a box equals good fresh meat and vegetables. At the Ellin Prince Speyer Hospital for Animals in New York, where about thirty thousand dogs and cats are received annually, only fresh foods are purchased, and this is the case with most breeders I know. One objection to canned foods is that some of them contain horse meat, and nowadays few horses are sent to the slaughterhouse except those that are old and diseased. Dry foods in boxes are safer, but too constipating for the average cat.

Above all, never give any prepared dog food to a cat. The stomachs of the two animals are quite different.

A woman brought a Persian cat into an animal hospital. The cat's hair was long, thick, and fine, the result of generations of breeding in which the fancier's object had been to produce, among other points, just this perfection of coat. Yet the coat was tangled and full of cots, hard lumps of hair so matted together that they felt like dried peas caught in the fur. The owner said that she had been too busy to groom her pet, and would the hospital please put him into shape?

It took an attendant hours to do the job, and when it was finished the cat looked ragged, for most of the cots had had to be cut out. A ten-minute grooming once a day would have kept the coat in good condition, and people who cannot spare the time or who grudge the trouble ought not to keep such an animal. A neglected Persian is a melancholy sight. They cannot valet themselves, for the small pink tongue which is a cat's washcloth and brush and comb is no match for long hair. Brushing is not so essential for short-haired cats as for the long-haired, but it is good for them, for no matter how assiduously a cat makes its toilet your grooming will improve its coat. Moreover, when cats lick themselves they swallow the loose hairs, for the papillae on their tongues, being turned inward, carry the hairs on toward the stomach, which cannot possibly digest them all. And so are formed the hair balls that are often so troublesome and sometimes fatal. Brushing the coat free of loose hairs is the preventive.

Cats love to be groomed if you accustom them to it from their kittenhood. It simplifies things if you have a beauty box for your pet, fitted with a brush and comb, absorbent cotton, wooden toothpicks for making swabs, powdered boric acid, and fuller's earth for cleansing the coat. The best brushes are of bristles; the bristles slightly ridged down the center of the brush and stiff enough to pass through the hair but not stiff enough to hurt the skin. They are sold at pets' specialty shops, as are the steel combs for cats. Some fanciers hold that combs tear the hair, but the right sort, which have teeth rounded at the tips, are useful and will do no harm if you take care not to pull with them.

Place the cat on your knees in a crouching position and brush the neck, back, and tail, first with upward strokes to loosen the hair, then with long downward strokes to smooth and polish it. Turn the cat on its back and repeat the process, taking pains to stretch out each leg so you can reach the hair around the joints. Twice a week rub in fuller's earth and brush it out; if you have no fuller's earth, coarse, dry cornmeal will answer.

If you want your pet to look particularly nice, complete the brushing by giving it a good brisk rubbing, first with a cloth or chamois skin and then with your hand. Wipe its eyes with cotton dipped in a warm solution of boric acid; swab out its ears with dry boric acid, or, twice a week or so, warm olive oil; and the cat is clean and comfortable at the cost of very little work.

Grooming a full-grown cat unused to beauty treatments is an ordeal. There is no limit to the number of claws some cats can muster when first introduced to a brush and comb. If the cat is strong, you may need stout gloves, and perhaps an attendant to hold the head and a few of the claws. But generally one can manage alone, if one is firm and gentle and does not try to do too much at a time. Take the cots separately, first moistening them with warm water, then teasing out the lumps with your fingers and a large darning needle. Sometimes it is necessary to slit a cot up through the center with a penknife, which sacrifices some of the hair, but not very much.

Bathing is a moot point among authorities on cats. One of the best veterinarians I know, a man of twenty years' experience, warns his clients that washing is bad for cats, that dry cleaning is safer and just as efficacious. Against his opinion are instances such as that of White Aigrette, a champion in her day, whose owner, Miss Laura Hopkins, gave her a tub bath whenever her coat looked dingy. White Aigrette enjoyed it and swam around with her long hair trailing after her, like a mermaid. But undeniably there is danger of shock to a nervous cat in being plunged into water, and there is great danger that if the fur is not thoroughly dried pneumonia or some similar disease may ensue.

If you feel that you cannot keep a cat clean without bathing it, begin when your pet is young. If you must wash a grown cat for the first time, better not dip it in water, but stand it in a sink and pour the water over it. Test the water with a bath thermometer or your wrist, and be sure that the temperature is not above blood heat. Use pure soap, preferably a reliable liquid eucalyptus soap. If you use some of the patent soaps or disinfectants that are on the market, you run the risk of injuring your pet's eyes, or skin, or causing the hair to fall out. Avoid carbolic, tar, and mercurial preparations, for they are poison to a cat's sensitive skin. Rinse with clear water, then wrap the wet body in a Turkish towel and dry it thoroughly, and guard against drafts and cold rooms.

Baths are no substitute for grooming. Brushing invigorates the skin and stimulates the hair follicles. It is particularly necessary in the spring and fall, the seasons when cats shed their coats.

Put the rubber mouse away;
Pick the spools up from the floor.
What was velvet-shod and gay
Will not need them any more.

This verse in a poem about a dead kitten, which looked out at me in some forgotten time from the corner of a newspaper, has always stayed in my mind. It says with such simplicity how tragically short the lives of these little creatures are, how willing they are to be happy while their lives last. Even a kitten who grows up to be a cat has a pretty short span, and it is not beneath our dignity, when we keep cats for our pleasure, to make their stay with us as pleasant as we can.

Though cats are philosophical and adapt themselves to apartment life so much more graciously than dogs do, they can be badly bored. They have big bumps of curiosity, and nothing quite makes up for freedom to a being descended, however remotely, from the wild. Since, then, in so many places we cannot allow our cats freedom with safety, let us consider by what devices we can give them variety and a fairly natural, healthy existence inside four walls.

There is no plaything a kitten enjoys as it does small celluloid balls that rattle. Kittens will play with non-rattling balls, either celluloid or rubber, but the rattle fascinates them. I think they cannot figure out how the rattle got inside the ball, and work out their puzzlement in batting the ball. There are shops which have all these balls for sale, and they also have play sticks, flexible sticks with balls attached, which are fine when you want to have a game with your kitten.

Then there are play bags, small cloth bags stuffed with cellophane and catnip, and catnip mice; also rubber mice, and mechanical mice which when wound up run around in a circle. Cats that insist on tearing a catnip mouse apart to get at the stuffing ought not to have them, since they may swallow some of the covering, but most cats are content to bat them about and revel in the smell.

Cats have their own notions about playthings; what pleases one does not always please another. Once a friend brought my Persians a rubber mouse, thinking, because her cats liked rubber mice, that mine would. She set it on the floor; they eyed it; they sniffed at it; then both of them turned tail, scornfully, and walked away. Somewhat abashed, my friend and I went out for a walk, and when we returned, lo, the rubber mouse had utterly vanished, though there was no one except the cats in the apartment. We looked everywhere, behind furniture and in corners, and did not find the mouse, and for days I watched Fifi and Mimi apprehensively for signs of rubber in their little insides, but they remained hearty. They never did tell what they had done with that mouse.

A log with thick bark on it is a necessity for an indoor cat. Claws must be exercised and the old sheaths got rid of as the new nails grow, and there is nothing like bark for that. Neglect to provide a log for your cats and they are likely to make ribbons of your upholstery, and small blame to them.

I set a tree in my hall, a maple with a trunk about six inches in diameter, the branches trimmed and the top cut off to fit the ceiling, and my cats had a grand time climbing it. Of course it was fixed to the floor. If you do not care for a tree, then a length of log, cut in half so that it lies firmly on the floor, does nicely. You can easily find the right sort of log in shops where firewood is sold.

Outdoor cats, country ones at least, can find grass when they need roughage in their diet or an emetic to bring up hair they have swallowed, but the indoor cat must be provided with grass. It is easy to grow it. Have three pots of earth, and plant them in rotation, one each week, with oats or rye or birdseed. In this way you will always have fresh grass, and cats love it. My Fifi, when she grew old and lost her teeth, would sit by her pot of grass and wait for me to pull off the tender blades and put them in her mouth.

If cats are not provided with grass they are likely to nip your house plants, which is bad not only for the plants but for them, for the foliage of most plants is too harsh for a cat's stomach. Some veterinarians for this reason advise cat-owners to discard their plants, but I say, give them grass to eat and flowers for pleasure, because many cats have a real aesthetic delight in flowers. Mine, when I brought a nosegay into the house, would walk round and round it, smelling the blossoms with apparent enjoyment. I once saw a dying cat drag itself from its bed and throw its fevered body under the spreading fronds of a potted fern, as if it thought that green tent could give it relief from pain.

You can raise catnip from seed, but most cats prefer it dried. They cannot go on a real catnip jag on the fresh article; it must age, like wine and whisky. Dried catnip can be purchased in drugstores, but if you are a cat-lover you will always, when you are in the woods, keep an eye out for growing catnip, and carry some home to dry for your cat or somebody else's cat, or perhaps for a Christmas gift to the homeless cats in some humane shelter.

Of all the comforts you can give your indoor cat, perhaps a window porch is the most grateful. Cats love to sit in windows, and they are frivolously fond of looking out on life and movement. But an unscreened window is dangerous; as any animal hospital knows, many a cat casualty is due to a fall from a high window. So you must screen yours securely, and while you are about it why not throw out a little balcony from one of them and make a hot-weather retreat for your pet?

The floor should be a board about sixteen inches wide, firmly nailed to the sill and held in place by two lengths of scantling running from its outer corners to the window casing near the top of the lower sash. Stout wire screening forms the front and sides. Of course, the porch should be all put together before being fastened in. With a cushion or two and a pot of grass at each end, this makes a nice place for cats to see the world from by day, and to sleep in on a hot night.

Did you ever hear of a cat commuter from a third-story window to the ground? Recently I was passing a house that stood next a vacant lot, and I perceived a basket, with a large cat sitting calmly in it, descending seemingly from heaven into this lot. The basket was attached to a rope and the rope was being paid out by a woman in an upper window. When the car reached the ground its passenger jumped out and scampered away.

I was curious enough to question the janitress, who was beating rugs at the basement door. She told me that Tommy's mistress was a shut-in, and had invented this way of giving Tommy his outings. He was a model commuter and always returned promptly. Sure enough, while I stood there he trotted back and got into his basket and was pulled aloft.

A cat with a cold in the head is just as uncomfortable as you are when you have the snuffles; and you have the solace of a handkerchief, while even the most intelligent cat can never be taught to blow its nose. Colds are sometimes called nasal catarrh, or coryza, or rhinitis, but by whatever name we call them they are just as annoying and dangerous. The beginning of a cold may be the first symptom of distemper, or influenza, or really serious catarrh, and for this reason, and also because colds are contagious among cats, you should, if you have more than one cat, isolate the infected animal at once.

Cats that are soft from a sedentary life, or logy from overeating, are more likely to contract colds than those that are sensibly fed and have plenty of exercise. Exposure, a draft, a run-down condition may bring on a cold. If you bathe your cat and do not dry it properly, it is apt to have an attack of the snuffles. Kittens are especially susceptible, and a tendency to colds is often found in youngsters purchased from pet shops or catteries where the animals are crowded together in quarters lacking air and sunshine.

A cat with a cold coming on is usually languid, and sneezes and shakes its head, trying to expel the mucus that clogs its nostrils. Examine the nose and you will find that it is warm and dry, sometimes with a thin discharge issuing from it. The eyes, too, are watery. Usually there is fever, but this you can determine only by using a thermometer, and as a cat's temperature is taken in the rectum it requires dexterity to do it. As I mentioned in Chapter II, there is a rectal thermometer for small animals, but an ordinary clinical thermometer can be used.

Often, with nursing, a cold clears up in a few days, and it is not necessary to call a veterinarian. Just keep the patient warm and quiet, away from drafty windows, and give it inhalations of medicated steam several times a day to clear out the head. I have heard cat-owners say that when they tried this the cat scratched and bit and upset the steam kettle, but I think this was the fault of the owners. Accustom your pet from the first to accept necessary ministrations, and if you are firm and gentle you will not have much trouble.

I used half a teaspoonful of Vick's VapoRub in a cupful of steaming water, but five or six drops of any volatile oil, such as eucalyptus, will do. I set my cat on a chair, draping a blanket over chair back and cat like a tent, and with one hand bent its head over the steam kettle, which I held with the other hand. But if your cat struggles it is best to use a chair with a perforated seat, and set the kettle under the chair.

A drop of oil of eucalyptus brushed on the fur of the forehead so that the patient will inhale the vapor is a good measure. If the mucus in the nose is obstinate, put two drops of argyrol (5 per cent solution) in each nostril twice a day. If your pet's afflicted nose is sore, rub on a little white vaseline to soothe it. When the throat is inflamed it may help to swab it with a 10 per cent solution of argyrol. Swabs are easily made by winding absorbent cotton securely around the end of an orange stick.

Medicines, I think, should be avoided in dealing with cats, except when prescribed by a competent veterinarian. But aspirin is simple and can do no harm; a quarter of a five-grain tablet three times a day for two days has been known to break up a cold. At any rate it soothes the headache that accompanies a cat's cold, just as it does yours. And be on your guard against constipation. At the first sign of it administer milk of magnesia in the morning and again at night for one day, repeating this treatment the following day in obstinate cases. The dose is from one-half to one teaspoonful of the liquid milk of magnesia, or one tablet for a small cat, two tablets for a large cat. Directions for administering medicine in its various forms will be found in the chapter on "The Importance of Nursing." A common cold does not usually affect a cat's appetite, except in severe attacks, where there is general inappetence. Unless there is fever it is well to heed the old adage and feed the cold; but remember that right feeding is doubly important at such times. Sometimes a convalescing cat is debilitated, and then half a teaspoonful of cod-liver oil is a good builder, unless it disagrees with the patient, as it does with some cats. Some take oil nicely from a spoon; for others it must be mixed with the food or put in a capsule.

Superior folk who suppose that the human race has a monopoly on diseases are surprised to learn how many respiratory ailments cats can have. And often it is a cold that ushers one of them in. Laryngitis is not uncommon in cats, and they have sinus affections, which hurt them just as much as yours do you. They have acute bronchitis, and chronic bronchitis, and bronchopneumonia, and the more serious lobar pneumonia. They have pleurisy, they have influenza, and they have cat distemper, which is not quite like dog distemper but is bad in its own way. And many a neglected cat has wasted away from tuberculosis, just as poor human beings did in pathology's dark days.

Most of these diseases have their own danger flags. If you are informed you can pretty well guess, from the character of the cough, the changed breathing, or some other symptom, what it is. But do not experiment with treatment. Call the veterinary.

All respiratory diseases of course cause disturbances of one sort or another in the breathing. In some of them respiration is quickened, in others it is labored and heavy. Abnormally fast breathing may of course result from other causes - from excitement, or fear, or exertion - but that is temporary. If you note that your cat in its own home, with nothing to frighten or disturb it, is having trouble with its breathing, then it is time to consult the doctor.

Difficult breathing may come from some growth that is pressing on the air passages, but that too calls for prompt action. Into a busy New York animal clinic, one day, two women brought a magnificent tiger cat. "He can't breathe," they said. "We think he must have swallowed something." So the veterinarian made a swift examination.

"How long," he asked, looking pityingly at the cat, who was lying down, and struggling up, and panting, and stretching out his neck in the effort to suck oxygen into his tortured lungs, "how long has this been going on?" At first the women said they had only noticed it the day before, but then they admitted it had been longer. The doctor smiled rather grimly. "A tumor on the windpipe," he said. "His breathing must have been distressful for a month or two at the very least."

Poor Tiger died on the operating table. Probably he never could have been saved, but if his owners had been watchful and truly kind he might have had a quicker, easier end. Obstructed breathing, or dyspnea, which may come from disease but is oftener due to a growth or some foreign object in the nose or throat, can be distinguished from an ordinary increase in the number of respirations by the muscular effort that the animal makes to overcome it.

Of the respiratory diseases, bronchial pneumonia is one of the most dangerous to cats. It may come from any one of various causes. If when you give your pet medicine the liquid goes the wrong way and gets drawn into the lungs, pneumonia may supervene. Exposure to the cold or wet may bring it on; so may accumulations of mucus from bronchitis. Sometimes it just seems to spring from an enfeebled condition, as in the case of a beloved Persian of mine, a very old cat whose liver became affected as livers sometimes will in old age. She was apparently recovering, when one morning I noticed a curious little catch in her breathing, and knew it for pneumonia. The veterinarian did not advise medicines or a pneumonia jacket; sometimes, he said, nursing is the only thing. When I coaxed her she would raise herself and take a little chicken or scraped beef or beef juice from my hand, and I think nursing would have pulled her through, only she was so old, and the weather was cruelly hot.

Nursing is the best help, but medicines are sometimes necessary, and there is great value in applications such as Antiphlogistine (a clay which is used as a poultice) and in mustard plasters and other counterirritants. But use them only on the advice of a competent veterinary. Do not torture a sick cat with experiments.

To shave any part of a cat's body in order that the skin may be more easily reached is not, I think, a good thing to do unless it is absolutely necessary. It robs the animal of the covering that nature put there, and the coat takes a long time to

Signs of pneumonia are quick breathing, a heightened temperature, and sometimes a murmuring sound in the chest, which you may detect by pressing your ear against it. In the catarrhal form there is a short and painful cough, but in some forms there in no cough at all.

Pleurisy, which is an inflammation of the lining membrane of the thoracic cavity, generally comes on as a cold does, with listlessness and loss of appetite. As it develops the cat shows pain when moved or lifted; it uses the abdominal muscles as an aid to respiration; and if you listen closely you hear a rustling sound in the pleurae. Pleurisy is sometimes the first indication of tuberculosis in a cat.

Laryngitis, rather common among cats, is not so serious. Its symptoms are a dry cough, unwillingness to swallow solid food, and frequent retching. It may be serious if the parts swell suddenly; once I knew a cat that was saved from death by smothering only by the quick use of a tiny tracheotomy tube. But it is usually cured if taken in time, so if your pet shows an inclination to sit with its head outstretched, and coughs when you press a finger on its throat, you may guess laryngitis, and keep the cat warm and quiet, and send for the veterinary.

A symptom of bronchitis is a dry, deep cough. In this, as in most of these troubles, the medicated steam kettle brings great relief. Asthma, which most frequently attacks old cats, particularly if they have been allowed to get fat, is generally accompanied by a spasmodic cough; an asthmatic cat, like an asthmatic person, wheezes terribly at any exertion. There is not much to be done except to cut down the diet and guard against constipation. Of course if paroxysms of coughing occur, medicines are needed to relieve them.

But the best cure for respiratory diseases is good nursing; the best preventive is right feeding, sunshine, and fresh air.

Of all the diseases that afflict our cats, these three are the least curable, the most to be dreaded: distemper, tuberculosis, and infectious enteritis. Feline distemper is different in some ways from canine distemper, and though it is very contagious among cats, it is said that dogs do not catch it from them. Puppies have been known to associate with cats suffering from distemper and to remain immune. However, it is not a good thing to let healthy animals mix with sick ones.

Just as with dog distemper, no scientist has succeeded in finding out much about the microbe that causes cat distemper. Really we know only that it is very virulent and that it manifests itself in many ways, of which the commonest is the deceptive one that seems to be a cold at first. This is variously called infectious catarrh, the snuffles, influenza, and, from the way that it sometimes sweeps through a cat show and even follows the champions home, "show fever."

Watery eyes and a running nose are the first symptoms of catarrhal distemper. Oddly enough, it sometimes affects just one eye, which will be so inflamed and sensitive to the light that you might think it had a cinder in it. The cat sneezes and has fits of shivering, and its hair roughens up into untidy points. Medicine is of little avail in these cases. From one to three grains of aspirin once a day for two days may check the attack and certainly will do no harm, and if there is much diarrhea (a little is salutary because it carries away the poison in the system), a pinch of bismuth subnitrate with each meal is advisable. But it is generally conceded that nursing, not dosing, is the important thing in distemper. Most veterinarians when summoned tell you this.

Make the patient as comfortable as possible in a warm, sunny room (isolated from other cats, of course), and if it shivers dress it in a cosy sweater. Protect it from drafts, but admit plenty of fresh air. Coax it to eat nourishing things. Scraped beef, beef juice, chicken jelly, egg, and milk are best. In the abdominal forms of distemper, however, meat should be avoided, lest it irritate the intestines. These attacks call for arrowroot, white of egg beaten up in milk, and similar soothing foods that are rich in albumin.

In serious attacks of catarrhal distemper the discharge from the eyes and nose becomes a thick, clogging mucus, and this should be wiped away often. Put a pinch of boric acid in a cup of warm water, wash the eyes gently with soft cotton, and clear the nostrils with a tiny swab made by wrapping a bit of cotton around the end of a wooden toothpick. This is important; we know how uncomfortable we feel if our breathing is impeded, and neglect of the eyes at such a time may mean blindness. Remember, too, that cats are unhappy if their fur is soiled, and keep all stains wiped off.

Cats usually recover from mild catarrhal distemper in three or four weeks, but they should be quarantined for eight weeks longer. The distemper germ is long-lived. The room in which a cat with distemper has been kept and the bed and other articles which it has used must be thoroughly disinfected, and even when this is done it is unwise to take a healthy cat into the place in less than three months.

When the distemper germ settles in the pharynx there is trouble indeed. The cat dribbles at the mouth and hangs over its food as if it wanted badly to eat but was afraid to try. Look into its mouth, and on the throat you will see tiny inflamed cysts, which break and turn into ulcers. Unless the disease is halted, a putrid deposit presently collects in the throat, and the patient, unable to swallow, suffers so much that the merciful thing is to put it to death.

There is a pulmonary form of distemper which sometimes manifests itself in pneumonia, bronchitis, or pleurisy. Abdominal distemper generally starts with vomiting and diarrhea, and it can strike so swiftly that at the first danger signal you should call the diagnostician. The death roll in distemper is large, and the victims who recover may be left with ulcerated eyeballs, or skin eruptions, or weak digestion. Veterinarians tell me that chorea, a nervous twitching resembling St. Vitus's dance, which dogs sometimes have following distemper, is not known in cats. But I have read of cats that were left with a palsied shaking of the head, so there you are.

Infectious enteritis, the cat plague, fatal as the black typhus is to man, is sometimes hardly to be distinguished from acute abdominal distemper. Symptoms of this disease are fever, the throwing up of yellow slime, bloody diarrhea, and great weakness. Often there are convulsions at the end. Like distemper, it has a deadly contagion. One cat-lover I know lost four Persian kittens from it, in succession, in a year. After the death of a kitten she would wait three months before taking another, but the germs were still in her apartment.

Does your cat drink fresh milk? If it does, be sure that the cow has been tested for tuberculosis and found healthy, for milk from tubercular cows is the great source of this disease in cats. But cats who dwell in slums sometimes get it from eating the stuff thrown out from tenements and cheap restaurants, and from the dirt they must swallow in making their toilets, and if your pet is permitted to mingle with these unfortunates it may contract the disease from them.

Tuberculosis in cats develops slowly, with increasing emaciation and weakness, and sometimes, though not always, a cough. The layman cannot distinguish it from the wasting type of distemper, which also brings loss of appetite and flesh, but, unlike distemper, it can be communicated to human beings. Just as in humans, tuberculosis will attack various parts of a cat's body - the abdomen, the bones, the kidneys and bladder, as well as the lungs. It is almost never cured, and it means great suffering for the cat.

I once found, in the dark, wet collar of a building that had lately been vacated by a speak-easy, ca cat far gone in tuberculosis, and I did not soon forget the haggard misery in that feeble creature's face. It is painful to put an end to any spark of life, but I was glad to end that one. Dr. Hamilton Kirk says that death is best for all tubercular cats, whether they be homeless strays or treasured pets. And he speaks not as a cold scientist, but as a real lover of cats.

Tubercular cats have been kept alive for some time by care and good food, by owners who thought they loved them, but I do not think life means much to these cats, and I doubt the genuineness of such affection.

Digestive ailments make a long story, for they extend all the way from the teeth to the anus, from pyorrhea to rectal abscesses, from stomatitis, or sore mouth, to colitis. They make up the greater part of the cat cases at animal clinics, and for this we cat-owners ought to take shame to ourselves, because wrong feeding is the chief cause. But I hope not many of us are as foolish as the colored girl who brought a white Persian cat, miserably sick, to a veterinarian late one night.

"What have you been feeding him?" the doctor asked.

"Horatio had sausages and a chicken bone and fried potatoes foh dinnah. Then mah girl friend across the hall had a pahty, and she treated him to ice cream. Horatio shuah does appreciate ice cream. 'Nothah thing he likes is cigarettes. It does tickle folks to see Horatio gobble the end of a cigarette. It's a trick mah boy friend learned him."

The boy friend had run to the drugstore when Horatio succumbed, and bought castor oil and buckthorn to pour down his throat. They were naively surprised that this made him worse. Now this may be an extreme case, but there are many just as outrageous.

Cats that are allowed to roam pick up things that upset the digestion, or worse. Country cats sometimes get thing from eating too many grasshoppers and beetles. And, contrary to the general belief, mice are not wholesome for cats, but fortunately well-fed cats seldom eat the mice they catch.

I do not suppose that four cats out of five have pyorrhea, but as they grow old they are subject to it, and the cause is what it is in humans: too much soft food. If your cat rubs its face with its paw, picks at its food, dribbles from the corners of its mouth, and has indigestion, you may guess pyorrhea. As pyorrhea develops the teeth are loosened and the gums become soft and inflamed. Often the first indication is tartar on the teeth; this is the time to take it in hand and clean the teeth with a soft brush or a swab dipped in a one per cent solution of hydrochloric acid, or in bicarbonate of soda. Real pyorrhea requires the veterinarian, for it may be a case for the forceps.

Stomatitis is an inflammation of the mucous membrane of the mouth. Your pet may get it from being scalded by hot food or from strong medicine, or from indigestion. The symptoms are bad breath, difficulty in eating, fever, and a tendency to sit with the head held stiffly forward. Open the mouth and you will find it inflamed, perhaps ulcerated. Sometimes there is a deposit at the back which the timid take for diphtheria, but it is not really that, and you need not fear contagion. The mouth should be cleansed with an antiseptic solution and the ulcers painted, but a layman should not attempt to treat ulcers.

Pharyngitis, or inflammation of the cavity into which the nose and mouth open, is a sort of extension of stomatitis, harder to deal with because the pharynx is less easy to reach. It may be caused by chills, or by bacterial invasion, or by a bone lodging in the throat. The most serious form, that caused by distemper germs, was described in the chapter on distemper. A cat with pharyngitis almost always coughs, especially when it tries to eat; but if the throat is very bad it refuses food, becomes very nervous, and hides away in corners.

In its mild form this disease soon yields to treatment. Keep the patient warm, coax it with soft nourishing foods, and pin a baby's wool sock snugly around the throat, with camphorated oil rubbed into the skin under it. Two per cent lime water is a good wash for a sore throat.

Gastritis, to which cats are rather subject, usually comes from bacteria taken into the system with food that is not fresh. Cats get it from eating mice, or poisoned baits that have been put out for vermin. A distressing symptom of gastritis is thirst along with an inability to drink; the sufferer will sit by the water dish eyeing it longingly, or if it does drink or eat anything, up it comes directly, accompanied by froth. Cats lose strength fast in gastritis; the sooner the doctor comes the better. There may be gastric ulcers, and they are very serious.

Gastritis is inflammation of the stomach, enteritis is inflammation of the bowels. If your pet cries with pain when you press on the abdomen, you may conclude that the trouble has gone on down. The toxic results of constipation can bring on enteritis, but do not experiment with purgatives, for they may do more harm than good. The cat's strength must be kept up (if it recovers enough to take nourishment) with small doses of beef juice, rice water, barley water, milk, and white of egg in water. In bad cases these are introduced by way of the rectum, but this, and the drugs that are needed to relieve pain, are matters for the veterinarian.

Plain dyspepsia often troubles cats fed not wisely but too well. They show it by hiccoughing instead of purring, by emesis, constipation, halitosis, and a dull demeanor. It is a good plan, when you suspect dyspepsia and cannot immediately have an expert opinion, to starve the cat for a day or two, and to empty the bowels with an enema of warm soapy water. You can easily do this with a soft rubber ear syringe, and if your pet has been properly trained to handling it will lie quiet on a rubber apron across your lap. Fractious patients must of course be held by an aid, and their claws muffled in a towel.

Colitis, or inflammation of the lower bowel, is as painful to cats as to humans. Most veterinarians put the sufferer on a milk diet, and give enemas of starch or opium. Abscesses near the rectum are painful too. A very old cat of mine had them, and they hurt her so that I decided to see if enemas would not correct the condition, and happily they did.

Kittens are subject to colic, and occasionally adult cats have it too. Usually they tell you; they cry and are very restless. A harmless remedy is a ten-grain tablet of bicarbonate of soda in water every few hours till the bloating is reduced. And a hot-water bottle on the tummy is as grateful to a cat as it is to a human being with a midriff ache.

It cannot be said too often that constipation, diarrhea, bad breath, loss of appetite, and an abnormally large appetite are danger signs. Never neglect constipation. If your cat does not evacuate once a day, you must give it milk of magnesia, as prescribed in the chapter on "Colds and What They Lead To," make sure that he has plenty of fresh water to drink, and check up on his diet to see that the cook is not giving him spaghetti or something equally harmful. And remember that a cat with diarrhea is a sick cat.

An increased appetite may indicate worms, or intestinal catarrh, or diabetes. Refusal to eat, if persisted in, shows illness, except in the case of a homesick or grieving cat.

I met, one day, a man who had often told me of his intelligent old cat, Plato. He looked as if he had lost his last friend. He is a solitary, shy sort of man, and Plato was the whole of his family. "Plato is dead," he told me, "and I killed him." Having had to leave the city for a time, he had put his cat in a cats' boarding place, and Plato, unable to understand the separation and perhaps thinking it final, had refused to eat. And the stupid attendants who collected the dishes from the boarders' cages after a meal never noticed that Plato's meat was untouched. This had gone on till Plato died of starvation.

Doctors know that it is hard to get a homesick cat to eat, and so they advise keeping ill cats at home rather than in a hospital.

Worms are not good things for cats to have inside them, but I do believe they are less harmful, by and large, than are some of the remedies used to expel them. The mistaken notion that all kittens have worms and must be wormed as a matter of routine has brought a great deal of suffering to our pets.

It never occurred to me to worm my cats, and so far as I knew they never needed it. I think worms do not often trouble cats that are born under sanitary conditions, that are kept clean and free of lice and fleas, and that do not eat mice or the offal of animals. Filth, vermin, and body pests are great breeders of intestinal parasites that can be communicated to cats. Of course if yours is an outdoor cat you can hardly guard it against all contamination, but fortunately cats are dainty, and the well-fed ones especially so.

But if you buy a kitten from a careless breeder or a badly kept pet shop, look out for worms. There was a bargain-hunter who bought a Siamese kitten "cheap" at a pet shop, only to find when she got it home that it was infested with worms. Kittens are not born with worms, as some people think, but sometimes a few are imbedded in the fur under the mother's tail, and her babies pick them up. The bargain-hunter did not deem it necessary to call a veterinary; a bottle of vermifuge that she had used to worm her police dog had been standing on her bathroom shelf ever since its death, and she gave the wee Siamese a generous dose.

She was afraid that the stuff had lost its strength, standing so long, but it had not. It was the kitten that lost its strength, and in a fortnight it was dead from enteritis. For worming is not a business for amateurs, and worm remedies that are all right for dogs may be entirely too drastic for cats. Their inner machinery is more delicate than that of dogs, and some drugs which are used with excellent results on dogs have been known to poison cats.

Cats are subject to several kinds of worms, and sometimes a laboratory test is needed to determine the kind and what the treatment ought to be. The two sorts from which they commonly suffer are the round worm and the tape worm.

The round worm is a threadlike pest, from two to five inches in length, white or cream-colored. Its eggs are spherical and very tiny, and very numerous in an infected cat's intestines. Sometimes the cat throws up worms; almost always the appetite is capricious, now abnormally keen, now failing; and most significant of all, the cat loses all pride in its personal appearance. Its coat looks rough and untidy, and it does not care. That is when there is a really serious invasion; if the invasion is not checked, diarrhea is likely to set in, and catarrh of the intestines or something equally bad.

Tape worms are diabolical creatures, for their hideous heads are capable of sprouting segments indefinitely, so no matter how many segments are gotten rid of there will be more as long as the head remains. Though the taenia peculiar to cats may be eight inches long, the segments measure only a tiny fraction of an inch, and are hard to identify.

There are vegetable treatments, I am told, that clear out worms effectually. Pumpkin seeds are one. The lady who recommends them says that her tiger cat, a martyr to worms, was cured by pumpkin seeds, which she shelled, broke into small pieces, and mixed with his food for several days. Miss Elsie G. Hydon believes in dosing the animal with tomato juice and carrots. She gives about a tablespoonful of the seedless juice to each cat once a day, poured over its food. If there are worms, this is almost sure to take them away, she says, and in any case tomatoes, with the seeds eliminated, are wholesome for cats. The cooked carrots she mixes with their meat, and she boils carrots in the meat stock she gives them.

Hair balls are the cat's most insidious enemy. You can prevent them by regular grooming, but once a hair ball forms it is difficult to remove.

Long-haired cats are in the greatest danger; about ten years ago "The Veterinary Journal," an English publication, reported the case of a Persian who had to be chloroformed because it was choking; a post-mortem revealed a hair ball as big as a walnut in the esophagus. The poor thing had been ailing for over a month, but the owner thought it was only off its feed.

It is amazing how these obstructions, growing hair by hair, can clog the stomach and bowels. Sometimes you can detect them with your fingers by the spongy feel of the parts. Then it is best to have the veterinary, for he knows how to give effective emetics and the high enemas that are so good for clearing out. Sometimes it is necessary to use a small stomach pump or even to operate.

Cats can be relieved of small amounts of hair by a pinch of bicarbonate of soda in water, followed in twenty minutes by a teaspoonful of mineral oil. White vaseline is good too; most cats will lick it down from your finger.

Cats will launder their coats with their tongues, but keep the loose hairs brushed out and provide them with growing grass for an emetic, and you give the ounce of prevention that excels a pound of cure.

A schoolteacher friend who lived with her cat and dog in a little house she had built on the outskirts of a Westchester town telephoned me in great distress.

"Bill has gone insane," she said.

Bill was her twelve-year-old cat, one of the most sensible and poised individuals I ever had the privilege of knowing. My friend used to say that it was most soothing to come home to Bill after a day spent with forty riotous eighth-grade children. It was edifying to see Bill's tolerant manner toward Fluffy, the dog, a rather feminine and inconsequent creature. I could not imagine Bill losing his senses. Besides, do cats go insane? But yes, Bill had.

Two nights before, a Friday night, she let him out for the brief stroll he always took at bedtime, and he did not return. My friend did not sleep much that night, and the next day she searched and called, called and searched. Sunday morning she remembered that she had not looked under the porch of the house next door. She went down on her stomach and wriggled under, and from the far corner two eyes glared at her. It was Bill, and yet not Bill, for he didn't know her.

He flew at her, snarling, then retreated and crouched in the shadows, shaking in a terrible convulsion. The veterinary came, but they could not reach Bill, and what could he do? She agreed with him that Bill's misery must be ended. The policeman came and did it, swiftly, mercifully, with a bullet in Bill's brain.

My friend buried Bill in the garden; she never knew what had befallen him. The doctor thought he had had inflammation of the brain, which might have been caused by some injury or fright, or might have struck with no apparent reason. I believe that diseases of the nerves and brain, when they occur to cats, are mostly from some outside cause. Cats have extremely sensitive nervous systems, but, curiously enough, they are not as subject to diseases of them as are dogs, if they lead normal lives. But they have always been targets for teasing by dogs and bad boys.

Inflammation of the brain may center in the brain substance or it may be in the brain coverings. The victim's first desire is to hide, as Bill's was. In the milder attacks they are just stupid; in the more acute they are maniacal, rushing about and tearing at things, and often the temperature reaches 105 degrees [Fahr]. This disease may be provoked by a fractured bone pressing on the brain, but whatever the cause it is difficult to diagnose and almost impossible to cure. Sometimes the patient passes into a chronic depression-for cats can be depressed, just as people and the times can.

Congestion of the brain is a milder disease than inflammation, with no fever. It may accompany distemper, and it has been known to follow sun-stroke, for cats do get sunstroke, even though they are less foolish than dogs about playing in the hot sun. Being worried by dogs or children is a frequent cause of brain lesions; an unconscious cat once brought into an animal clinic was found to have a cord tied so tightly around its neck that brain congestion had set in.

Some of the symptoms of congestion are muscular twitching, wild eyes, and a frightened air. If the cat is kept quiet in a dark corner, and a little ice pack held on its head, the chances are that it will recover, but on the other hand inflammation of the brain may be near.

When a cat has apoplexy it falls unconscious, and this coma is followed by paralysis, which sometimes is permanent. Light attacks of apoplexy generally yield to treatment - ice on the head, a laxative, and an enema of warm soapy water. In epilepsy the cat falls to the ground but does not lose consciousness; it stares wildly, quivers all over, and sometimes froths at the mouth.

Anemia of the brain is a slow and hopeless disease, coming from poverty of the blood or from depletion by hemorrhage. The cat will be dizzy at times, dull, and sick at its stomach. An abscess on the brain is another difficult thing to treat. With an abscess there are some of the symptoms of inflammation of the brain; also, the cat shakes its head and holds it in an unnatural position.

Spinal meningitis is a malady of the spinal cord, sometimes the result of an injury, and it is so painful that the patient can hardly bear to be touched. A frequent outcome of meningitis is paraplegia, or paralysis of the rear parts of the body. A cat with paraplegia is a pitiful sight, unable to move its thighs or hind legs. But I have seen one, in an animal hospital, massaged day by day for weeks by an attendant till it walked totteringly; finally it showed a complete cure.

Cat mothers have their share of brain and nervous troubles, like human mothers. Cats with their first kittens are most liable to puerperal eclampsia. Restlessness, fever, and convulsions are the signs, and when they appear the kittens must be at once removed, else the mother may do them harm. Sometimes the seizure is soon over, sometimes it lasts for days. The milk usually dries, but if any remains in the breasts it should be drawn off. Then the cat's owner has her work cut out for her - to keep the kittens alive till the mother can nurse them, if she ever can.

Though science has established that cats have brains to be diseased, and we are learning that the word "fits" does not cover the range of their brain and nerve disorders, the fact that cats have brains to think with and do think with them is not very widely recognized. It is so easy to disparage the "harmless necessary cat." It was once said by Dr. William B. Scott, professor emeritus of Princeton University, in a speech before the American Society of Mammalogists, that the first cats in what is now America, some 35,000,000 years ago, were stupid, dull, and chuckle-headed. And you meet people who say the same of our cats today.

But there is plenty of proof that cats have brains, and souls too, or whatever the vital sparks are that enable us to think, to reason, to love, and to pity. I suppose that pity is the highest of all attributes. Few believe that the cat is capable of it. Yet I knew a cat who not only pitied misfortune but did something about it, who could give some of our modern relief workers a lesson in quick action.

He belonged to the editor of the "Brodhead Independent," in the Wisconsin town where I lived as a child. Mr. and Mrs. Editor adored cats and always had anywhere from five to ten. They were well fed, and this old fellow, Arthur, was particularly honest, so there was much astonishment when he was seen stealing a chop from the kitchen table. He got away with it before they could follow him, but the next day he took u piece of steak, and that time they were able to trail him.

He carried the steak down the path to the barn and around to the back, where there was a hole in the foundations, laid it down, and gave a little call. Then out from under the barn crept a cat that Mr. and Mrs. Editor had never seen before, a forlorn, emaciated creature, and it devoured the food with timorous glances about, while Arthur sat by and smiled. Yes, smiled. He did not have to steal again, for Mrs. Editor placed a heaped saucer behind the barn regularly until the stray decided to come out and join the family.

In that town we knew nothing of Persians, or Siamese, or any of the new-fangled breeds, but we had some fine cats that I suppose were alley cats, though we had no alleys, only lanes. The dean of the Brodhead cats lived with the minister of the Union Free Church, a society of liberal men and women. This cat was nineteen years old, and he always had his chair and plate at the minister's table. The Presbyterian deacon who lived next door thought that was terrible, but he could not deny that the cat's manners were better than those of his own children.

When it comes to the deeds of daring that dogs are always being lauded for, such as pulling drowning people out of the surf, or rescuing travelers from the Alpine snow, cats naturally cannot perform these; but I know a cat who saved a kitten from death by exposure, and another who called help for his sick mistress.

Peter is a handsome tiger cat who has spent the four years of his life with Mr. and Mrs. Newton L. Otis, of New York City. They have always treated him like a dog, talking to him, playing ball with him, taking him in the car on their week-end trips to the Catskills. And he is as responsive and as devoted to them as any dog could be.

A charming white Persian kitten who lives in the same apartment house often calls on Peter, coming along a cornice to his favorite window. There is a screen, but they converse in their own way through its meshes. One cold stormy night Mr. and Mrs. Otis returned late from the theater, and Peter, who sleeps on their bed, would not settle down. He kept going to the window and crying, until they got up to investigate. And there in the beating rain was the Persian kitten. They had not heard a sound from it, and the curtains were closely drawn, but Peter knew. He was extremely pleased with himself, and attended with the greatest complacency while they took the baby in and dried it.

It was a Philadelphia cat who fetched aid for his mistress, Miss Mary H. Leopold, when she was taken suddenly ill. The only people in the house were two stories above, where the cat had never been, but when Miss Leopold said to him, "Oh, Maltie, can't you get someone to help me?" he went up there, miewed till he caught the attention of the people, and led them to his mistress.

Both cats and dogs have been known to show concern and grief over the death of an animal friend, as well as at the loss of a loved human being. Once a Brooklyn cat, just a homeless old tom, stood guard for many hours over the body of a younger cat that had been killed by an automobile and thrown to the curb. Neither coaxing, nor threats, nor the offer of food could break his vigil, and when at last a street cleaner removed the body with a long-handled shovel he pursued the man's cart down the block until a blundering dog chased him away. I wonder what alley idyl of companionship was broken up by this tragedy.

It is motherhood that has inspired the greatest acts of devotion and courage in cats, as in other creatures, though female cats are said not to be so intelligent as the males. At a gathering of scientists at the American Museum of Natural History, May 23, 1930, Miss A. S. Firkins of Columbia University was compelled reluctantly to confess to the men who made up her audience that in a series of intelligence tests she had made with seventy-eight cats the Toms proved brighter than the Marias. Perhaps that was because the tests involved getting something to eat.

When a female cat has kittens to feed and protect she can be very brave, very cunning. There was a New York cat who when her kittens were threatened by a river-front fire carried them one by one past the flames, through the confusion of engines and hose and trampling firemen, under the spouting water, to safety. And there was a ranch cat in a far Western state who swam a river six times, six burdened journeys across wide rushing water, to carry her babies back to the home from which, for some reason mysterious to her, they had been removed. She deserved to be allowed to keep them, and she was.

There was planning required in the process by which a Long Island cat procured milk for her kittens. A farmer was puzzled to find a cat and four kittens in his barnyard every morning when he went to milk. They belonged a mile up the road, and how had the mother got them past his dog, who had a complex against cats? But the dog was not permitted in the barnyard. Once there the kittens were safe while they lapped up the warm milk the farmer gave them.

The farmer's wife, being curious, stationed herself very early with a spyglass at a window commanding the house up the road. And presently she saw the regiment coming with the mother in advance like a scouting colonel; she seemed almost to hear the kittens being warned, "Take care now, wait till I see where the dog is; so, we'll skirt this field, the corn hides us; careful, I hear him barking; creep along this hedge, jump this fence - and here we are."

There was a Chicago mother cat who took her blind kitten to the Association for the Blind, but I suppose we must not credit that to reason. But the Lighthouse attendants thought it very cute. They said that being a young cat she probably had not heard that kittens are born blind, and felt that she needed their help. Anyhow, she came one morning with the kitten dangling from her mouth, deposited it on the steps, watched while they picked it up, and then departed on business of her own - probably to forage for food. In a few hours she called for the kitten and bore it away. This went on for some days, but there came a morning when she did not appear, and the Lighthouse never saw the two again.

Cats often open doors, even manage difficult latches, but I think the process by which a Connecticut cat gains entrance to the house at night in more subtle. This cat, called Fuzzy Dear, generally sleeps in, but she cannot resist a brilliant moonlight night. About four in the morning, however, she tires of prowling and wants to come in. But she does not cry at the door. She would not be heard there.

Instead, she climbs a tree outside the bedroom of her master and mistress, and jumps down on a porch roof below the window. It is a tin roof that rattles even under her light weight and wakes her mistress, who goes to the window. The instant the head appears at the window Fuzzy Dear leaps down and runs to the door, where she is admitted. This surely is clear evidence that cats can not only reason from cause to effect, but they can deliberately go about producing the effect they desire.

There is a good deal of confusion in the lay mind about the skin diseases to which cats are subject, and this is not strange, for there are several of them, some parasitic, some non-parasitic, some contagious, some non-contagious, and often the eruptions look pretty much the same to the inexperienced eye. It is unfortunate, because the different diseases come from different causes and require different treatments. Also, many a poor cat has been evicted or destroyed by an owner who feared contagion to human beings, when the animal was suffering from a non-contagious breaking-out brought on by wrong feeding.

The head resident veterinarian of a large animal hospital told me that he had hardly ever known of dermic trouble being communicated from a cat to a human being. However, I knew a woman who caught ringworm from her cat, and there is always this possibility in some types of skin ailment. So if your cat develops eruptions, it is wise to isolate the sufferer, to observe sanitary precautions in handling it, and to consult a veterinary, who will probably determine the nature of the disease by making a laboratory test of scrapings from the infected spot.

A brief description of the skin disorders that attack cats may be helpful. Cats are less liable to such disorders than dogs are. They are cleaner, they take better care of their persons, and they are more critical about what they eat. Garbage often has a curious attraction for dogs in the best society, but unless a cat is an absolute bum or is very hungry it is scornful of food that is not nice. But of course cats are not proof against wrong feeding imposed upon them by foolish owners, and they are not, if they are neglected or below par, proof against the parasites that are always lying in wait for them.

There is a wide difference between mange and eczema, which are the two principal skin diseases. Mange is a parasitic affection and may be transmitted from cat to cat, and in some forms from cats to human beings. Eczema is a danger flag that nature throws out to indicate that some part of the machinery - the stomach, the intestines, or the kidneys - is not doing its work, or perhaps that the nerves are out of order. It is not contagious, but is sometimes complicated with contagious troubles.

The commonest form of mange in cats is sarcoptic mange. It is an irritating, itching disease, and a bad feature is that it sometimes leads to auricular mange, or parasitic canker of the ear, which is difficult to eradicate once it gets deep down in the convolutions of that organ. The villain in this piece is an infinitesimal mite called the Sarcoptes minor, and, owing partly to the cat's habit of rubbing its head against things, this is the part of its body that is generally attacked.

Like all these pests the sarcoptic mites love filth, and when they find themselves on a clean, well- roomed, healthy cat they just, as a rule, sit tight and wait for favorable conditions. Their ability to exist a long time without declaring themselves is proved by the fact that sometimes this mange develops in cats who have been confined for months in an apartment where there was no chance of infection. Almost always it starts around the eyes or ears or on the cheeks or neck; if your cat begins to scratch its head, to rub it against furniture, and shake it as if trying to dislodge a troublesome invader, you may suspect mange. It is true that toothache or a foreign object, such as a needle, lodged in the jaw may cause such symptoms, but the uneasiness that comes from pain and the uneasiness that comes from itching may be distinguished from each other.

If it is sarcoptic mange you will find by looking closely, as the disease develops, very small red pimples or elevations, over which presently sticky scabs will form. Unless you have had experience it is not best to try to treat this yourself. You might be mistaken in the diagnosis, and if you set out to experiment with so-called cures there is grave danger that you will use some drug that is poison to a cat's sensitive skin. Cats are more susceptible than dogs. Never use preparations of tar, or balsam, or alkali, or carbolic acid, for they have been known to kill cats on whose skin they were rubbed.

If you must carry on without a veterinary, get some good boric ointment and apply it to the sore place, first cleansing this with a weak solution of Lysol. Soap, even the pure unscented soap which is the only kind that ought ever to touch cats, is irritating to a mangy surface. If the eruptions are of some extent, the hair should be carefully clipped around and above them. Never grease a cat's whole body or even a large part of it, for the discomfort and the interference with the pores might bring on a depression that would end in death.

If your cat has mange, do not let it associate with other cats, and do not let it lie on cushioned furniture. Give it a bed of its own in a warm, quiet place, a bed lined with cloths that can be frequently changed (and the old ones burned). There is really no risk to yourself if you are careful. It is very bad for the patient to lick the doctored spots, and if these are where a light bandage can be applied, or if an Elizabethan collar (described in the chapter on "The Importance of Nursing") can be adjusted and worn without hurting the sores, some such check should be employed.

Sarcoptic mange at its worst, as it is sometimes seen in homeless cats, can be very terrible. Once in a tenement street I picked up an old cat whose head was so covered with hardened, thickened scabs that it looked like an elephant's skin. The poor thing was nearly blind and starved to a skeleton, yet it managed a rusty purr when I lifted it and carried it away to be mercifully put to death.

Any irritation of the skin is weakening, so the victim ought to be well fed on simple, nourishing things, especially when convalescence sets in. A daily teaspoonful of cod-liver oil is excellent if it agrees with your cat, but with some it does not agree. As a tonic I have found nothing better than pure beef juice, which I make by broiling round steak just enough to start the blood, and pressing it out. Sarcoptic mange may run a week, or a month, or longer, but if it is taken in time and properly treated the sores will heal, the mousy odor will disappear, the hardened skin will become soft and supple, and the hair, if it has fallen out or been cut away, will grow again as beautiful as before.

Happily for cats they have little liking for the cake and candy that so many spoiled dogs beg for, and get. This and the fastidious distaste of cats for meat that is not fresh make them, as I have said, less subject than dogs to that frequent result of wrong feeding, eczema. However, there is enough wrong feeding of cats to make eczema a not uncommon trouble among them. Some owners have queer notions. For example, salt fish and horse flesh are considered by many people good provender for cats, but both can cause eczema. Happily, there is not much horse meat now, except that used in some prepared rations for cats.

Eczema is a non-parasitic, non-contagious disease, though it may be complicated with a contagious form of mange. There are two types of eczema, the dry and the moist. Dry eczema is most likely to be seen around the ears and on the eyelids, or rather its results are seen, for the pimples by which it manifests itself are too small for the naked eye to discern. What you see is a worried cat scratching its head till the skin is sore and the hair falls out.

Persian cats with their long thick coats are peculiarly liable to moist eczema, though the short-haired breeds have it too. It breaks out along the back, on the head, on the forelegs, at the base of the tail, and on the abdomen. The skin is hot and tender, little sores form, pus exudes, and the hair becomes matted and dirty. If it continues, the hair follicles may be destroyed and baldness ensue.

Outside applications cannot cure eczema, and ignorantly employed they may torture the sensitive skin, perhaps poison the patient, possibly cause death. Even soap and water are too irritating to a skin so sore. Of course in moist eczema it is necessary to remove the dried pus and perhaps to clip away the matted hair, that the skin may be reached for soothing treatment, but this should be done only under skilled supervision. Debilitated cats have died from shock and chill after the reckless cutting away of too much hair, and some of the lotions that are cleansing, no doubt, are absolutely toxic to a cat. The internal treatment is the important thing. The bowels must be cleared out. The safest laxative for an amateur to use is milk of magnesia, given as prescribed in the chapter on Colds and What They Lead To. The diet must be carefully regulated. Give nourishing food, but nothing stimulating. No salt fish, none of the richer fresh fish, no rice or potatoes or bread or spaghetti, no pork, no liver, only lean beef, cooked lamb and rabbit and codfish, brown-bread toast, milk, and non-starchy vegetables. Do not overfeed, but if there is anemia a tonic, say half a teaspoonful of cod-liver oil daily, is advisable.

Moist eczema has a sad tendency to recur even after it seems to be cleared up, but it can be conquered if you keep your pet scrupulously clean and on a rigid diet.

Ringworm is a fungoid skin disease, one of the few dermic woes that human beings can catch from cats, and cats from humans. Mice and rats have it, and they are the chief source of infection for cats. It starts with small yellow specks, which grow larger and lift slightly, with hairs piercing the scabs. They spread in a circular shape, and are sometimes as large as a penny. Ringworm often runs its course and goes of itself, but it is better to have a veterinarian, for a good fungicide will hasten the cure. And if there are dusty corners or floor cracks where the cat has lain they should be cleaned out, for these vegetable parasites infest such places. There are various other skin troubles, and they come from various causes. Pruritus, which is simply the Latin for itching, has been known, to appear for no apparent reason. Or it will follow the use of turpentine or kerosene or any other stinging agent, which some people are mad enough to use to free a cat's coat from paint, or birdlime, or other messes into which unfortunate cats do sometimes blunder. Or sickness may bring it on. Its symptoms are swelling and redness, discharges and scurf, and the treatment should be soothing applications to the skin and attention to the diet.

Baldness is something we hate to befall our pets, for an abundant, fine, healthy coat is one of the cat's great beauties and a proof of its condition. Old cats have a right to get a trifle bald around the ears, but bald spots and even thin places on a younger cat indicate something wrong. They may result from inbreeding of the forebears, or from parasites, or from malnutrition of the skin.

When baldness follows accidental burning or scalding, or a bout of skin disease so severe as to destroy the hair follicles, not much can be done about it. When there has been no injury to the skin you must look for other causes. In any event, a well- nourished body is necessary for a good coat, and grooming is the best stimulant. There is nothing like a good bristle brush regularly used to give life to the hair follicles, and, by cleaning out the dead hair, to make room for a new growth.

There is no excuse for the owner when fleas appear on an indoor cat, unless they are brought in by some visiting cat or dog. For the flea is a creature of filth, and its eggs are usually deposited in dust and grime, in neglected chinks and corners. Cats that are below par, cats that are not kept clean, cats that lead sedentary lives, or that are anemic from bearing and nursing too many kittens are always the most likely to be the prey of fleas.

Of course an outdoor cat is not easy to guard. Though fleas breed in hidden unclean places they get about a good deal, and they are often lurking in weeds and underbrush, waiting to invade your cat as it takes an innocent stroll. They infest rabbits, fowls, and pigeons, and hop lightly from them to cats and dogs, not caring who their host is so long as they get a good drink of mammalian blood.

The cat-flea egg is a whitish speck, from which comes a grub that in the course of several weeks develops into the jumping, biting flea. If your cat, dozing peacefully, suddenly starts up and scratches itself or makes a desperate grab with its mouth at some part of its anatomy, and if, on examination, you see an infinitesimal brownish longish speck which is there and then not there, probably it is a flea.

The flea itself is not dangerous, but it sometimes carries the eggs of the tape worm, which the cat, licking itself, takes into its stomach, to its future undoing. Cats cannot rest or sleep properly when fleas are at work on them; then, by scratching themselves, as they will, they bring on skin diseases and finally get moth-eaten looking and debilitated.

There are various powders for the eradication of fleas, but one must be cautious about using them except by expert advice. I believe Pulvex to be safe; veterinarians I know and trust say it can be used on cats, and they are mindful of the fact that these animals are more sensitive to drugs than dogs are. Pulvex should be dusted well under the hair and allowed to remain a few hours, so as to stun or kill the fleas.

I feel that when applying any powder or other medicinal agent to a cat's body you should put an Elizabethan collar on it to prevent it from licking itself. In the chapter on "The Importance of Nursing" you will find directions for making these collars. A little linen coat serves the same purpose, but it is more troublesome to make and put on.

When the Pulvex has done its work the fleas must be removed, and this is important, for they are probably only stupefied, not dead. I am told that if you stand the cat on a newspaper and brush it vigorously the unconscious fleas will drop on the paper, which can then be burned, but I never found fleas so accommodating; in my experience they stuck to the cat till I combed them out or picked them out with my fingers.

Some authorities prefer a bath to dry powder, using warm water with some soap or oil that is lethal to fleas. But such a bath should be given only under expert supervision, first, because the soap or oil must be selected with care, second, because there is danger that the cat will be chilled. It is best done in an animal hospital.

I always preferred to catch fleas alive, looking through my cat's fur till I found one and nipping it with a thumb and finger. With practice you can do it, but then my cats never had many fleas. When they come in battalions the thumb-and-finger method will hardly serve.

It is humiliating to think that our pet cats can have lice, but even the cleanest children have been known to come home from school with these pests in their hair. But lice have one virtue, they cannot hop about as fleas can; your cat acquires them only through direct contact with some infested animal or object. Like other vermin, lice flourish in unsanitary conditions and on cats that are debilitated from disease or that have long, thick, neglected hair. The cat louse, a biting louse that eats scurf, is hardly visible unless you use a hand lens. The nits may be laid on any part of the body, and they are, by the way, very much harder to slay than the lice. When they hatch you can know it only by the cat's uneasiness and by the appearance of scurf. In time the hair loses its luster, and lesions appear on the skin. It is sometimes difficult to tell whether your pet has eczema or just lice.

When in doubt, or if you know it is lice, consult the veterinary, for it is not easy to destroy these pests. I once heard a discouraged practitioner say that he believed they flourished on vermicides. There are effective methods, such as creolin baths, but they are not for amateurs to attempt, for if not rightly given they are dangerous.

And remember that it is useless to take your pet to a doctor to be cleansed of lice if you bring it back to infested surroundings. Have a thorough house-cleaning of the cat's bed and the other articles with which it has been in contact. And after it has been returned to you keep it healthy and well brushed, and parasites will stay away.

The cat's eyes are its most remarkable feature; their luminous beauty and power of seeing in the darkness had much to do with the awe in which this animal was held by the early Egyptians and its prominence in witch lore and strange religions. The Egyptians believed that the cat's phosphorescent eyes mirrored the sun's rays when it was hidden from man, and so cats were the attendants of Bast, the goddess of the moon, the Sun-god's eye at night. Plutarch affirms that the cat's eyes grow larger and smaller with the waxing and waning of the moon.

It is a fact that cats have the largest volume of eye, compared to their weight, of all animals. And it is their sensitiveness to light, the way the pupil contracts to a slit in strong sunlight and opens in darkness till the iris almost disappears, that helps to give them the touch of the mysterious that we feel.

These marvelous organs, however, are not immune from disease. All sorts of ills with long Latin names, conjunctivitis, keratitis, oedema, trichiasis, entropion, and various others, can afflict a cat's beautiful eyes. Cats have cataracts, they get motes in their eyes, their sight becomes dim in old age. And no way has been found to induce them to wear spectacles. Artificial eyes are made for them, and I knew a noble Thomas who, having lost an orb in a nocturnal escapade, was required by his mistress to wear a false one when she had guests for tea. He hated it, for the eye was not practical - always falling out and having to be stuck back in again.

Probably conjunctivitis, or inflammation of the mucous membrane of the eye, is the commonest visual trouble with cats. It may come from an attack of distemper or start with catarrh, or it may be caused by smoke, or dust, or poisonous gases. Sometimes both eyes are affected, sometimes only one. There is redness and a swollen look, and the sufferer weeps tears which presently become a discharge that excoriates the skin and leaves bald spots unless you promptly wipe it away. Often the cornea looks quite opaque. Mild conjunctivitis can be relieved by bathing the eyes with a warm solution of boric acid and water and keeping the cat from the light. Of course she will try to scratch the affected parts, and of course this must be prevented. There are little wire eye guards for the purpose, but a light bandage will serve.

There is a purulent conjunctivitis which attacks kittens, and, less often, cats. It is a painful malady, with a thick discharge, and sometimes blindness follows. The eyes of young kittens should be carefully looked to for signs of congenital disease, though to be sure this does not often occur. A kitten's eyes should open when it is nine days old, but in rare instances, as I have already said, nature must be aided by gentle rubbing and bathing, or possibly an operation.

Keratitis is an inflammation of the cornea. It is sometimes found in a tubercular cat, but it has other causes. Fighting toms have gotten it from a well-placed jab of an opponent's paw. The worst case I ever saw was in a grocer's cat that had been trapped in a smoky fire in the store. Like conjunctivitis, keratitis makes the eye red and angry and brings a slight film over the ball. For slight cases the treatment is the same, but there is an ulcerative form that calls for a veterinarian.

Trichiatis, or ingrowing lashes on the eyelid, is an annoying trouble, which we rarely recognize, thinking that our pet has a cold. Fannie Hurst, the novelist, tells how she learned that her cat was suffering from a troublesome eyelash by having one of her own. She remarked to her doctor that her Persian's eye was watering just as hers did, and he, being a true healer, immediately examined the cat, found that it had the same ailment, and treated it with the same care that he had shown the mistress.

There are many types of ophthalmitis, or inflammation of the eye, as many as there are parts to this intricate organ. In any of them it is important to keep the eye aseptic, and it is a good plan to give the patient a laxative. But if your cat's eyes are affected, it is best to take it to a veterinary, for something serious may be on the way. For example, cases are known in which choroiditis, or inflammation of the choroid, the thin vascular coating that nourishes the retina and lenses, was the first symptom of tuberculosis.

Entropion is a curious disease. It is an inversion of the eyelid, and is sometimes so complete that it shuts off the sight. I knew a dog who was born with it and never saw until, when he was four years old, a surgeon took a piece out of the upper eyelid, drawing it up, and enabled him to see. I never knew a cat to have it so badly, but they do have it. Nothing helps but an operation, and it must be very skillfully performed or the result is permanently disfiguring.

The haw, the cat's inner eyelid, is very useful when it behaves. This membrane is the White Wings of the eye, rising from the inner corner and sweeping over the ball, clearing away dust and moistening the cornea. But sometimes it protrudes unduly, and makes your pet squint-eyed. This may be caused by a tumor, or by anemia, or by some condition that cannot be ascertained. In some cases astringent applications, with a tonic, will reduce the haw, but others require an operation.

Cataracts are not so frequent with cats as with dogs. There is really nothing to be done about them. Removing a cataract is a ticklish job, and cats do not stand operations well. Cataracts come mostly to old cats; when they are old, too, they are likely to have a blurring of vision, an increasing difficulty in focusing. When my Mimi was seventeen years old she could hardly see me across the room, but she could come to me unerringly. Something told her where I was, and custom enabled her to get about the house without trouble.

Nature is kind, making one sense help out another. When medicine and surgery can help our pets, by all means let us invoke them, but sometimes it is best just to make the animal as comfortable as possible and let nature take its course.

Cats have very acute hearing. At a convention of the American Otological Society in Atlantic City, a McGill University man exhibited a group of cats that had been trained to associate certain sounds with food, and showed that the cats responded to sounds that the listening scientists could not hear at all. It was proved, in terms of cycles per second, that a cat hears more than twice as well as a normal human. Perhaps that is why they are often so nervous. It must be very distracting to hear all the mice and caterwauling within such a wide radius.

Very few cats are deaf. When they are, it is usually due to an injury or to disease. One hears of deaf albino cats, but Clyde E. Keeler, of Harvard University, and Virginia Cobb, of the Boston Cat Club, who have made a joint study of variations in pigmentation produced by matings, state in an article in the "Journal of Heredity" for May, 1933, that "we have no indisputable record of complete albinism in the cat, and if it exists at all, it may possibly be confused with dominant blue-eyed white."

I am told by some fanciers that deafness is found in blue-eyed whites oftener than in cats of any other color, but an English breeder of whites, Lady Alexander, has been quoted as saying, "With very few exceptions all our cats have had perfect hearing." It is well that there are few deaf cats, for they are rather pathetic; they have a wistful look, and they appear stupid sometimes, when they are not stupid at all. Like most hard-of-hearing people, they talk very loud.

Ear hygiene is very important in the prevention of disease. Look out for wax, for it may be the first sign of trouble. Otodectic mange, commonly called parasitic canker of the ear, produces a brown wax which, when examined with a microscope, is seen to be swarming with minute organisms. Longhaired cats are especially subject to this disease, but no breed is immune; it is a very general feline complaint. Sometimes the parasites are very irritating, constraining their involuntary host to scratch its ears perpetually, but sometimes they have been found to be present when the cat showed no discomfort at all.

The worst feature of otodectic mange is that it leads sometimes to otitis, a cruelly painful disease. Take it at the start, therefore, with a careful daily cleansing. Make little swabs with wooden toothpicks and absorbent cotton and wipe out the ear with ether, going as far down into the pink convolutions as you safely can, but gently, for it is easy to do harm. Twice a week or so use warm olive oil. Let a drop fall in, massage the ear a bit, then dry it out with cotton, and dust in some boric acid powder. The wax may continue to reappear for some time, for the mites often burrow far into the ear.

Burn the removed wax and the swabs. This disease is contagious among cats, but not to human beings. There is no call for the fear timid folk have of catching it from our pets.

Otitis, or inflammation of the ear, may affect the external, or the internal, or the middle ear. It is oftenest the work of the symbiotic acari, the little demons that make the brown wax, but there are other causes in plenty. Mistaken owners who wash out a cat's ear with soap and water may bring it on, for water is bad for ears, and soap, like wax, can harden and press on the nerves and cause inflammation. Otitis can result from a blow on the head or from some injury that the cat, seeking relief from the itching, inflicts on itself by scratching.

As this disease advances the ear will look swollen and be hot to the touch, and the cat will shake its head and hold it to one side and act worried and frightened, perhaps run away and hide. Sometimes there is an offensive discharge, which closes the canal so that deafness follows, and the cat may have convulsions and die.

But no cat-owner, certainly none who knows by personal experience what otitis means, will let an animal suffer so. This ailment emphatically calls for a skillful veterinarian, and a kind one. If your surgeon employs instruments in the treatment, such as the speculum (a device for dilating and throwing light into the ear), make sure that he anesthetizes your pet. I know that this is too painful a business for a conscious creature to endure. And remember what Henry Gray, that humane English veterinary, said; "It is not wise to poke about in the ears too much."

Cysts and blood tumors on the ear flap occasionally happen for the torment of cats. They hurt badly, and if your pet is so unfortunate as to have one it will probably hide in corners, refuse food, and move its head distressfully. Examine the ear and you will find an oblong swelling along the inner surface of the flap. If the cyst comes from a bad bruise there may be blood in the watery contents.

Sometimes these cysts are absorbed, and the swelling disappears without treatment, but, aside from the pain the cat suffers in this slow process, it is sure to result in a permanent distortion and ugly wrinkling of the lobe. This is one of the diseases in which an operation is needed, and, to restore the ear to its former shape and keep it standing up proudly as a cat's ear should, the operation must be carefully done and the cat kept quiet till the wound heals.

"Speaking about operations on cats," said a man who had lost an old cat greatly beloved by his wife and himself, "there is only one thing to be said. They can't stand them."

Happy had a cancer, and his owners refused to subject him to the knife. They kept him with them so long as his life did not belie his name, and when he began to suffer they put him to death. I believe most people who have much to do with sick animals would agree with Dr. Hamilton Kirk, who said, "When any tumor is definitely diagnosed as cancerous, the most humane course is to destroy the victim."

It is not always easy. When Mimi the Second - mine since she was an orphaned one-day-old kitten seventeen years before - developed a limp that we thought was rheumatism till we found a little lump under the groin, and the veterinarian, after anesthetizing her and examining the growth, said, "It is cancerous," there was only one thing to tell him.

"Then don't let her wake up." So I know it is not easy.

But the saddest eyes I ever saw were the eyes of a gentle old cat who was dying of cancer in a hospital cage. He had been operated on twice, and each time the growth returned. Now he was too weak for anesthetics, and the merciful doctor would have ended his pain, but his owners said they were so fond of him that they could not have him killed before his time. So he lay there, looking up with those despairing eyes when someone stopped at his cage, then tucking his head silently down again.

I think the second operation on this cat was a cruel mistake. But in many cases operations are a good thing, and it is by no means true that cats cannot stand them. Undoubtedly they are more susceptible to shock and more easily overcome by anesthetics than dogs are, but many cats have survived major operations and lived happily ever after.

I asked Dr. Alfred W. Meyer, who has performed operations almost daily for many years at the Ellin Prince Speyer Hospital for Animals in New York, to give me some statistics on the comparative ability of dogs and cats to withstand operations.

"Impossible," he said. "We have figures showing how many cats are operated on, how many dogs, how many survive and how many die, but conditions differ in every case. For example, the owner of one cat takes it home after the operation and brings it back daily, if necessary, for treatment. The owner of another prefers or is obliged to leave it in the surgical ward. Now, cats do not stand hospitalization very well. They fret in a cage, in a strange place, and their chances of recovery are better at home.

"The age of an animal, its disposition, its general condition, the nature of its complaint, all these are factors in its reaction to an operation. So, statistics tell little, and we can only say that cats are more sensitive than dogs."

From one sort of operation the cat's native caution makes it almost immune. Dogs will bolt the queerest, most indigestible things; the Speyer Hospital charts record successful operations on several canine knife-swallowers, a collie that swallowed the twisted-wire handle of a stove-lifter, dogs that had dined off tennis balls, silver dollars, and rubber mice, and three police pups that between them had eaten several hundred wire nails. But cats rarely have intestinal obstructions, except indeed hair balls and needles. They love to play with strings and threads, and when a thread with a needle at the end gets into a cat's throat the needle is pretty sure to follow.

I have not heard of many operations for hair balls. When they are present in the intestines, veterinarians as a rule prefer to work on them with enemas, emetics, and stomach pumps. An operation is the last resort. But the right instrument for hair balls is a good stiff brush in the owner's hands, used daily on the cat's coat before, not after, the ball forms.

Cats have been operated on for abnormal growths of many kinds, in the internal organs, on the body, in the throat, the ears, the eyes. Tumors are the most frequent, and if there are no serious complications they can be removed with a fair chance of their not recurring. Hernia, or rupture of the intestines, is not so common, but does happen; and it has been successfully operated on. But I have known a small hernia to be let alone and never give any trouble.

It is not well to rush into an operation except in an emergency. When Mimi the Second was quite young she developed a large unsightly swelling under her silken ruff. An operation was advised, but one day I marched in a Votes for Women parade, and my partner in line and I got to talking cats, and I told her of Mimi's goiter.

"That's my husband's specialty," she said. "Take her to him." The husband was Dr. John Rogers, a physician of note; he could not have examined his human patients more carefully than he examined my little cat, advising against an operation, and prescribing treatment that in a short time caused the swelling to be absorbed. The cure was simple; massaging and tablets to reduce the glands.

Injuries, of course, bulk large in the surgical records of animal hospitals, and cats have their share of accidents. Fewer cats than dogs are hurt by automobiles, but they make up for that by falling from high windows and fracturing their legs and backs - or they are maimed by dogs - or they get into fights. It is amazing what mayhem two angry toms can commit upon each other. In my youth we would stick a bleeding warrior into a large stocking, binding down his claws, and tie up his wounds with strips torn from an old petticoat, but now they have modern methods. I met a cat in a hospital the other day whose torn ear, incurred in a duel, was costing his owner quite a penny.

Many of the animal hospitals today, both the large ones maintained by humane societies and the smaller ones owned by veterinaries, have excellent operating rooms. The operating room in the Speyer Hospital, for example, is quite as up-to-date as are the operating rooms in good hospitals for human beings. The operating table, the shadowless lamp, the sterilizing machines, the devices for electrical treatment, the dressing tables, the instruments - all the equipment is of the sort used for man, and the white walls, tiled from floor to ceiling, and the drainage arrangements insure safety from infection.

The Angell Animal Hospital in Boston is very fine too, and there are splendid ones on the Pacific coast. I believe that England and France, despite their love of cats and dogs, have no great public animal hospitals like those in the United States. They have, however, some fine private hospitals maintained by veterinarians.

It is of great importance to have a cat in proper shape when it is to be operated on. It should not, as a rule, be fed for eighteen hours before going under the knife. I believe in the use of a general anesthetic whenever pain is to be inflicted. Some veterinarians dispense with this in the smaller operations, but these men are not truly careful or truly kind. Work with the knife can be done better when the subject is perfectly still, and even the most expert handling cannot guard against sudden movements on the part of a conscious cat that is being hurt. And why impose unnecessary torture on a helpless animal?

It is said that nursing is half the battle in treating a sick human being. It is more than that in dealing with a sick cat. Shut off from us by the barrier of language, not knowing the why of the hurt and the handling and the medicines and all the tiresome business of healing, cats doubly need the reassurance of affectionate care, of gentle hands and a soothing voice.

For nursing means much more than just the practical details. I knew a cat who was accidentally poisoned. The veterinary came, administered antidotes, and went, saying that he doubted if the cat could recover. But Cedric's mistress sat down by him and tended him the night through, stroking him, coaxing him to take the drink he needed, crooning a foolish little ritual, "Cedric, get well for Missie's sake," and in the morning he was better; in a week he was well. Another cat, similarly stricken and given the same antidote but left alone for the night, died. Of course the practical details are important, and if you cannot attend to them at home it is better to take your pet to a hospital. But you can manage them if you really want to, and home is the best place for a sick cat. I have often heard Dr. Bruce Blair say that the temperature of even a healthy dog or cat will rise when it is confined in a cage in a strange place. During the score of years that he was head of the Ellin Prince Speyer Hospital he never failed to advise owners to care for their pets at home if they could.

In nursing your sick cat the first detail is its bed. If it has had a favorite spot to lie in, a particular chair or corner of a sofa, it will as a rule want to stay there, and you should humor it if you can, but if the nature of the ailment or the conditions of your household forbid this, fix a bed in a quiet corner. It should be airy but not in a draft, near sunlight but shaded from the glare. Newspapers make a good mattress; they should be changed and the discarded ones burned every day. The blanket should be changed and washed daily. A cat that is badly hurt or so helpless as to be in danger of bedsores will find a rubber air cushion a very grateful relief.

When a sick cat is inclined to move about to its harm it may be necessary to cage it. Canny owners accustom their pets to occasional cage life early, and that makes it simpler to confine them when the need arises. It is possible to buy attractive cages that will match your furniture.

Administering medicine to cats is a ticklish business. Liquids are most difficult, for the cat's muzzle is small, and it has not, as the dog has, elastic cheek pouches into which they can be poured. But patience does it. If you are nervous and hasty you get nowhere with a cat. Have the dose ready in a medicine dropper or a fountain- pen filler, stroke the patient and talk to it soothingly, and then (if it is a quiet cat) you will be able to put your left hand around the back of its neck, pressing the jaw hinges open with your thumb and second finger, and drop the liquid down its throat.

A fractious or frightened cat will have to be wrapped in a blanket to keep it still. Avoid making it struggle. And do not pour anything down hastily, or much at a time, lest it get into the lungs and give your pet pneumonia.

Tasteless potions can of course be added to a cat's food or water, if he is eating or drinking. Liquid paraffin, which relieves constipation, can be mixed with broken-up sardines. Olive oil can be given the same way. Bismuth powder, excellent for diarrhea or vomiting, cannot be detected when added to meat. Milk of magnesia is fairly tasteless in cow's milk. But do not let the patient see you doctoring its food. I have known cats to wax suspicious at the mere sight of the medicine bottle.

When the drug can be had in the form of pills or can be put in capsules it is easiest to give it in that form, even though you cannot fool a cat as you often can a dog by wrapping a pill in a bit of meat. Cats decline to bolt things. But with small spring forceps you can drop a pill far back on the tongue, and down it goes. Powders can be dusted on the tongue, but never try this with bitter ones; your pet may be nauseated and refuse to take anything for days. Use a capsule for the disagreeable dose.

Getting an invalid or convalescent cat to eat is of the greatest importance, and here is the great advantage in having sick pets at home. They are more inclined to eat in familiar surroundings, and hospital attendants rarely have the time to use the artifices necessary to induce an ailing cat to take the nourishment it is too languid to want. Just to set down a saucer of food is not enough. Take a little scraped beef or minced chicken in your fingers and hold it at the cat's nostrils or rub it lightly against the mouth. I have seen very sick cats roused in this way to eat.

But do not overdo it. A little at a time is the rule for stomachs sensitive from illness.

The type of food to give depends on the nature of the ailment. If your pet is anemic and thin from a wasting disease, give milk with a little cream in it, beef that is a trifle fat, boiled codfish, boiled tripe, and similar foods. Half a teaspoonful of cod-liver oil daily is a good builder if it agrees with the patient; if it upsets the stomach, avoid it. Oil goes down best mixed with sardines. I believe strongly in beef juice, for it not only nourishes but stimulates, and when a cat is thirsty it will drink this quite readily. Prepared extracts are likely, because of the salts they contain, to irritate a cat's stomach, so make the juice yourself. Broiling the steak slightly makes it easier to press the juice out.

Raw egg is good in fevers, beaten up in milk, one egg to half a pint of liquid. When the digestion is bad the white of the egg only should be used. Very sick cats have benefited by egg albumin forcibly fed. But forcible feeding must be done very cautiously, for it may cause an attack of vomiting that will result in heart failure and death.

Arrowroot is nourishing and very useful in checking diarrhea. If the bowels are loose, it is best to give things with a little starch in them, or gelatine, rather than meats, oils, or vegetables.

Neat cats must be very sick indeed before they cease to go to the pan, and generally it is best to let them go. Place the pan near the bed, and change the sand or paper often. Never let a sick cat's coat become smeared, but clean it with damp absorbent cotton. Keep the eyes, the ears, and the nostrils clean too. When there is a discharge, as in distemper, it is very important to clear out the nasal passages.

A thing that must be watched out for in nursing cats with skin troubles is their inveterate tendency to wash themselves. An Elizabethan collar is the best guard. Cut a round of cardboard and make a hole in the center just large enough to slip over the head. The collar should stand out from the neck about four inches. Wound with a strip of soft cloth it is not uncomfortable, and most cats, though at first they think it queer, end by tolerating it very gracefully.

Some people do not approve of the growing practice of neutering cats. They say it is against nature. But nature has one mighty purpose, to create, to guard against extinction, and the consequences of an oversupply mean nothing at all to her. "So careless of the single life," she neither knows nor cares whether there are homes for kittens or whether they must wander and starve.

I have seen many altered cats, and they are just as healthy and happy, as handsome and alert, as unaltered cats. The notion that it makes them stupid and dull and destroys their value as mousers is absurd. My Fifi was an altered cat. When she and her sister Mimi were two years old, and their kittens came, it was necessary to perform the Caesarian operation on both, and in the process the ovaries were removed. Two weeks afterward, in the country cattery where she convalesced, Fifi was prancing up and down her run and announcing to the astonished cats on either side that she was "cat of the walk." She was a vigorous character, and vigorous she remained through her long life. Mimi died, but her two daughters survived, and it was Mimi the Second who lived to the great age of seventeen years.

The castration of a male is a minor operation; spaying a female is a major operation. So of course the risk is greater with the female than with the male, but even with the former there is not much danger if the surgeon is skillful, if his instruments are properly sterilized, and the patient's previous condition and the aftercare are what they should be. Neutering is really the only way, if you live in an apartment, of having a satisfactory pet. "To keep breeding stock and not breed it," says Miss Doris Bryant, "means that the eat becomes a nuisance." And however much you love the cat, that is true.

I do not think that mother cats are always happy, even when they are lodged and fed. I am acquainted with one, Prissy by name, whose owner boasts of the number of kittens she produces; they average at least twenty a year. The village is populated with them. But despite the lauded joys of motherhood, Prissy, though still young, has a harried, dragged-down look. At three years she seems older than my Fifi did at thirteen.

Male cats may in most cases be castrated after they reach the age of four months. Some veterinarians advocate waiting till they are older. The advantage in putting it off, I suppose, is that it occasionally happens that an animal is not sufficiently matured at four months, and then the operation is not successful. One is told that it is not safe to castrate males of over six or seven months, but in a case I knew a four-year-old who had turned vicious was neutered; he survived, and his disposition was much improved.

Even the simplest operations have their pitfalls. Peritonitis has been known to develop after castration or spaying. Sometimes the subject will, for no apparent reason, refuse food, droop, and die. But still, considering the large number of male cats veterinarians are called on to neuter, and the not inconsiderable number of females, the percentage of fatalities is small. And think of the delight of having a Tom who never wants to go out on the back fence and sing, a Maria who enjoys spinster-hood and never shrieks for offspring.

I believe that even for the minor operation on the male the cat should be anesthetized. Some veterinarians dispense with it, but the British Animals (Anaesthetics) Act, which became a law in 1919, provides that a dog or cat over six months of age shall not be subjected to castration without being under the influence of a general anesthetic. Dr. Hamilton Kirk, whose wide practice among small animals entitles him to speak, thinks there should be no age limit. There is of course the danger of death under the anesthetic, but it is better to run this risk, a very slight one if the anesthetist is careful, than to subject any creature to needless pain. Most authorities put the proper age for spaying a female cat at from six to eight months, but it can be done later. Miss Bryant tells me that she had a Siamese spayed that was over three years old and had had fifteen kittens, and another that was nearly seven years old and had had forty kittens. "The operation caused them no suffering," she says, "and they are now as playful and happy as kittens."

Never have a cat neutered when its condition is not right. Cats that are fat, cats that are weakened by illness, mother cats that have lately had kittens, are not up to the operation. Female cats especially must be healthy to have it turn out well. They should be given nothing to eat for eighteen hours previous, save a little milk. Immediately after the operation the cat must be placed in a comfortable, warm bed to recuperate. The surgeon of course sees to it that the body is snugly bandaged to hold the parts in place and to prevent the cat from licking the wound and tearing the stitches.

Possible complications - heart failure, hemorrhage, infection, loss of appetite, adhesions - cannot be overlooked. But in the great majority of cases, if the thing is done properly, it will turn out all right. Neutered cats are inclined, with their greater serenity, to take on extra flesh, but you can prevent this by regulating the diet.

"I had to choose between giving him a short life and a merry one or a long life and a dull," a woman said of her cat whom she had allowed to wander at will, and whose career was unfortunately cut short by poison. "And I don't believe in shutting animals up."

If it were put to a vote of the cats I suppose many would say the same, at least the gay young blades would, and lively ladies like Don Marquis's Mehitabel. Of course what most cats prefer is home and a fireside when they want it, with the right to arise and go forth when the moon draws them. How can they realize the dangers that await them? But I have noticed that when they have their freedom there comes sooner or later a morning when the cat does not come back.

In the city and in the country dangers await the wandering cat. In New York, where the sanitary code allows janitors and apartment dwellers to spread exterminators around the premises without a permit, many cats and dogs die from eating poisoned baits put out for rats and roaches. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals gets reports of from three to ten deaths daily from this cause, and there are many cases which neither this nor any other humane agency hears about.

I have not the facts about other cities, but the exterminator peril exists almost everywhere. We cannot blame it on the reliable exterminating companies, for they seldom use materials harmful to dogs and cats, and if they must resort to poison they do it with precaution. It is generally the janitors, who, acting under orders from the landlord, scatter cheap exterminators containing arsenic, strychnine, thallium sulphate, and other violent poisons. Then your cat, adventuring into a basement, finds a tempting morsel and tastes it, and creeps away to die in agony. If these landlords would spend a little more money and buy red squill or some other exterminator harmless to pets ... but what is the life of an animal compared to keeping down the budget?

So - it is up to you, the owner of the cat. If you do not let your pet roam it cannot be poisoned. Cannot, that is to say, unless you take risks with exterminators in your apartment. Cats have been made very sick by stepping in phosphorous preparations and licking the stuff from their paws. And remember that some cats will eat insects, and an insect that has eaten noxious powder or even merely run through it is not a wholesome thing in the stomach of a cat.

Automobiles kill fewer cats than dogs, but it is not uncommon to see the body of a feline victim of a hit-and-run driver lying by the curb. Then there is the peril of cruel boys, for in spite of humane education in the schools there are still many boys who delight to tease and torture a helpless cat. Then there are the dogs that kill cats. Some dog-owners have a strange attitude about this. I knew a dear old Persian who was chased into his mistress's kitchen and killed there by a neighbor's dog, and the neighbor kept his four-footed murderer and did nothing.

Ever present dangers to country cats are the traps that boys and men set to catch fur-bearing wild animals. But they catch domestic animals too, and the terrible thing about most of these traps is that they do not kill instantly, but clamp their jaws on a leg or other part of the hapless creature and hold it there in misery till the owner of the fiendish device comes, which may not be for days.

Many country cats are poisoned and shot, too. It is difficult to understand the man or woman who will put out ground glass in meat, for instance, for dogs and cats to eat, or will riddle their skins with shot; but since such people exist and often contrive to do their devilish work secretly, we should protect our pets from them. When it is impractical to confine a cat, as it may be if he is on patrol service against rats and mice in the barn and granary, we can train him not to wander much. A cat that is one of the family, that is petted and fed regularly, is much likelier to stay at home than is the neglected cat. Neutered cats do not stray much, and they are good mousers, too; neutering does not, as many people think it does, dull their ardor in that pursuit.

In my old home we shut our mousers in the barn at night, a good plan when it is fixed so they cannot get out, and there is a haymow for them to sleep in. But a wild scramble it was to get them there! They had a flattering preference for the family circle, and such an uncanny sense of time that though at ten minutes of ten they would be lying serenely in our midst, at ten, barn-going time, they would have slipped mysteriously away, generally to the farthest corner under the biggest bed.

There are dangers awaiting wandering cats in city and country; there are even dangers in the confines of an apartment. High windows are one of these. Cats love to sit in a window and survey the world, but unless there is a screen to guard them there is always the chance that they will fall. Full-length screens hinged on one side and secured by a strong hook on the other are best if the architecture permits them. I have spoken of this before, but it cannot be mentioned too often.

Putting a cat on the fire-escape for an airing is generally a mistaken kindness, and roofs, too, are rather dangerous playgrounds. Unless you watch your pet closely you may miss him, to find him lying, grievously hurt, on the pavement below.

Compared with the normal span of a human life, old age and death come pathetically soon to cats. Ten years is the average length of the cat's life, and it is the tragedy of becoming attached to a pet that you must part with it in such a short time.

However, as some cats die before they are ten, some live longer. It is not unusual for them to last twelve or fourteen years, and in various authentic instances they have doubled the natural span. Every one of these ancients that I have interviewed had been of regular and temperate habits. I only know of one, Mr. Nathaniel Winkle, a cat who lived twenty years and six months, and had the further distinction of wearing a wooden leg, who even drank whisky, and he took it only when he was recovering from the amputation of his leg.

Mr. Winkle's story appeared in the New York Sun in November, 1928. It was told by his mistress, Jennie Correll Bartleman, whose companion he became when both of them were very young. "He was the nearest thing to my heart always," she says. "I rarely moved without him. He went with us to our country place in Pennsylvania. Of a delightful disposition, of uncanny intelligence, it is no wonder that everyone fell in love with him."

When Mr. Winkle was seventeen years old, but still agile, he was chased by a playful terrier and fell backward from a tree, dislocating a shoulder and breaking an ankle. A veterinarian pulled the shoulder into place, and said that nature would take care of the ankle. Apparently it did, but in fact one of the small bones failed to knit, and after many futile attempts to heal the lump that formed, the leg was amputated by Dr. Charles J. McAnulty of Ventnor, New Jersey. Mr. Winkle was under ether three quarters of an hour, but he revived and became well and strong. His mistress's brother, a surgeon, devised a wooden leg, which Mr. Winkle wore with dignity and dexterity till the end of his days.

There was wide interest in the case; medical journals both in this country and in Europe commented admiringly upon it. And well they might. I never heard of another cat with a peg leg, and very few have lived as long as he. His faculties were unimpaired to the last, though he was, judged by human standards (calling the human span threescore and ten), almost one hundred and fifty years old.

At the 1933 show of the Boardwalk Persian Cat Club, in Atlantic City, a twenty-year-old male tiger cat, Jack, was exhibited by his owner, Mrs. Laura E. Warthman. He was in excellent shape and appeared to be going strong. A nineteen-year-old cat, Captain Jinks, died recently in the home of his owner, Mrs. F. A. Rogers, of Jamaica, Long Island. He, too, was bright and active, with good sight and hearing, till his last sickness came. One of the youngest old cats I ever saw was a roof acquaintance I had in Washington Heights, New York City. His owners would bring him to the roof for an airing, and his coat was so glossy, his eyes so bright, and he played so gaily with his ball that I guessed he was about six years old. No, they said, he was more than twenty years old, and they brought evidence to prove it.

When my Mimi the Second had to be put to sleep, at the age of seventeen years, it was not because of old age but because of a growth in the groin. She relished her dinner to the last, and there was no failure of her faculties save an inability to see clearly at a little distance. And she slept more. She would sit herself in a Morris chair in exactly the human attitude, her back against the back of the chair, her head up, her hind paws stretched out in front and the forepaws crossed on her stomach, but soon, to her embarrassment, she would begin to nod. And like an old lady she would catch herself and give me a look as much as to say, "You are mistaken, I was not asleep."

Cats do not show senile decay as dogs do. Old dogs sometimes get gray; cats do not. The coat may roughen and thin in old age, but not, I think, if it has always been groomed. I have known well-cared-for cats to have beautiful coats when quite old.

As a cat gets old the teeth begin to look worn and lose their whiteness; a yellowish stain shows at the gums and creeps toward the points. The flesh falls away a little along the spine and around the eyes. The joints stiffen, though not so badly as in old dogs, probably because cats do not run around in the cold and lie out in the wet as much as dogs do. A cat is more careful of its health, and in old age it reaps the reward. Except when disease or infirmity assails them, there is no reason why old cats cannot be quite as happy in their own way as young ones.

They just need a little special attention. Their food should be cut finer and should have (unless their digestion is too delicate to stand it) some extra richness and stimulation: raw beef juice on the chopped meat, a little cream in the milk. They want a warm corner in winter, and in summer they should be guarded against exertion and excessive heat, for old cats, like old people, are sensitive to both heat and cold. I once knew a granny cat (quite shrunken with age she was, and touched in the temper, but her owners loved her) who always wore a little sweater on bleak days and when it was hot had a tiny icebag for her head. And why should she not have been made comfortable? She had always done her duty, and her days had been long in the land.

Modern people could hardly credit the prominence of the Cat Symbol in the religion of the ancient Egyptians were it not for the evidence that remains. But the statues of the goddess Bast, showing her with a cat head or with cats at her feet, statues brought from Thebes and Bubastis and now in Cairo, in the British Museum in London, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and in other museums throughout the world, tell a story that cannot be denied. So too do the many cat cemeteries that have been uncovered in Egypt, and the small feline mummies in their cases, some of which are rich with inlay work of gold and gems and wrought with carvings representing food that was to sustain the cat in its journey through eternity.

Like most of the ancient peoples the Egyptians used many beasts and birds as well as humans to symbolize their gods, but the cat pre-eminently expressed their conception of the fact that good and evil exist side by side, that light is born of darkness, and day follows night. Cats were not only the attendants of Bast, the beneficent and kindly, but of Sekhmet, goddess of war. I suppose that was because of the many-sided nature of the cat. We have often seen one of our own purring, affectionate pets transformed by the appearance of an alien tom into a shrieking warrior, and probably cats have not changed much since the days of the Pharaohs.

The cat can see in darkness, and Bast was the cat-moon, holding the sun in her eye at night. Perhaps the first Egyptian, looking into his cat's phosphorescent eyes at night, saw there a reflection of the sun, and a promise that the sun would surely return. But the worship of the cat began before the dawn of history, and of its beginnings we have no record.

On an island in the Nile, in Lower Egypt, north of Bilbeis, where the city of Bubastis lay, travelers may see the remains of the temple once dedicated to Bast, protector of cats. Herodotus left a description of it in its glory: a building of the finest red granite, five hundred feet long, standing in a spacious enclosure in which were tree-shaded canals and lakes. The vestibule was lined with statues six cubits high, and in the innermost shrine was the most sacred figure of Bast.

At Bubastis too was the necropolis where cats who died in that vicinity were interred. Herodotus says that some Egyptians who lived long distances from the temple would send their revered pets to be buried there, believing they would rest better in the abode of their patroness. But there were also cat cemeteries in other towns where Bast was worshiped. Only a half century ago one was discovered in the grottoes at Beni Hasan, with hundreds of thousands of cat mummies ranged on shelves.

Had the Egyptians known what the irreverent moderns would do with the small bodies so carefully placed there they would have buried them deeper. For they were shipped (barring a few that were sold to tourists) to Liverpool to be sold at auction for a fertilizer for English crops.

The mummy cases preserved in modern museums are of extraordinary variety and strange beauty. Some are made of linen, with palm-leaf ears and disks to represent eyes; some of wood or bronze or clay, either shaped as a coffin or made in a cat's form, with eyes of crystal, gold, and black obsidian. In these collections are also cat amulets that the Egyptians wore, and in the British Museum is one quaint wooden cat with a movable jaw, doubtless a toy that some little brown child played with on the banks of the Nile.

Those ancient Egyptians, believing that death was a temporary suspension of life, which might be renewed if the body was preserved, spared no trouble to give their cats a chance of resurrection. And when, centuries later, they conceived the idea of a paradise, a sort of glorified Egypt where cats and men might live and hunt in sunlit fields forever, they made provision for the safe conduct thither of the little cat souls by assigning a goddess to guide and protect them on the journey.

Above this heaven was a higher one where dwelt the Pharaohs with their favorite cats. For cats, like men, were graded in rank, in dignities, and in honors. Even in paradise the Egyptians had some just playing in fields while others sat eternally with their royal masters in a blaze of glory; but I wonder if the latter did not sometimes look wistfully over the parapet into the lower heaven, envying the cat commoners their freedom there.

One of the qualities for which cats were revered in those far days was fecundity. The sistrum, an Egyptian musical instrument used much in religious ceremonies, which was fashioned to represent the principle of life, always had the figure of a cat on its apex as the emblem of eternal fruitfulness. Cats also typified might in the war on evil and darkness. When the god Ra, who personified the life-giving sun, gave battle to the malevolent serpent Rerek, he assumed the form of a cat. In the frightful combats that were supposed to rage in the skies during solar eclipses it was the celestial cat who leaped on the serpent and slew him.

The origin of Egypt's sacred cats is rather in doubt, but it is thought by those who have studied the matter that they may have been tamed caffre cats, a species of feline native to parts of Asia and Africa. It is frequently called the Egyptian cat, and the mummified cats are said to resemble, as far as can be determined from a mummy, the wild caffre cats. There is also a resemblance to our own domestic short-haired cats.

I do not suppose there is any race in the world, or ever was, that has passed through such strange vicissitudes as has the cat. As H. C. Brooke, English cat-lover and editor for years of the magazine "Cat Gossip," writes in his "Tempora Mutantur," a poem dedicated to an Abyssinian cat:

When Nile was young. . . .
‘Fore thee a priesthood, wise in ancient lore,
Spread offerings rich and rare. . . .
And when thy time upon this earth was o'er
Then, jewel-decked, thou shareds't the Pharaoh's tomb. . . .
O Bast, look downward through the centuries
And see thy children. Timorous through the streets
Some crouch, the sport of every ruffian lad:
Cold-blooded torturers wrench their tender limbs
In name of science. . . .
Yet scarce a soul lifts a protesting voice.

We are not pagans, as those sons of Nile!

It is a curious fact that in the Bible, chronicle of a people who were not only contemporary with the cat-worshiping Egyptians but were closely associated with them, cats are not once mentioned. There have been many surmises as to the reason for this. One guess is that the Jews so hated Egypt, whose rulers "made the children of Israel to serve with rigor," that they included in their detestation the animal it held sacred.

That might be. Genesis tells us that Tubal-Cain, seventh in descent from Adam, was "an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron." So it is not impossible that the descendants of his pupils, carrying on their skill, were set by Pharaoh to make effigies of his favorite cats and coffins for their mummified bodies, which, to a captive people who had been taught to despise graven images, would have been quite enough to turn them against cats.

Still, if the Israelites had really seriously hated the cat, it seems as if they would (with their genius for magnificent denunciation) have made it the subject of at least one thunderous psalm. Cats are mentioned in the Talmud, the contents of which, though not reduced to writing till the second, fourth, and sixth centuries of the Christian Era, may be just as old as the Mosaic books. The Talmudic name for cat is "the pouncer," and there are references to its mousing habits and its attachment to the home it has chosen. The fact that the cat is in the Talmud makes it the stranger that it is left out of the Bible.

Even the New Testament, in the instances it gives of Christ's love and pity, never speaks of the cat. However, there is a gospel, not indeed included in the canonical books of the Bible, but vouched for by a clergyman of the Church of England, which supplies this want. It is "The Gospel of the Holy Twelve," which was set down by the Rev. G. J. Ouseley, who declared that he received it in visions, and that it was a translation of an early Christian document "preserved in one of the Buddhist monasteries in Thibet, where it was hidden by some of the Essene community for safety from the hands of corrupters." The book was first published by Mr. Ouseley, and republished in 1923, after his death, by Edson, Ltd., London.

I once heard an imaginative cat-lover say that there ought to have been a mother cat with kittens in the manger where the infant Christ was cradled; it was the touch that was needed. Well, "The Gospel of the Holy Twelve" tells us that there was one. Describing the birth of Christ in a cave, it goes on, "And there were in the same cave an ox and a horse and an ass, and a sheep, and beneath the manger a cat with her little ones, and there were doves also, overhead, and each had its mate after its kind."

In one of the later chapters we find this legend:

"As Jesus passed through a certain village he saw a crowd of idlers of the baser sort, and they were tormenting a cat which they had found, and shamefully treating it. And Jesus commanded them to desist and began to reason with them, but they would have none of his words, and reviled him. Then he made a whip of knotted cords and drove them away, saying, This earth, which my Father-Mother made for joy and gladness, ye have made into the lowest hell with your deeds of vice and cruelty. And they fled before his face."

And this:

"As Jesus entered a certain village he saw a young cat which had none to care for her, and she was hungry and cried unto him, and he took her up, and put her inside his garment, and she lay in his bosom. And when he came into the village he set food and drink before the cat, and she ate and drank, and showed thanks unto him. And he gave her unto one of his disciples who was a widow, whose name was Lorenza, and she took care of her. And some of the people said, This man careth for all creatures ... are they his brothers and sisters that he should love them? And he said unto them, Verily these are your fellow creatures, of the great Household of God; yea, they are your brothers and sisters, having the same breath of life in the Eternal. And whosoever careth for one of the least of these, and giveth it to eat and drink in its need, the same doeth it unto me; and whoso willingly suffereth one of these to be in want, and defendeth it not when evilly treated, suffereth the evil as done unto me."

Could there be a better statement of the humane creed?

Christ spent part of his childhood in Egypt, and, remembering the regard in which cats were held there, it must have gone hard with him to see them ill-treated. At any rate, whatever the authenticity of "The Gospel of the Holy Twelve," it is so simply, naturally told, it shows the tenderness of Christ so truly, that though this book is not in the New Testament it seems as if it belonged there.

"He is only an alley cat, but we love him."

One often hears people say this, or something like it, but it is a mistaken sense of values that leads anyone to speak apologetically of the household pet because it has short hair and no pedigree. For the domestic short-haired cat is a member of as good a breed and is as capable of development as is the Persian, the Manx, or the Siamese. But the Persians, the Manx, and the Siamese have the glamour of imported stock, whereas domestic short-haired cats have always been with us.

It is a proof of the amazing strength of the strain that among its strays and hoboes, cats without benefit of breeding, living as they can in holes and corners, one finds kittens that are really beautiful in color and in build. One does not see many domestic short-hairs in shows, but ask any of the few exhibitors of such animals where their stock came from, and the answer usually is, "Oh, just a couple of cats that I picked up." A short-haired silver tabby that began life as a stray was second-best cat in the largest show in New York City in 1934. It is interesting, too, to note the pure whites and blacks and Maltese among these so-called alley cats. Breeders take great pains to preserve purity of color in Persians, yet nature does it for the short- hairs without any fuss at all.

What was the origin of the cat? Darwin declared that he had never been able to determine with certainty whether these animals were descended from several distinct species or had only been modified by occasional crosses. As far back as we know there were many varieties; chief among them the Asiatic cats, including the Persians, the Angoras, and the Siamese, and the European cat, now known as the domestic short-haired cat.

As to the beginnings of the latter there is one theory that I like to believe, and it is as reasonable as the next one. When I see a neglected alley cat I like to think, "Long before the Christian era your forefathers were worshiped as gods." Not that this is any comfort to a hungry cat, but it seems to invest the poor thing with a sort of dignity to reflect that it derives from the sacred cats of Egypt. Richard Lydekker is one authority who holds this view. In the "Library of Natural History" which he edited and part of which he wrote he says, after mentioning that the ancient Egyptians tamed und trained the wild caffre cat, "We are inclined to follow those who consider the caffre cat the original parent stock of the domesticated cats of Europe."

These cats are supposed to have entered Europe by way of Gibraltar. Probably most of them were undomesticated wanderers, but it is a fair guess that some of the sacred cats, bored perhaps by attending goddesses, joined the emigrants. Many reached England and settled there, and, cats being great sailors, their invasion of America was only a question of time. It is thought they may have been modified by mating with native wild cats in the north of England, but not much, for the caffre cat in Asia and Africa is about the size of one of our domestic cats and looks not unlike them.

At any rate there is the theory, and here are our cats. Despite the indifference of breeders, the standard for domestic short-haired cats is pretty well fixed in England and the United States, and the show rules of cat fanciers' associations include classifications for them. I do not know that shows are good things for our house pets. If you love your cat you don't need a judge to tell you its qualities, and a cat who has always been a homebody is likely to find the crowds and excitement and strain of an exhibition rather terrifying. However, blue ribbons do lend prestige, and a wider participation in shows would at least give our humble alley cats a better social position.

Domestic short-hairs must conform in color of coat and eye color to the standards laid down for long-hairs. These you will find in the chapter on "Shows, and Long-hair Standards." One must not expect to see in domestic cats the delicate shades that breeding has produced in the Persians, but there are handsome silver tabbies, brown tabbies, orange tabbies, and tortoise-shells, as well as blacks, whites, and blues. I have heard tortoiseshell cats, with their Joseph's coats of black, orange, and cream, called calico cats in American rural districts. Our short-haired blues are generally known as Maltese.

Eye color is largely a result of selection, and short-hairs are seldom perfect in this respect, but I once picked up a stray Maltese kitten who had the brilliant copper eyes of a Persian blue. Attached to the Washington Square Book Shop in New York City is a beautiful yellow short-hair with eyes of a warm yellow, matching his coat. I don't know how he would be listed in a show, but if good looks and good manners merit a prize he could compete with any thoroughbred, unpedigreed though he is.

In their build the short-haired cats differ signally from the Persians. They are more slender, more lithe, and more vigorous - more like the feline creatures of the wild. Their noses are longer, their heads less round, their ears more upstanding. The standard requires a well-knit and powerful body, a deep chest, and a tail rather thick at the base, tapering toward the tip, and carried level with the body, The coat must be heavy but not cottony, and any sign of a long-hair bar sinister is fatal to success in the short-haired classes. Cats with lockets of a contrasting color under the chin are denied winners' ribbons.

Our domestic cats are the Cinderellas of their race, sitting in chimney corners and doing the mouse-catching of the house while the Persians go about getting themselves in the cats' social register. But they are also adventurous. It is mostly the common cats who go down to the sea in ships and who patrol the farms and stores of the world for rats. They are very practical pets. You may not be able to purchase a pedigreed cat, but you can always find a short-haired kitten that needs a home. They have an intelligence which has been sharpened through many generations by the necessity of scrambling for a living, but hardships have not marred their native courtesy. Meet a cat on the street and it hardly ever fails to rise, to bow, and to utter a polite "P-r-r-t!" of greeting-except, of course, the poor strays whose experiences have made them distrust humanity.

The life that has stimulated their wits has also given them a heritage of terror and uncertainty. It is rather pathetic to see how this uncertainty will show in adopted strays in an abnormal anxiety about dinner. Whereas the Persians whose lives have always been safe are like Hafiz, the cat in George Eliot's "Daniel Deronda," who sat calmly watching the family at the tea table, "regarding the whole scene as an apparatus for supplying his allowance of milk."

In the beginning there were Persian cats, brought to Europe and America from Smyrna and other ports on the Oriental coast, and Angora cats, from the mountainous Turkish province of Angora. The Persians had silky, uniformly long and abundant coats, and broad heads; the Angoras had narrow heads, and their hair was longest on the stomach, pendent like that of the goats of their native country.

Interbreeding has made the two one, and the official term is now "long-haired cat." Round heads, wide-set eyes, firm legs, cobby bodies, and long, fine, even hair have been the objectives of most breeders, and it is the Persian characteristics that are strongest in the best long-hairs today. The narrow Angora head is considered a blemish and is seen only in the poorer specimens of the breed.

The captains and crews of trading vessels that plied between the Orient and our Atlantic ports brought the first long-haired cats to this country. They throve best in Maine, probably because of the cold climate, and today in Boothbay Harbor and other Maine coast towns long-hairs are as common as short-hairs are in most parts of the United States. They are known as Maine coon cats, and there is a legend that the Adam and Eve of the tribe were brought here by a certain Captain Coon and got the name from him; but I have not been able to run Captain Coon's record to earth. The generally accepted theory is that some old Maine farmer who saw an animal with a broad head and a bushy tail in his poultry yard and at first supposed it to be a raccoon but found it was a cat, first gave the name.

But these coon cats were never show stock. The marvelous, proud, long-haired beauties who take awards in American shows were mostly imported (they or their progenitors) from England by breeders. In the Mauve Decade [1890s] and the early part of this century the cat vogue flourished in England and Scotland; and the Champion family, Miss Elsie G. Hydon, Miss Evelyn Langston, and other scientific breeders produced some fine Persian blues, chinchillas, silvers, tabbies, and other varieties of the long-haired cat. Some of these breeders emigrated to the United States with their cats; Americans took up breeding, sales increased, cat societies sprang up, shows multiplied .... and then came the World War, and put an end to this, as to so many pleasant things.

It is only in recent years that the interest in cats In England and America has begun to revive, and there is little pecuniary gain in breeding them now. People have not the money they once had to pay for pedigreed animals, and it costs money, in stock, in overhead, in care, and in food, to raise thoroughbred cats. It is fortunate that there are breeders who are true cat-lovers and are content to work for small profits because they do love their cats and take delight in developing the best.

And there never were Persians like those of today. Even Miss Carroll Macy's King Winter, the grand chinchilla who was the sensation of cat shows twenty-odd years ago (I can still see him sitting royally in his silk-lined cage with his hundreds of trophies from former shows for a background) - even he would probably go down, in a battle of points, before some of the champions exhibited now.

The story of experiments in pigmentation, of controlled matings by which the many colors and shades of colors of long-haired cats have been developed, is too long to be told here. Of all the colors the blues are by far the most popular. I do not know how they started, but Mr. C. A. House, a veteran English judge of cats, suggests in his book, "Our Cats and All about Them," that they derive from Russian blues, cats with thick short fur, like plush, that were first brought to England from Archangel by sailors. Harrison Weir, the artist, who wrote the first cat book (I believe) and got up the first cat show (it was in the Crystal Palace in London more than half a century ago) declared that the blues were just a variant of the blacks. The earlier blues had a dark streak along the spine, but the fanciers worked hard to eliminate this and produced the true, even, lavender blue which is the ideal today.

I love the blues, I suppose because mine were blues; they had the same grandfather that Miss Hydon's first American cats had - Siegfried, a magnificent male raised by Miss Shirley Turner and Miss Elsie Bunker on the Bunker farm in Merrick, Long Island, where my cats now lie in a wood beside the pond where Siegfried took occasional swims in hot weather. Siegfried went to California, and is buried there, but his descendants are many in the land. He was a brave cat, but very fatherly, not at all above tending baby kittens when their mother went gallivanting.

But Siegfried's title to excellence was not so much in his coat, though that was very fine, as in his build and expression. Fine coats do not always make fine cats, and a Persian with beautiful hair may be inferior in bone formation. In choosing a Persian kitten one should remember that the important points are the massive build and the sweet expression which properly set eyes give to a good long-hair.

Many people think that Persians are lofty and indifferent, and they do often seem that way in shows, but who would not? We would be bored and haughty if we were set up in cages with an endless procession of cats walking by us, making personal remarks about us, carrying us to and fro to judge our points. It is an evidence of the amiability of cats that they so seldom go berserk in shows.

There is an impression, too, that Persians are delicate and rather lazy, that they are not good mousers, that they are like the lilies of the field that toil not. But I have found that Persians have hearts that are just as stout, under their fluffy attire, as that of any short-haired alley cat. It may be that their digestion requires special care, but my long-hairs were no more susceptible to disease than my short-hairs. Of course a Persian hobo does look a wretched creature, just as a two-legged down-and-outer whose clothes came originally from Bond Street or Fifth Avenue looks more forlorn than one in overalls or a Mother Hubbard.

The few Persian strays I have known showed good stuff. Take Black Pussy. On a sleety day two winters ago Robert Claiborne, a New Yorker who liken cats, picked up a draggled, emaciated one on Third Avenue and took him home. He was indeed almost at the last gasp, but he was not whining; he faced adversity with head unbowed. Washed and brushed, fed and petted, he bloomed out into a handsome, urbane Persian, sinking gratefully into the lap of luxury. I suppose he was returning to his original cycle. Then came another cycle. Mr. Claiborne sailed for the Virgin Islands and took Black Pussy along. Armed with a clean bill of health from the Speyer Hospital, the cat passed quarantine and took up his duties with his master's firm, the Virgin Islands Fruit Products Company in St. Thomas.

There were huge rats in the warehouse. Black Pussy cleared them out, and a sight it was to see him, with his tail like a plume, bringing down a rat almost as large as himself. Then he sought other game. No lizard or crab was too much for him, and once he killed a ten-inch centipede and brought it home. His cache was the top step of an old stone stairway, and there was quite a fuss when one of the negroes stepped barefooted on the centipede. But no negro dared molest Black Pussy, and in his favorite post, mounted on a sea wall near the warehouse entrance watching for crabs, he is a most effective watchcat.

He still hunts, and he has taken up sailing, though he does not try to handle the boat; he prefers to sit in the prow like a figurehead. He is fully aware of his decorative value. He lies for hours in the green caverns of the brushing coconut palms on a terraced roof, as if he knew he could not find a better background for his ebony self. I had an S O S from Black Pussy's master recently. The cat was indisposed, owing to eating lizards, which are not good for cats. I immediately mailed medicine, and though at first he retreated up a spreading grapevine to avoid it, he capitulated, came down, took his pill, and recovered.

Black Pussy is quite a conversationalist. He has a whole lexicon of miews, one for every occasion. His behavior and his life are a complete proof that a Persian can be just as intelligent and as capable as any short-haired cat that ever lived.

In the autumn there begins a mighty grooming and conditioning of cats that have show possibilities, whether these be in fact or in the fancy of fond owners. For in November the cat-show season opens. Among the first shows in New York City are those held by the Cat Fanciers' Association, Inc., and the United Cat Clubs of America, Inc. Each of these organizations has many member clubs in the United States and Canada. There are other large societies, such as the Cat Fanciers' Federation and the American Cat Association, and all of these, and their member clubs, have shows through the autumn and winter. There are cat shows from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Maine to Florida, and naturally (for cat people are very human) each show is the biggest and best of its kind.

Among the specialty clubs (those devoted to one breed) the Persian clubs far outnumber all others, and in exhibitions, except for those that are solely for other breeds, the long-hairs always predominate.

Shows are necessary to the cat fancy, as breeders in the aggregate are called, but I would not exhibit a pet cat. Old troupers may thrive on it, as movie stars do on the acclaim of the public; I knew one champion who when his traveling cage was put on the floor along with his trunk of trophies would step into it and settle down, ready for a journey to the far side of the continent perhaps. But a show is an ordeal for most home cats, and there is always the danger of infection where numbers of cats are gathered together. No matter how many precautions the show managers take, this peril does exist.

If, however, you wish to exhibit your cats, a necessary preliminary is to register them with some recognized cat club, procure the club's show rules, and study the classifications and standards.

Select the club that is sponsoring the show you mean to enter, for rules differ. If your cats have been well cared for, special conditioning is not necessary. A cat that is properly groomed and fed and kept happy is ready for a show any time, except in the hot months, when no cat's coat is at its best.

To condition a neglected cat, valet it every day according to the directions in the chapters "On Grooming a Cat," "Diseases of the Ears," and "Diseases of the Eyes." No judge would admit a cat with a hint of cots in the hair or canker in the ears. To clean white cats there is a white fuller's earth, but well-baked flour will answer. Of course it must be thoroughly brushed out of the hair. Plenty of nourishing food, and a half teaspoonful daily of cod-liver oil if it seems needed, will put your pet into the right physical condition.

Cats should not be fed before a journey, even a short one by automobile. At shows there is a feeding committee, and chopped beef is taken to the cages at regular times, but you may take your own food if you prefer. It is wise to stay by your pet during the show, in order to give it confidence and guard it against any possible harm at the hands of some ill-advised visitor.

There are special carriers and crates to be had if one is sending a cat to a distant show, but if you ship a cat by railway you risk a tragedy. Once a cat and two kittens were sent from California to New York, and when the crate was opened the kittens were dead and the mother so near death that she had to be killed. Somehow the trainmen had overlooked the instructions about food and water. Even on short journeys accidents may happen. I knew of a Persian kitten whose cage was crushed, with the kitten inside, by the fall of express packages insecurely piled above.

But if shows have their risks they undoubtedly have their delights and their advantages. It is gratifying if your pet makes a win, and even if it fails you learn something from what the judges say. But show managers are canny. There is generally something, if no more than a ribbon, for every cat. And you can avoid a too crushing defeat by conning the standards closely and not entering your pet in a class where it obviously has no chance of success.

The long-hair standard demands a body that is low on the legs, deep in the chest, and massive across the shoulders and rump, with a short, well-rounded middle piece. The head must be massive too, with a broad skull, and it must be well set on a neck that is not too long. The ears must be neat, round-tipped, and set well apart; the cheeks full and the jaws powerful; and the nose of the snub variety, and broad. The eyes must be large, full, round, very brilliant, and wide set, with that serene gaze which distinguishes the Persian cat.

The back must be level, the legs thick and strong (the forelegs perfectly straight), and the paws large and compact. The rather short tail is slightly lower than the back, and must not trail when the cat walks. The hair must be long and fine over the entire body, and full of life, standing out fluffily; and the ruff should be immense. The brush must be full, and the ear tufts and toe tufts long and feathery, A "button" or a "locket" under the chin disqualifies a cat.

In the Persian gamut the colors and combinations of colors are fourteen. The great point in a solid color is that it shall be pure and even from the roots to the tip of the fur. Each has its right eye color. White cats must not have any colored hairs; the eyes are deep blue or deep orange. The blacks must be of a dense, coal black, with copper or orange eyes. The blues must be a real blue, and their eyes copper or orange. Red cats must be of a rich yet brilliant red, and the eyes copper or orange. A good chinchilla is of a pale, unshaded silver, with green eyes. Cream cats must be pure cream, free from markings; the eyes are copper or orange. The shaded silver cats are rather dark on the spine, shading gradually down the sides and face and tail to a very pale silver; the eyes are green. Smoke cats are black, shading to smoke (a light undercoat and black points) with a silver frill and ear tufts; the eyes are copper or orange.

The body of a masked silver is chinchilla or shaded silver, with a black or dark silver face, and green eyes. Silver tabbies are a pale silver with broad black markings, and green eyes. The coat of the brown tabby has a tawny background, with broad black markings; the bars on the legs and tail are like rings, and on the chest they have the effect of necklaces. Copper eyes are best, but orange eyes are permitted. The red tabby has a coat with an even groundwork and markings of a deeper, richer red, patterned like those of the brown tabby; the eyes are copper, or a very deep orange.

Tortoise-shell cats sport three colors, black, orange, and cream, and the colors are not brindled but in clearly defined patches. They have amusing noses, half black and half orange. The eyes are copper or orange. Last of all there are the blue creams, who have these two colors in patches, and copper or orange eyes.

Roth Manx cats and domestic short-haired cats have the same standards of color and eye color as have the long hairs. Only the Siamese have their own special coats. The standards of build and body required for the three different short-hairs are described in the chapters on these breeds.

A cat may look at a king, but not many cats have the opportunity. Siamese cats for more than two hundred years have dwelt in the royal palaces at Bangkok and had kings, queens, princes, and princesses to look at. Those who did not live at court lived in temples and had priests to serve them. So they are not only royal but sacred, the modern prototype of the sacred cat of Egypt. Of course there have always been street cats in Siam, but they have kinks in their tails and do not count.

The first Siamese cats to leave that country were two fine specimens that were given to some titled Englishwomen by the uncle of Prajadhipok, the recently abdicated king. They were much admired in England, and founded the line which soon became popular there, and, later, in America.

The origin of the Siamese cats is obscure. They may have come from crosses between the sacred cats of Burma and the Annamite cats when the Siamese and the Annamese conquered the Burmese empire of the Khmers about three centuries ago. The Burmese sacred cats were an ancient race of which little is known. It is said that they were like the Siamese in color, but had splendid bushy tails and long hair. The Burmese, like the people of Siam, believed that the spirits of the dead dwelt within the sacred cats.

1 have seen in shows cats that were called Burmese, but I doubt if they were authentic. However, our best Siamese are genuine. King Prajadhipok must have had cats in his entourage when he last visited America, for he gave two to a New York woman during his stay.

Siamese cats are like Prajadhipok. Though born to palaces they are very democratic and alertly interested in everything they see. A Siamese cat is more energetic and can be in more places at once than any other member of the Felis domesticus. I took my collie-setter Luddy to call on Frederick B. Eddy's Siamese in Red Bank, New Jersey, and he retired under a sofa with his tail to the world, disconcerted by a liveliness with which no mere dog could cope.

The number of Siamese cats in the United States is not large compared with the number of longhairs, but they are getting a good hold, and there is a flourishing Siamese Cat Society of America, which conducts its shows under the Cat Fanciers' Association of America. Its standard of points conforms to that of the Siamese-cat societies in England.

True Siamese are medium in size, with a well-muscled body, not fat, and very lithe and graceful in action. The head is wedge-shaped, long and narrow, the ears broad at the base and small at the apex and very neat and well-defined. The legs are rather thin and not long; the hind legs are slightly longer than the forelegs. The feet are somewhat smaller than those of the domestic short-haired cat. The tail is thin and tapering and not very long.

A good many people think that Siamese cats have kinked tails. So learned a commentator as M. Oldfield Howey asserts in his fascinating book, "The Cat in the Mysteries of Religion and Magic," that the kinked tail has been a Siamese characteristic for two hundred years. There is a Siamese legend which says that somebody once tied a knot in a cat's tail to remind it of something (perhaps to leave the throne room backward) and the knot stayed. Another form of the story is that a princess strung her rings on her cat's tail while she bathed, and tied a knot to keep them from falling off.

But the royal Siamese have no kinks. Any kinky-tailed Siamese in America were brought here by sailors who picked them up in the streets over there. Richard Lydekker in his "Library of Natural History," after describing the "breed of cats in Siam reserved for royalty," adds, "Siam, together with Burmah, also possesses a breed known as the Malay cat, in which the tail is but half the usual length, and is often, through deformity in its bones, curled up tightly into a knot."

The coat of the Siamese is soft and short and glossy. The body is colored a clear, pale fawn, the face is deep chocolate brown shading to fawn between the ears, and the ears, tail, legs, and feet are brown. Siamese kittens are born snow white, but the distinctive markings soon appear, and at one year of age these cats attain their loveliest contrast between the fawn and brown. After this they slowly darken.

There is a blue-point Siamese in which the body is pale blue and the face, legs, and tail dark blue. Blue points are rare, a sort of "sport," but the Cat Fanciers' Association includes a class for them in its show rules. The pigmentation of the blue point is what is called recessive, and those who are curious about scientific breeding might be interested to know that if a seal point were bred to a blue point the darker coloring of the former would probably prevail in the kittens.

The eyes of the royal Siamese are blue, and the better the cat, the darker are the eyes. In shape they are almost round, but with a slight Oriental slant toward the nose.

Devotees of the Siamese insist that they are the smartest cats in the world. But every cat-lover knows that his or her cat, be it Siamese or Persian or Manx or plain alley, is the smartest cat in the world.

The "mystery of the ships and the magic of the sea" envelop the beginning of Manx cats, or rather the beginning of our knowledge of them. This does not extend very far into the past. By shipwreck they came to the Isle of Man, leaving their tails behind them, if they ever had any. The cats will not tell, but I do not think they mind their taillessness. The Manx cats I have known appeared well satisfied with themselves, and I could almost imagine them saying to tailed cats, "Why have a tail? You cannot catch mice with it, or fight with it, or wash your face with it. Its only function is to serve as a handle for naughty children to pull, or, if you are a mother, something for your kittens to play with just when you want to take a nap."

As to the value of a tail as an ornament, that of course rests in the eye of the beholder. It is a matter of taste. People who own and admire Manx cats think that a tail makes a cat look awkward, and that the animals of their chosen breed are much trimmer and more graceful than your finest tail-wavers, as Manx owners call cats with tails. But in a world where conformity is the thing, deviation from type requires explanation, and there have been many attempts to explain why the Manx has no caudal appendage.

Most of them are just legends. There is an old rhyme which says that the cat was the last of all the animals to board the Ark, and so Noah, impatient to be off, slammed the door on its tail.

Said the cat, and he was Manx,
"Oh, Captain Noah, wait!
I'll catch the mice to give you thanks,
And pay for being late."
So the cat got in, but oh,
His tail was a bit too slow.

Another version holds Noah's dog responsible.

Noah, sailing o'er the seas,
Ran fast aground on Ararat.
His dog then made a spring and took
The tail from off a pretty cat.
Puss through the window quick did fly,
And bravely through the waters swam,
Nor ever stopp'd till high and dry
She landed on the Calf of Man.

Thus tailless Puss earn'd Mona's thanks,
And ever after was call'd Manx.

There are, however, more factual accounts connecting Manx cats with shipwreck and the sea. An old Manx newspaper states that early in the nineteenth century an East County ship was wrecked on Jurby Point, and "a rumpy cat_swam ashore." There is a tradition that there were tailless cats aboard the Spanish Armada, and that two of them, escaping to land from one of the vessels which was wrecked on Spanish Head, near Port Erin, began the propagation of the breed in the Isle of Man. Another story has it that the Adam and Eve of Manx cats were the survivors of a Baltic ship that went down off the coast of the Calf of Man.

But whether they came from the north or the south, the east or the west, they became identified with the quaint little island in the Irish Sea, a feature in its trade with tourists, and a part of its folklore. At the Jubilee Congress of the Folk Lore Society in London, in 1928, Miss Mona Douglas, in an address on animals in Manx lore, said that the Manx peasantry believed that the cats had a king of their own, a wily beast that pretended to be a demure house cat in the daytime, but at night traveled the lanes in awful state, wreaking vengeance on persons who were cruel to cats. They believed, too, that the fairies were friendly to cats, and that it was of no use to shut Puss in, or out of, the house at night, for the wee people would hasten to her assistance, and work their magic on doors and windows to gratify her will.

Naturally, with ships plying between the Isle of Man and England, tailless cats soon became common in Liverpool and other coast towns. They have never been taken up by fanciers as the Persians have, or the Siamese, and people who breed them seem to do it not so much for commercial reasons as for the love of them. There is a British Manx Cat Club, of which Miss Helen Hill Shaw is the secretary. Miss Shaw has bred tailless cats for forty years at her home in Surrey, and she has done more than almost anybody else to keep the strain pure.

It has not been easy. "I never know what to expect in a litter," she wrote me. "Even when two pure Manx cats are mated, there will almost always be one or two kittens with stumps or even tails," This suggests a theory. May it not be that long ago some experimenter tried selective breeding with cats whose tails happened to be short, producing shorter and shorter tails until they were eliminated, and may not the tailed offspring of tailless cats be throwbacks to that time?

The absence of a tail is not the only distinguishing mark of a Manx. The standard of points set up by the British Manx Cat Club says that a very short back and very high hindquarters are essential, since "only with them do we get the true rabbity or hopping gait." The flanks must be deep, and the rump round, "as round as an orange." The coat is what is termed double, very soft and open like a rabbit's, with a soft thick undercoat of fur.

The head should be large and round but not snubby like the Persian's, and the nose longer than a Persian's but not so long as that of the domestic short-haired cat. The cheeks are prominent, the ears broad at the base and tapering. As to color, Manx cats are found in all colors known in the longhaired or the domestic short-haired breeds, but the color is not so important as the formation.

The taillessness must be absolute. Not even the merest bud of a tail is permitted, and many cats cherished by their owners as Manx would be disqualified in any show where the judges knew their business. In the pure Manx there is a slight hollow where the tail starts in other cats. A tuft of hair is not a bar sinister, but the hair must not conceal a stump, for a tail is no less a tail for being hidden.

Manx cats are very individual, very brave and active, and loyal and affectionate. Miss Shaw says that she once witnessed the reunion of a Manx cat and his mistress, from whom he had been parted for four years. "He recognized her at once, jumping on her knee and then on her shoulder and kissing her, and he made it very clear that if he could help it he would not be parted from her again."

The cats in the Shaw home in Surrey live together in the greatest amity. They sleep cuddled up together, any number of them, of different generations, and never quarrel. "Home would not be home to us," their mistress says, "without the warm welcome of our little Manx family, headed by Champion Josephus, the latest of a long line of champions descended from the kittens I brought to England, forty years ago, from a girlhood visit to the Isle of Man."

Around the year 1820 A family named Hurley owned a large farm at the place now called Toms River, in New Jersey. The love of the sea was in their blood, and as the sons grew up they had their own sailing vessels, and adventured far and wide. And among the curiosities they brought back with them from their voyages were tailless cats from England, which, they said, came originally from the Isle of Man.

That is the earliest account I have of Manx cats in America. On the large Hurley farm the breed grew and flourished exceedingly, and when a son or daughter married and moved to another part of the country a pair of Manx cats went along as part of the dowry. Farmer Hurley's descendants and the descendants of his tailless cats have come down through the years together, and today his great-great-granddaughter breeds cats of this strain at her home, Jolly Hill Farm, near Philadelphia.

I fancy that some of the Hurley cats wandered away from the farm and set up a bold buccaneering tribe of their own, which still endures, for there are many tailless and bobtail cats around Barnegat, New Jersey, which is not far below Toms River, and wild creatures they are, living by their wits. When you cross the causeway from the mainland to Ship Bottom, the first town on Long Beach Island, and turn north toward Barnegat Light, you may, if you have quick eyes, see them in the dunes. They subsist on the offal of the fishermen's catches, and perhaps they receive largess from the men at Loveladies' Coast Guard Station, but no man can come near them, and they will fight the fiercest dog.

Even in captivity they retain their outstanding he-cat qualities. The Hurley great-great-grand-daughter, Miss Elsie Walgrove, says that her Manx are "great hunters, not afraid to go far and wide from home, and very sturdy, some of the neuters weighing as much as thirty pounds." One of her champions, Minus, attacked and killed a large weasel that had been stealing valuable cockerels from her chicken-house, and Minus is a lady, too. Like all the Hurley family they love boating, and they enjoy riding on the market wagon. They will not, as a rule, take up with tailed cats, but with their own kind they are most friendly, and as companions for human beings they are, their admirers say, better than any dog.

I have been told by cat connoisseurs that there are no really good Manx, true Manx, in America. The trouble is, I think, that in shows over here the standard is not insisted upon as it is in England. People exhibit bobtail cats as Manx, and too many judges will let them get by on their markings and color, which are not important in this breed.

After all, though, if one is an individual owner and a connoisseur rather in the qualities that make cats delightful and stimulating than in points of structure, what does it matter if one's Manx has an inch of tail where the hollow would be? I know a Manx cat named Michael; of the first litter of kittens born to his mother, a petite Manx called Mrs. Lena Dodds, he was the only one marked with the bar sinister. His mistress gave the perfect kittens to friends and kept Michael because even at the earliest age he showed character.

Michael is now a handsome coal-black giant, swaggering about on his tall hind legs and ruling the cats of the neighborhood with a high hand - or should one say paw? He is afraid of nothing, and can find his way anywhere. Carried away once in an automobile, unknown to his owners, to a distant railway station, he came home on his four legs through many miles of traffic, all by himself. Both he and Mrs. Lena Dodds should belong to the nearest Izaak Walton Club, for they are tireless fishermen. They stand for hours on a flat stone in the shallow stream that runs through the foot of the garden, they even stand in the water, watching and waiting for a catch. Woe be to the fish that tries to swim past them. They have caught quite large ones with a single sweep of a paw.

Michael looks like a large black hare, and when he sees a strange cat his nose twitches as a rabbit's does when it is excited. But as both he and Lena hunt rabbits, squirrels, and chipmunks, it is hardly likely that they have rabbit blood.

Their favorite game is hoppity-hide-and-seek, which they play in the tall grass of a neighboring field, and their mistress says that when one of them, leaping high in the air, succeeds in landing on the other, she could fancy that she hears them laughing - so mischievous and gay are their movements. Lena and Michael have very sensitive nervous systems, and their ears are attuned to the slightest sound. They are quick to hear the approach of an automobile; if it is the family car they run to meet it, but they are never deceived by a strange motor.

Few Manx cats are imported to America for breeding or show purposes. Those brought here are usually the pets of English families coming to live in the United States. Shipwreck has had its part, too, in bringing them, just as shipwreck carried the tailless cat originally to the Isle of Man. A huge gray and white Manx I know, named Jack, was purchased at the tender age of ten days from a Barnegat fisherman, and the fisherman said that the kitten's ancestors were washed ashore from an English ship that went down off the coast in a storm. It would be interesting to know why Manx cats, for all their intelligence and charm, for all the romance of their history, are still caviar to the general. Perhaps some time the popular taste will turn to them as it has to the Persians and the Siamese, but at present the majority of Americans seem to prefer their cats with tails.

I had often heard of rabbit-cats, but had never met one until, quite recently, I was introduced to Swamp Angel, formerly of the Great Swamp near Chatham, New Jersey, but at the time of our meeting living in a New York apartment, and not liking it very much.

One is always seeing newspaper stories about rabbit-cats. They tell of a hybrid creature with a cat's head and eyes, short forelegs, long hind legs, a brief tail like a rabbit's, close, soft fur like a rabbit's, and a trick of hopping instead of walking. The mother is always a cat, but the assumption is that the father was a rabbit, and no matter how emphatically science declares that the Carnivora and the Herbivora do not interbreed the rabbit-cat theory persists.

"No scientist could convince me that there is no such animal," one woman writes me. "I know I could swear to one. Twenty-two years ago, at Winthrop Rifle Range on the Potomac River, I saw an animal that had the general appearance of a cat but many of the characteristics of the rabbit. Its front legs were so short that it ambled rather than walked, and it would sit up any old time on its queer little bunny tail. Its fur was shorter and softer than a cat's, its jaw was not shaped like a cat's, and it made a sound quite unlike a miew. No one who saw it had any doubt that its mother had met a rabbit in the woods."

In the "Culver Citizen" of August 22, 1934, appeared an article by Samuel E. Perkins III, formerly president of the Indiana Audubon Society, and leader of many nature hikes. He describes three strange kittens, part of a litter of which the others were ordinary kittens, all of them born to a cat who liked to go adventuring in the fields behind the Morgan County farmhouse where she lived.

"One would guess that she had been wooed there by a gentleman cottontail rabbit," he says. "Three of the kittens had rabbit tails. I felt the tail bone of one, a tawny male, and it had three vertebrae, each one-fourth of an inch long. It curved upward, hidden in a ball of fur. The kitten's back was arched like a rabbit's, and he used his hind legs as a rabbit does, hopping toward his saucer of milk. I suggested a Manx father, but no one had ever seen or heard of a Manx cat anywhere thereabouts. And in the Manx cat there is no tail at all, and no ball of fur such as these kittens had."

A moving-picture man made films and snapshots of the kittens, and Mr. Perkins wrote to Dr. H. E. Anthony, curator of mammals at the American Museum of Natural History, telling of his find and* of a queer kangaroo-like cat he had seen in Indianapolis. Dr. Anthony replied that a cat was a cat. He discounted the hybrid theory.

"So far as we are aware no such animal could exist," he wrote. "It is possible that your specimens are of the peculiar types of cat which appear unexpectedly, and are well known to students of genetics, though puzzling to the layman."

Swamp Angel was found by Charles Perry Weimer, the artist, in the course of a hunting trip along the margins of the Great Swamp. No man has penetrated into the depths of the Great Swamp, and strange creatures are said to inhabit it, but Mr. Weimer saw nothing strange in a nest of kittens he stumbled over until he lifted one, a coal-black atom, and perceived that it had no tail. All the others had tails, so Mr. Weimer left them to the mother, presumably off foraging, and tucked the odd one in his pocket. Mrs. Weimer named it Swamp Angel, and brought it up by hand.

Swamp Angel had Chatham people puzzled. His long, limber hind legs and his trick of standing erect on them, his lack of a tail, and his soft, thick fur led many who saw him to recall that there are numbers of black jack rabbits in the Great Swamp. Newspapers printed stories and pictures of him, and he became quite a celebrity.

His traits are as contradictory as his appearance. He has none of the cat's sense of direction. If he wandered from the door of Mr. Weimer's Chatham studio, where he spent the first year of his life, he could not find his way back but would sit under a bush waiting to be fetched. Yet he is very intelligent and responsive. He has no miew, but a musical purr. He has claws on his forefeet but none on his hind feet, so he cannot climb. He has a rounder head, a blunter nose, and a more amiable gaze than have most bobtail cats, but that is what I think he is - a nice bobtail. The only alleged hybrid I have seen, Swamp Angel leaves me on the side of the scientists.

Clyde E. Keeler, of Harvard University, explains these cat eccentricities on the ground of exostoses or bony distortions of the vertebral column. He writes me: "These distortions are commonly found in human beings suffering from arthritis. They characterize many Siamese cats, the Manx cats, and the bob-tail which is so often erroneously called rabbit-cat. In inbred stocks a particular grade of exostoses will become characteristic of the strain. The Manx cat is bred for complete loss of tail. The Siamese when affected has a kinky tail. These exostoses are found in bulldogs, and in several varieties of mice."

Siamese-cat societies would excommunicate Dr. Keeler for mentioning Siamese and kink-tails in the same breath. They call kink-tails Malay cats. Kink-tailed cats abound in Malay Land, and they probably have corrupted Siam. People who have lived in the Philippines tell me that all the cats in those islands have kinks, "as if somebody had tied knots in their tails when they were very young."

It is ignorantly said that mutilations far back in the strain account for the crooked tails and the taillessness of some cats. Certainly there have been mutilations. James Baillie Fraser, a traveler-writer of the last century, told of islands off the coast of New Guinea where all the cats had docked tails. Their owners did it to protect them from impecunious neighbors who liked cat stew. By burying the tail of one's cat with suitable incantations one could bring terrible illnesses on the thief who dared to cook and eat the cat. So docked cats were safe. However, we know that acquired characteristics are not transmitted.

An unbalanced diet has its effect on the bony structure of cats. An artist who used to sketch in Marblehead told me that the stray cats there were curiously deformed. One she saw was a hunchback, and another had two tails, one growing out of the other. Now these cats had nothing to eat but fish. They would gather around the docks when the boats came in, and when a fish fell to the ground as the men tossed their catch into the baskets they would make off with it and devour it. This may have been good for their brains, but it was bad for their bones.

Cats in the Orient have little to eat but what they find in the streets, and perhaps that is why there are so many kink-tailed cats in those countries. And it may be that Swamp Angel's forebears found poor hunting in the Great Swamp, and became so reduced that they were unable to bequeath him a tail.

Humanity has used cats in many ways to express and to personify forces of good and evil that it did not understand. The Egyptian worship of cats had its germ in the feeling that they were one manifestation of the divine, and the Celtic tribes of early Europe believed that the demoniac powers which, they thought, surrounded them and threatened them appeared oftenest in the form of cats - large black tomcats. The belief that cats enshrine the spirits of the dead has cropped up in various primitive peoples, but It remained for Japan to give it its quaintest turn.

East is East and West is West, and it is hard for the Occidental mind to comprehend why a cat that in born with a black mark on its back resembling a woman in a kimono is thought to contain the spirit of the owner's honorable grandfather or great-aunt and is sent to a temple to be kept from contamination by the vulgar. Nevertheless, there have been quite recent examples of this faith in some sects or portions of the Japanese public.

These kimono cats were never given away, or knowingly sent out of the country, but early in this century one was stolen and carried to England. A Chinese servant committed the theft, and he smuggled the cat, a female, aboard an English ship. The captain wanted to return her to the priests of the temple from which she was taken, but so great was popular indignation over the theft that he was afraid to reveal that he had her. And even a British officer might have itching fingers where such a curiosity was concerned.

So the little Kimona sailed for England, and went to live with a family in Putney, who, according to an account Dr. Lilian Veley wrote for "Cat Gossip," respected her traditions and gave her a happy home. Kimona was uncannily human in her ways, and decided in her likes and dislikes. She would eat no fish or vegetables or milk, nothing but raw meat. She was not snooty about her past except in one respect. British tomcats she simply could not abide, and she lived and died a spinster.

Dr. Veley took some photographs of Kimona, and they were printed in "Cat Gossip" shortly before the cat's death in 1911. The black saddle on her white body might with some stretch of the imagination be thought to resemble a fat woman in a kimono. She had a black mark on her head, coming down over the cheeks, like a cap with lappets. Her tail was black and very short, broad at the base, almost triangular in shape.

There is a statue in Japan that is dedicated to cats, not the sacred kimono cats but the little commoners that are sacrificed to make catgut for the samisen, the Japanese banjo. It stands in front of the great Buddhist temple to Nichiren in the Yamanashi Prefecture, and one of the figures, that of a nun, has a cat's head. Samisen manufacturers placed it there, not so much from remorse as that they feared that the spirits of the slain animals might return to haunt them and injure the samisen business. Incense is burned there, and prayers are said to appease and propitiate the cats and to assure them that the manufacturers regretted the necessity of making them into samisens.

Even the geishas of Tokio contributed their haul-earned yens to have religious services for the dead cats before the big bronze statue. And I suppose it did the geishas good, if not the cats.

Cats play a more sinister part in some of the remote districts of Japan, where apparently the belief in vampires still survives. In the "London Sunday Express" for July 14, 1929, there was printed a report that the dread vampire cat of Nabeshima was once more, after a long absence, abroad in the land, seeking to bewitch the wives of the descendants of the old fighting Samurai. F. Hadland Davis in his "Myths and Legends of Japan" tells the story of this feline vampire that once upon a time harried the noble Nabeshima family.

It slew O Toyo, the sweetheart of the Prince of Hizen, an honored member of the Nabeshima race, and assumed her form, and in that guise sought to destroy the prince. But he was saved by the vigilance of Ito Soda, a faithful soldier, and the vampire, changing into a cat again, escaped to the mountains, where it was slain by hunters sent by the prince. That is the legend, but if we credit the item in the "Sunday Express" some of the Japanese believe that the creature had a life in reserve. It is to be hoped that it has not the fabled nine lives of our own harmless cats.

Though cats, like many human beings, do not understand financial systems, there was one feline government employee who took a paw in the making up of the national budget with excellent results to himself. That was Rufus of England, familiarly known as Treasury Bill, who wangled a pay raise of two cents a day in perpetuity out of Philip Snowden, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the MacDonald ministry, and said to be the most ruthless, icy, tight-fisted guardian of the state funds that ever ruled in the old Treasury Building in Whitehall, London.

There has always been a cat in the Treasury of England since the days of Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII's great chancellor, who, being of course a bachelor, made a great companion of his cat. But these cats have something more than social qualities. That rambling block of buildings at No. 10 Downing Street, with paneled walls and shelves stacked with old papers, is a Mecca for rats and mice. It was the job of Treasury Bill and his predecessors to keep the hordes down.

Bill was a noble ratter, but there came a time when he declined. Sir Warren Fisher, Permanent Secretary of H. M. Treasury, noted that he was thin and languid. The matter came up at a meeting of departmental chiefs, and a minute went to the Lords of the Treasury, submitting that Bill's prewar pay of four cents a day was insufficient to provide a hunting cat with food now that the cost of living had gone up. An increase of at least fifty per centum was recommended.

Their lordships replied that after giving "careful consideration to the case" they were "unable to approve a raise." Then Bill took charge. Finding Mr. Snowden's door ajar he walked in and exercised some of those blandishments that cats know so well how to employ. The Chancellor looked at Bill, and his hard gray eye softened. He turned to his desk and made a note: "Treasury vote: approve increase in cat's pay."

A well-known London cat was Mike, from 1909 to 1929 one of the keepers of the gate at the British Museum. Black Jack, one of the old-timers, brought the kitten to the Museum entrance in his mouth and left it there without any explanations. Mike lasted, and became a fine ratter. He was not paid in money but in good red meat.

Of course British official cats are not all males. Perhaps Mrs. Pankhurst saw to that, but at any rate lady cats have played their part in official London. There was, for example, Emily of the Home Office, who was picked up in the street by a charwoman, but became so wise and engaging that she always sat in at conferences with the Home Secretary.

The United States Congress makes a special appropriation for the maintenance of the feline guardians of Uncle Sam's mail. There are many of them, engaged in catching rats in post offices throughout the country. For nearly a score of years Champion Tom, the finest of them all, was stationed in the post-office building at Washington. Tom is dead now, after slaying so many rats that had they been laid in a row they would have stretched across the continent, or so it was said by his admirers.

There are cats in the Department of Agriculture, too, and recently Uncle Sam paid a great compliment to their fastidiousness. He subpoenaed sixteen of them to sit in judgment on some relief beef, the recipients of which had complained that it was not good. When the cats ate it and miewed for more the authorities ruled that the meat was all right.

There were of course many cats serving during the World War, as ratters, or as camp followers providing a little touch and semblance of home for the nostalgic soldiers. Once the British government drafted five hundred cats and sent them to the trenches to be used as barometers to give warning of the approach of gas. Such is the sensibility of cats to all poisonous odors that gas overcomes them before human noses detect it. It was not a pleasant job for the five hundred, and it seems that some of them should have received decorations or some special honor; but perhaps the poor things all perished. The army records do not say.

Prince Edward Island offers a highly specialized career for cats. Only lady cats need apply. This little Canadian province off the coast of Nova Scotia has many fox farms, producing silver fox skins, but the mother foxes have a habit of killing their young. This is where the cats come in. They make admirable wet nurses. The sad thing is that their own babies are drowned, but they get very fond of the little foxes, and they lead pleasant lives on the farms, supporting their husbands in idleness.

I suppose the highest-paid cat known was Bobby, a self-made film player, who died not very long ago of old age at the home of his guardian, Miss Charlotte Delaney, in Los Angeles. Bobby's mother was just a stray that Miss Delaney picked up on the street fifteen years ago. But Bobby showed talent from his earliest kittenhood, and from the moment that he went on as an extra there was no doubt that he would succeed.

He played beside Gloria Swanson and many other stars, and Miss Delaney watched and guarded his career, as well she might; Bobby drew a good salary, but he remained a simple, unassuming cat.

I do not know whether cats are really interested in the business of writing, or only pretend to be, but the effect is the same. And they are so tactful about it, so restful and soothing. My dog bears me company when I write, but he insists on napping under my feet, where I step on him if I stir, and at the least excuse he is up with his ball, urging me to come outdoors and see what wonderful things that ball can do. One remembers the Persians with their lambent eyes who used to sit so quietly on one's desk. It is true they liked to sleep On the typewriter, and that was inconvenient, but at the least hint they would gracefully retire.

"Cats like silence, order, and quietness, and no place is so proper for them as the study of a man of letters." Was it Theophile Gautier or Charles Baudelaire who said this? At any rate it is true. Walking one day in Copp's Hill Burial Ground, in the North End of Boston, a friend of mine was struck by the number of cats that were there, lying on the graves, making their toilets on the low tombstones, strolling in the paths. What, she asked a caretaker, was the reason of this invasion?

"It's a feast day in the Italian colony near by," he said. "The cats don't like the firecrackers and the shouting, so they come here for the day."

Since all cats cannot live with literary folk, I suppose these were lucky to have a graveyard to which to retire. How fortunate are cats such as Calvin, of whose life Charles Dudley Warner writes with such understanding in "My Summer in a Garden."

Calvin must have craved literary surroundings. He walked one day "out of the great unknown" into the house of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. "It was as if he had inquired at the door if this was the residence of the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and, upon being assured that it was, had decided to dwell there." When Mrs. Stowe made her winter home in Florida, Calvin came to live with the Warners. There he divided his time between the garden, the study, and the drawing room when there were guests. For the kitchen company he did not care.

"Writing always interested him," Mr. Warner says. "Until he understood it he wanted to hold the pen." But he was never obtrusive. "He would sit quietly in my study for hours, then, moved by a delicate affection, come and pull at my sleeve until he could touch my face with his nose, and then go away contented." But he had a practical side. If he wished to warm himself at the register and it was closed he would open it. "He could do almost everything but speak, and you would declare sometimes that you could see a pathetic longing to do that in his intelligent face."

It is not to be wondered at that when Calvin died "a little shock went through the neighborhood, and his friends, one after another, came to see him." His burial was simple, for it was felt that any parade or sentimental nonsense would be distasteful to him.

"He was always a mystery," the biography ends. "I did not know whence he came, I do not know whither he has gone. I would not weave one spray of falsehood in the wreath I lay upon his grave."

French writers are particularly fond of cats, Gautier had his house full of them until the siege of Paris in 1870 decimated them. Best of all he loved Gavroche, a charitable creature who would "bring in from the streets gaunt and ragged cats, who devoured in a scurry of fright the food laid aside for him." Victor Hugo, Prosper Merimee, and Anatole France all had their favorite cats; Cardinal Richelieu found diversion in his; and Montaigne wrote, "When I play with my cat who knows whether she amuses herself with me or I with her?" Pierre Loti left charming accounts of his pet cats, Moumoutte Blanche and Moumoutte Chinoise, but he could sympathize with less fortunate ones too. There are few things more poignant that his story of the lonely, old, sick cat to whom he gave what he believed was merciful death. But from the brink the cat's eyes followed him:

"Why were you in such a hurry for me to meet my fate? If it had not been for you I would have been able to drag out life a little longer, to have still had certain little thoughts, cares, fancies of my own. I had still strength enough left to spring to the sills of the windows, where the dogs would not trouble me too much. In the morning, when the sun shone there, I could have looked about me and seen life. Instead of which I am about to be dissolved into I know not what; I will be no more."

It was the waifs and strays of catdom that Samuel Butler, seventeenth century English poet, loved to take in, to save if he could. George Moore, master of beautiful prose, liked plain, short-haired cats of plebeian origin. Thomas Hardy, on the contrary, had a patrician Persian to companion him in his study. Henry James sometimes wrote with a cat on his shoulder, and Walter Pater always had them about.

With Walter Scott cats were an acquired taste. In early life he disliked them, but then he met Hinse of Hinsefield, and Hinse came to live with him and taught him many things. "Cats are a mysterious kind of folk," he wrote. "There is more passing in their minds than we are aware of." Samuel Johnson, though, knew what was passing in the mind of his cat Hodge when Hodge wanted oysters. Hodge left him in no doubt, and there are few pictures more lovable than that of the gruff old doctor laying down his pen and stumping out to buy Hodge's favorite food.

When one thinks of cats in connection with Edgar Allan Poe one immediately remembers that weird story of his, "The Black Cat." But I like to recall the wonderful big cat who used to lie on the bed of his young wife, Virginia, when she was dying. It was very cold, and they had not enough blankets to keep her warm, and no money with which to buy more coverings. It seemed as if the cat knew this, for It would lie close to her feet so that the warmth from its body might pass into hers.

Cats do not like the water. Dogs do. Cats are supposed to love a snug, warm berth. Dogs are agog for adventure. Yet there is seldom a ship that has not its cat, and the annals of the sea are full of stories of them, while the only sea dogs so far as I know are two-legged ones, the old salts to whom the name is colloquially given.

Cats have always had a part in the traditions of the sea, ever since the ancients identified the cat with the moon, the ruler of the tides. They had a more sinister connection in medieval times, when in many parts of Europe, particularly in the highlands and islands of Scotland, men believed that tempests and disasters at sea were caused by cats that were really witches in disguise, But today, with no superstition about it, or at least not much, sailors value cats as good shipmates, who are not only useful in keeping down rats, but who bring good luck, and often in some mysterious way sense approaching storms and other perils and give winning.

Cats have never told us why so many of them hang around the water front, but certainly in sea-ports it is the part of the town they prefer. Perhaps It is because longshoremen and sailors are kind to them. Or it may be because of the rats. Or the moonlight on the water. Anyway there they are, and when one gets bored he takes passage on some ship and extends his knowledge of geography.

Dick, a black cat with white spats, who makes his home on the mezzanine floor of the French Line dock in New York, where he mingles with the crowd on sailing nights, always takes a voyage when he feels run down, and returns quite restored by the sea air and tidbits in the ship's kitchen. The steamship "Clairton," plying between Liverpool and Norfolk, Virginia, arrived in America one day with a Manx cat who had sailed as a stowaway, not declaring himself till Liverpool was below the horizon. The men said the ship had never had such a smooth and speedy voyage, and they gave the credit to Stumpy, as they named the Manx. Sailors believe that tailless cats are special carriers of good luck.

When the steamship "Leviathan" had left for Europe on her first voyage after being out of commission for a year, there was a rumor abroad in Hoboken that she had sailed without a cat. A wireless was sent to Captain Harry Manning of the "Leviathan," inquiring if this was so, and he was so disturbed that he not only wirelessed back an emphatic denial but had himself photographed with a cat on either arm and mailed the picture to America. Was it likely, he asked, that a boat that had twelve cats on its preceding voyage would sail without any?

The "Leviathan" always did have fine cats. One of the old-timers was Ginger, a red cat born in a sampan near the Chinese seaport, Whampoa. He was a grandson of Tiger, a huge tomcat who signed up with Captain Samuels of the clipper ship "Dreadnought." Samuels would sooner have sailed without his first mate than without Tiger. At the last minute he would bellow, "Is Tiger aboard?" and not till the men answered, "Aye, aye, sir," did he give the order to cast off.

Grandson Ginger was a great ratter, a hard fighter, and a gay old sailor, with a wife in every port.

Some sea cats have shown, on occasion, qualities of real heroism and devotion. The Coast Guardsmen at Cape Cod tell some stirring tales, and some pathetic ones, such as that of the cat of the "Castagna," who after the vessel was wrecked was found upon it, keeping solitary vigil by her dead captain's side.

And consider the courage and intelligence of Old One-Eye and of Oldtimer, two cats of whom Captain George H. Grant told in the "New York Herald Tribune Magazine."

On a night when his vessel was caught in a fearful hurricane Oldtimer made her way through the blinding rain and wind to Captain Grant by the wheelhouse and gave him to understand that he must follow her. Then she led him along slippery decks and down ladders to the after well deck, and straight to where some heavy cargo had come loose from its lashings and was crashing dangerously against the bulwarks. It was Oldtimer's last service. On that same night she was swept away by a sea that broke over the boat deck while she clung there, as it were, on guard.

Old One-Eye, "the most sagacious cat that ever trod the deck of a vessel," according to Captain Grant, was born dumb, but on two occasions he forced himself to miew. On one, he waked the captain just in time for him to save himself from a drunken cook who threatened him with a galley knife. On the other, he gave warning of a drifting dory with two exhausted fishermen in it, on a night so dark that but for the cat they would never have been sighted. Did Old One-Eye see the dory, or did he sense it out in the fog? The fishermen thought he might have smelt their fish, but Captain Grant did not agree. He called it "uncanny intuition."

For many years the effigy of a ship's cat stood over the door of a house in Stockholm, Sweden. Recently this house was torn down, and old people in Stockholm recalled the deed for which this cat was honored. The captain of a sailing vessel died during a voyage from Haiti, and his wife died also, and their baby daughter was left in charge of a nurse who did not know if the child had relatives, or where to go to find out. But the ship's cat, a former resident of Stockholm, knew where to go. As soon as the boat docked he led the nurse with the baby up one street and down another till he reached No. 22 Vasterland Street. There he stopped and miewed at the door. It was the home of the baby's grandmother.

One hears a great deal about dogs on polar expeditions, and of course in heavy work like hauling sledges they are more useful than cats could be. But cats have their uses, even in the eternal snows. Lincoln Ellsworth took a lady cat along on the last Ellsworth Transantarctic Flight Expedition, and on Christmas night she presented him with three kittens. It was a pleasant little touch of home. Ellsworth sent announcements to the home papers, but one wonders why he did not arrange to have the kittens go on the air. The barks of the Byrd Expedition dogs and the squawks of its penguins were broadcast. Surely the miews of polar Christmas kittens are quite as worthy of the radio.

I suppose that when Chappie the Globe-trotter opened his eyes, behind the counter in a little stationery shop in New York, his mother had no idea that he was to become a great traveler. She was a humble creature who had never been a block away from home, and Chappie was the least of her kittens. He was beautifully striped in black and gray, and he had six toes on each foot, but he was frail and rickety. When, a few weeks later, a customer asked if she could have him the shopkeeper said that she could, and welcome.

The customer was Miss Alice Engel, a lover of cats, who was going on a long trip through Europe and the Orient and wanted a cat for a traveling companion. The kitten's six-toed feet marked him for distinction, so she named him Chappie the Globe-Trotter and trained him for his job. Good red meat and milk and cod-liver oil made him strong and healthy, and daily walks on a leash taught him to regard strange sights and sounds with equanimity.

Miss Engel wrote the managers of the Italian Line by which she was sailing and asked if she might take her cat in her cabin, and the price of his passage. They replied that they would be delighted to have him as a guest, and inquired what he preferred to eat, that they might provide the right food for him.

Chappie had his own suitcase, which contained his dishes for food and water, scissors for cutting up his beef, his brush and comb, his bed, his sanitary pan, and some simple medicines. For cold days on deck he had a tweed coat and for mild weather a wool sweater. In the pocket of his coat he carried a bill of health from a New York veterinarian for the reassurance of foreign quarantine authorities.

Chappie proved to be an excellent sailor. He was never seasick but once, when a choppy sea off Gibraltar took him off his legs temporarily. But during a rough Atlantic crossing, when some race horses aboard the ship nearly died of seasickness, and "Bring 'Em Back Alive" Buck was staying up nights with four unhappy baby elephants, Chappie would sit for hours watching the waves through a porthole or from the deck, and the higher they rose the more he enjoyed it.

Miss Engel's itinerary took her into southern Europe, Egypt, India, China, Japan, and Hawaii, and everywhere railway officials were most polite to Chappie. He rode in her compartment, sitting up on the seat beside her like a nice child, looking with Interest at the sights that flashed past and the people in the stations. Sometimes he rode free, and sometimes there was a small charge for his fare. Miss Engel kept him on a leash, but it was hardly necessary; he would sit quietly wherever she bade him. It was only when customs men approached his suitcase that he lost his splendid poise.

In Trieste, Vienna, and other European cities the hotels were most hospitable to Chappie. Miss Engel had dreaded China, knowing that the Chinese do not care for cats, but he had a beautiful time there. In the Palace Hotel on the Nanking Road in Shanghai his beef was sent up to him on ice, served on a silver tray, and the boys there guarded him zealously. "We shuttie door tlight," they assured his mistress. "Pussie no lun out."

Chappie greatly enjoyed riding in rickshas. In fact he likes riding in anything except aircraft. He will not travel by air, so Miss Engel never flies, for she and Chappie are too used to one another to bear being separated.

Chappie is now at home, but he keeps beside him, ready for another journey, his suitcase, which is well plastered with foreign labels. Miss Engel says they had only one bad experience during their two- year trip. That was when a steamship captain refused to honor the written permission given her with her ticket to take her cat to her cabin, and told her she must leave it in the hold. She refused, and was put off on the dock with Chappie and her baggage. This, I regret to say, was an American boat.

European railways are more agreeable about cat travelers than American railways are. I know only one cat who has traveled in our passenger cars, and she was smuggled aboard wearing a baby's cloak and cap. In Europe it is quite usual to take one's pets journeying. In 1934 the American Consul at Moscow, Angus I. Ward, and Mrs. Ward arrived in that city from Tientsin accompanied by an Alsatian shepherd dog, a bearded Korean hen, and two cats - Shart, a yellow Angora, and Blackie, a Siamese. They emerged in stately procession from the Ward compartment on the Trans-Siberian Express, and Mr. Ward said they had behaved beautifully during the twelve-day journey.

In England some years ago there was a remarkable cat named Mickey, who traveled many thousands of miles with his people, Mr. and Mrs. Osborne Leonard, stopping with them at hotels and boarding-houses. He loved to take long walks with them, especially in London and other big cities. He would go out by himself, too, even in strange places, taking the precaution to smell about the doorstep of their lodging so that he could identify the place when he returned. Only once had Mickey's people left him behind them at home, and he had grieved so piteously, though he was quite young, that they resolved they would never leave him again.

Minnie, the cat who knew Caruso, owed her rise in life partly to luck and partly to character. Luck led her, a forlorn kitten, to the door of the Artists' and Writers' Club in West Fortieth Street on a cold November night in 1920 just when John Bleeck, the manager, was taking a look at the weather, but her own qualities did the rest.

Minnie was no beauty, just a black morsel with a wistful little white face, but she had sense. She slept that night, full of good food, in a warm corner of the basement, and in the morning she caught a mouse and laid it at Mr. Bleeck's feet. Now mice and rats had been the bane of Mr. Bleeck's life. They had made a game of the traps he set for them and had, so he told the newspapermen when he gave them Minnie's obituary fourteen years later, grown so audacious that they mingled with the members and nibbled at their shoes. So Minnie seemed the answer to prayer. She had to grow bigger and stronger before she could tackle the rats, but in six months she had caught most of them and the rest had moved away.

The first female ever admitted to this strictly stag club, Minnie enjoyed her advantages but did not abuse them. She never neglected the mouse holes or her kittens, but she dearly loved to spend an hour in the evening with the newspapermen and artists who frequent the club. Many were the card games at which she was a kibitzer - an ideal one, for she never miewed a suggestion. And more than once she arched her back under Caruso's hand when he came to the club with Antonio Scotti for a dry Martini, in the golden days before a lesion in his magic throat left the Metropolitan Opera House bereft of his voice.

It was a tumor in the stomach that killed Minnie, that and old age. When Mr. Bleeck found that she was ailing he carried her to the Ellin Prince Speyer Hospital, but she could not be saved. She was buried in the cemetery for dogs and cats at Hartsdale, New York, and her newspaper friends saw to it that she had good obituaries. I do not suppose that an unassuming little cat ever had so much public notice. The "Herald Tribune," next door to the club, printed a column three days running on her sickness, death, and burial.

Minnie had one hundred and ten kittens in the course of her life and made good mousers of them all, but she never imparted to any of them her peculiar social qualities.

Cats like clubs, I think, but whether it is the company or the food I do not know. Years ago I knew a stately Maltese who lived in a watchmaker's shop on Sixth Avenue. One day I found the watchmaker's wife in tears; William Tell had disappeared. Two months later they learned that the Lambs' Club, around the corner, had a Maltese cat. They investigated. It was William Tell. They took him back, but he persistently returned to the club. Why, he seemed to say, should he live in a dim shop among clocks and watches when he could associate with Broadway stars and be fed sumptuously by their chef?

The Stock Exchange Luncheon Club had a cat named Minnie, as modest and efficient as her namesake of Fortieth Street. The steward often said that Minnie saved the club thousands of dollars by catching the rats that otherwise would have devoured the supplies. But Wall Street rats must be more aggressive than literary and artistic rats, for while Minnie of the Artists' and Writers' Club never got a wound in her encounters with rodents, Minnie of the financial district bore some bad scars. It was in defending one of her kittens from a rat that she received the hurt that caused her death. While she was in the hospital more than one Stock Exchange member called to inquire how Minnie fared.

Of quite another sort from the two Minnies was another famous ratter, Waterside Bill. Bill would have scorned to be anybody's protege, and he did not die in a hospital cage, he died in his boots. He appointed himself Exterminator Extraordinary to a row of small shops near the North River. He would saunter into a shop shortly before closing time, and the proprietor, rejoicing, would leave him in possession, knowing that there would be none but dead rodents there in the morning. He visited all the shops in that row, but no others. Though he never tolerated caresses, the whole neighborhood liked him and mourned when he was killed by a vicious dog. Waterside Bill was too arrogant to retreat before any dog, and that was his undoing.

There have been a number of political cats in New York, especially during the Tammany regime. Perhaps they considered themselves the Tiger's poor relations, and knowing that Tammany was good to its own thought it would be a good idea to rally round. Dean of them all was Tammany Tom, striped like a tiger himself, who for many years was an esteemed resident of the Criminal Courts Building.

Tom lived with the custodian of the building and was the pet of the custodian's daughter, but he spent his days visiting the judges in their courtrooms. He always used the judges' elevator. He would wait at the door for it, miew for it to stop, and enter it sedately; when his floor was reached he would ask to be let off. Never did he deign to use the public elevator. He liked to sleep on the clerk's desk in the Court of General Sessions, and on hot days he would stroll across the Bridge of Sighs to the Tombs to cool himself in the corridors of the grim prison.

Then there was N*gger, a great friend of former Mayor James J. Walker. N*gger lived in the City Courts Building, but he liked to go over to City Hall and sit in on conferences in the Mayor's office. Mr. Walker always gave him a warm welcome. "Black cats bring me luck," he would say. And indeed it is true that at that time the Mayor's star rode high, and that it was after N*gger's death (of a fall from a six-story window) that his luck began to desert him.

There are many police cats, one of whose duties apparently is to furnish copy on dull days to the reporters who cover the stations. Fire companies mostly have dogs, but their rescue squads are always ready to go forth with ladders and fire axes to release some wandering cat imprisoned in a tenement wall. One squad worked two days to locate the Harlem Ghost, a black cat whose mysterious wails nearly emptied an entire tenement of its Negro population. The poor starved cat was indeed nearly a ghost when the firemen finally chopped it out.

Volumes could be written about the store cats of New York. Most of them are expected to be useful, and are, but I used to know one, a black cat in an uptown florist's shop, who was so ornamental that his owner asked nothing else of him. Any cat could catch mice, but Ebony's gift for posing against the blossoms in the window and catching the eye of the sidewalk stroller was much more subtle . . . Sundays are the problem for store cats. Weekdays are very well - plenty of company and regular meals; but Sundays are lonely. There was an Eighth Avenue grocery cat who solved the problem nicely. He made himself so popular with customers that one or another of them was always glad to borrow him for the week-end. There was usually a waiting list for Rupert.

Recently I saw a store cat, with no effort of his own, collect a crowd. Someone saw him sitting alone in the window of a closed store and decided that he must be locked in and starving. In no time the pavement was blocked; the A. S. P. C. A. was summoned, and the crowd dispersed only after the agent promised to find the storekeeper and release the cat. Next day the cat still sat in the window, but above him was a placard: "THIS CAT IS FED AND CARED FOR."

It seemed that the owner, finding it necessary to close the place temporarily, had left Pal in charge of the mousing department, but visited him twice a day.

A New York cat who gained nation-wide fame last year was a female impersonator, a black-and- white tomcat who toured the country with Eva Le Gallienne's company in Alice in Wonderland, and made a hit as Dinah in the fireside scene with Alice. But when the season ended and the company returned to New York what could Dinah do? 

Booking agencies were of no avail, for there are few parts for cat actors. A well-meaning person gave him to a butcher, but Dinah was used to different society and languished in the butcher shop. Then the young actor who took the part of Tweedledee in the play, and who understands cats, appealed to the New York Women's League for Animals, and the League told the newspapers. After that the only trouble was to decide which one of the many congenial families that wanted Dinah should have him.

Mickey, the English cat who, as related in the chapter on "Cats as Traveling Companions," traveled widely with his beloved master and mistress, Mr. and Mrs. Osborne Leonard, is said to have continued to travel after he died. It was the firm belief of Mrs. Leonard that he came back many times in the astral body to visit them, that she saw him and felt his back arch under her stroking hand. In the "International Psychic Gazette" for April, 1918, she told Mickey's story and described the comings and goings of the little cat ghost.

Psychic literature is full of such instances, and certainly if there are human ghosts there must be cat ghosts too. Cats are well suited to do a bit of ghosting. Elliott O'Donnell, whose book "Animal Ghosts" is rich in examples, says that cats predominate in animal phenomena; he has convinced himself too by experiments in haunted houses that living cats are reliable psychic barometers. "The dog is sometimes unaware of the proximity of the Unknown," he says, "but I have never yet had with me a cat that has not shown the most obvious signs of terror before and during a superphysical manifestation."

A cat's nervous system is easily worked upon; then, too, cats have imagination. After my Mimi the First died her sister, Fifi, would sit at twilight with her great eyes attentively regarding a dusky corner of the room, sometimes fixed, sometimes moving as if they followed something. She never did that before Mimi died. Spiritists would say that Mimi was there, but I think it was Fifi's memory and imagination and the gray shadows in the corner of the room.

So with the reported instances of the reappearance of a cat after death. Does it really appear, or does the mind of the beholder throw out an image of the animal? There must be something, for one cannot doubt the sincerity or the sanity of the people who seriously record these matters. Take the story that was told in the Occult Review some years ago by Norah Chesson, a perfectly normal young English girl who had no leanings whatever toward the supernatural.

Norah was in bed convalescing from an illness and was wondering why Minnie, her cat, had never come to see her while she was sick. It must be, she thought, that Minnie was absorbed in her young kitten. But as she lay thinking this the door, which was slightly ajar, swung open a few inches farther, and Minnie trotted in. Norah could feel the white throat of the little tortoise-shell vibrating with an ecstatic purr as she pressed against her mistress, licked her hand, and clasped the fingers in her paws "in a pretty fondling gesture that was all her own." Then she trotted out. When the maid came in Norah exclaimed that Minnie had come to see her at last. The maid stared at her.

"Minnie?" she said. "Minnie's been dead a week, and buried under a stone in the garden. Her kitten's fretting itself to skin and bone. Your mamma didn't want to tell you while you was so sick."

The subject of witch cats is less pleasant than that of cat ghosts. Most of these small ghosts are gentle and wistful and give pleasure to the people who see them or think they see them, it is all the same. But the witch cats born of the fear-ridden minds of the Middle Ages worked nothing but harm. The tissue-paper black cats with which we trim up Hallowe'en frolics typify a good deal of horror.

It was not many centuries ago that, at witchcraft trials in both secular and ecclesiastical courts, women were gravely accused of assuming the form of cats, and were condemned to death on charges of working mischief in that guise. In 1596 the witches of Aberdeen were brought to trial for appearing as cats at the Fish Cross, in order that they might celebrate their orgies unsuspected. I do not know where the Fish Cross was, but if it stood in a fish market, which seems logical, then it is just possible that the whole business started in the irritation of some fishmonger at cats that were drawn there by the odor of their favorite food.

A full century later trials for witchcraft in which cats were involved were going on in New England. One that Cotton Mather recorded in his "Wonders of the Invisible World" was held in the court of Oyer and Terminer on June 29, 1692. Among the many witnesses who testified against the accused, Susannah Martin, a man named Robert Downer declared that upon his telling her that he believed she was a witch, she had replied, "Some she-devil will shortly fetch you away," and that as he lay in his bed that night the likeness of a cat flew in at his window and almost killed him. Not until he called upon the name of "the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost" did the cat release him and fly out at the window.

Isobel Gowdie, known as the queen of Scottish witches, seems to have gloried in her strange distinction. At her trial in 1662 she made a most dramatic confession, describing vividly how she and her companies of witches rambled through the country disguised as cats, wasting the goods of their neighbors and playing havoc wherever they went.

The strange doctrine that wounds received by a person masquerading as an animal remain after the disguise has been thrown off was bound up with witchcraft. One terrible account is of three poor women of Thurso, Scotland, "the witches of Thurso." In a petition to the sheriff one William Montgomerie complained that his house was infested with cats that "spoke among themselves," and then he took matters into his own hands, and killed two of the cats and struck off a leg from another.

Soon afterward a suspected witch in the town died suddenly, another threw herself into the sea, and a third, Margaret Nin-Gilbert, was seen by neighbors to drop one of her legs at her own door. The putrefied leg was found, and Margaret was imprisoned. She had been long ill with gangrene, but that did not count with the populace or the authorities, and she and the two dead women were immediately identified with the cats against which Montgomerie had used his dirk and broadsword. Margaret made a forced confession that she visited Montgomerie's house "in the likeness of a feltered cat," and was wounded by him. She died in prison.

Witchcraft makes a dark chapter in the history of cats. Those who care to read of horrors can find plenty in musty volumes of old trials, legends, and histories. And the chapter is not really closed. Sinister tales are still current in the remoter parts of Germany, Italy, France, and Scotland; in the Monferrato it is believed that "cats which wander on the roofs in February are not really cats but witches, and it is a duty to shoot them."

"Cats," said a bird-lover whose name I know but will not mention, "are the sly and malicious enemies of birds. The cat is the only animal that is not taxed; it ought to be taxed to death."

Putting aside the question of what the rats would do to us if the cats were not here to check them, one wonders at these bird-lovers who ignore the many different enemies that birds have, including the two-legged, featherless ones, and, as another sort of bird-lover, an old Connecticut man, said in a letter to the "New York Herald Tribune" a few years ago, "blame it all on the cat."

This man, Louis Snyder, had lived all his life in rural places. After pointing out that many birds have been driven away by the destruction of woods and swamps and thickets that were their natural sanctuaries, he wrote:

"The red squirrel is very destructive to bird life, destroying nests and eating eggs. Common rats prey on birds that raise their broods on the ground. The cats catch the red squirrels and the rats and so are a protection to bird life, taking a small toll for the good they do. The hawk and the owl and the crow constantly prey on bird life, the hawk by day, the owl by night. Crows destroy the eggs and eat the fledglings. Yet it is all blamed on the cat. Weasels also come in for their toll. The cat catches the weasel. Give the cat credit."

Mr. Snyder did not mention those other enemies of birds, wanton human hunters, yet no killer is more malicious. Consider the case of the robins that winter in Big Laurel Bottoms, in Virginia. Hundreds of thousands of them have for years regarded this place as a refuge. Now, it seems, midnight hunting parties are the vogue. The noble hunters go into the undergrowth where the robins roost, bewilder them with lights, and strike them down with wooden paddles. As many as a thousand robins have been killed in one night.

What use can these men make of all these pitiful dead robins? They kill for the lust of killing. The authorities in Virginia are seeking to stop this outrage, and thirty of the killers have been prosecuted and fined $14.25 each. But this seems an inadequate punishment. Cats have never organized in groups to go out and do mass killing of birds, yet one hears their lives demanded as enemies of birds.

In New York State in the short space of three months, in 1934, one hundred and fifty men and boys were arrested for killing song birds. They all had dead birds; one man was caught with eighty-four slaughtered robins, thrushes, black-birds and other songsters in his bag. In Central Park, in the heart of Manhattan, men and boys have been found bringing down small birds with a slingshot. And for each who is apprehended it is certain that there are many who engage in this slaughter unseen.

The friends of cats do not deny that some cats kill birds, but they are amazed at the extraordinary statistics that anti-cat people offer - each set of figures different from the others. The president of the National Association of Audubon Societies stated in 1933 that there were 60,000,000 cats in the United States and that they killed 600,000,000 birds in a year. The "Nature Magazine" not long afterward printed an article putting the number of cats in the United States at 120,000,000, of which, the writer said, 40,000,000 were owned and 80,000,000 strays.

Which of these estimates, if either, is correct? When were these censuses taken? I am sure that if there had been a census of cats we should have heard of it in the newspapers and from owners of cats.

The editor of the "National Humane Review" was surprised to read in the "Nature Magazine" that there are 40,000,000 owned cats in this country, because there are less than 30,000,000 families, and he suspected that a good many of the less than 30,000,000 do not keep cats. So he asked some of the employees of the American Humane Association to observe conditions in their respective neighborhoods.

One reported three cats to sixteen families; another, two cats to twenty-four families; a third, only one cat to ten families; a fourth, nine families with not a single cat; a fifth, a lone cat to sixteen families. I think this is not unusual. In one street in my town, a short street, there are eight children, seven dogs, and one cat and a kitten. This cat occasionally kills a bird, but not more than two or three in a season, though there is a bird bath on the place and many winged visitors about. She is always soundly punished for it, and it is a long time before she repeats the crime.

The "National Humane Review" also made some investigations in the matter of the alleged 80,000,000 stray cats, and the charge that many live in the woods on the birds they kill. It quotes a Massachusetts woman whose father was an ornithologist. "I have had a great deal to do with cats, both pets and strays," she says. "I have yet to see the cat who, wholly unsheltered, would live through one of our northern winters. In the cities or about farms with deserted buildings, even holes in verandas, they may manage to live one winter out. But in the open, never."

A naturalist who practically lives in the great outdoors testified that in all his wanderings he had seen but three cats who had gone wild; stray cats, he said, stayed close to human habitations. And this is true. The habit of dependence has overlaid the primitive instincts, and these strays are generally hoping for a handout, or an opportunity to join some family. Seldom, outside of fiction, is there anything like the animal in Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's short story, "The Cat," who with his hunting maintained for an entire winter not only himself but the helpless human stray with whom he shared a hut in the wilderness.

It is asserted that a cat has been seen to devour twenty-four birds in a day. It seems impossible that a cat could do this and not burst, but there may be cat abnormities just as there are men who eat two dozen pies or a hundred oysters at a sitting. Of course it is not fair to say that because one cat ate twenty-four birds in a day 60,000,000 cats will destroy 1,440,000,000 birds in a year, but that is the way these cat statistics work. There is one thing, the cat outlasts its enemies. It was the great hope of Rockwell Sayer, of Chicago, that he might live long enough to see the last cat executed, and he spent a great deal of money printing and circulating anti-cat literature, and giving presents to people who were opposed to cats. But he is dead. The cats remain.

And now how is the cat-owner, who knows that hunting is a natural feline instinct, to persuade his or her cat that it is right to kill mice and rats but wrong to kill birds? It is a fine ethical point, but with an intelligent cat patience generally does the trick. You must begin early. It is wonderful what can be done with a kitten by starting right. Otis, a cat owned by L. G. Walker of Towanda, Pennsylvania, who was trained in his youth not to harm the Walker canaries, picked up a half-frozen grackle that he found in the snow, carried it home, and laid it before the fire. Then he watched approvingly while his master thawed the bird out, fed it, and released it.

If your kitten begins to stalk the birds that fly into the yard, seize it in the act if possible, give it a stern talking to, and shut it up in the house. If your cat catches a bird, take the bird away if you can, give the offender a spanking, and shut it up without its dinner. Never pass over an offense. In case a cat simply will not be taught, it should be confined during the nesting season if you live where there are birds.

Some people advocate licensing cats "to save the birds." William E. Brigham, managing director of the Animal Rescue League of Boston, which handles five thousand cats in a month, once explained why this cannot be done. The license could not be enforced and thousands of the poor cats would be thrown out to seek a living in garbage cans or from the trees where the birds live. They would breed, and the birds would be in more danger than ever. Also, Mr. Brigham pointed out, a licensed cat would have to wear a collar, and "a cat with a collar is continually getting hung up somewhere, on a fence or a limb, and some of them hang for days before they are found, often dead."

Owners who bell their cats to warn the birds must face the danger of the collar. Belling is a law in some communities, but experienced bird people do not think that it does much good. Young birds especially seldom heed the bell. If you do bell your pet, use an elastic collar. Some shops sell these collars, which are supposed to stretch and slip over the cat's head if it is caught and struggles.

The destruction of birds by vagrant cats is a problem that is up to mankind. Every motorist who drops unwanted cats in the woods or on a country road is spreading the evil; what is a starving cat to do but catch game if he can?

When I think of homeless cats sad little pictures pass one after another through my mind.

A scrawny mother cat lying on the edge of a filthy snowbank in an alley, hugging a kitten up to her breasts with her arm. The kitten is dead, but she will not believe it. She licks the wet little body all over and purrs her cat lullaby, "T-r-r, t-r-r!"

A large, black tom, bewildered but dignified, making his slow way along Broadway in the theater district. He walks unevenly, one paw held up; it is swollen to the size of three. With his white spats and necktie he might be a sick old actor out of a job. He looks up into the faces of the matinee crowds as if he would like to tell someone about it, but no one notices him, and he hobbles into a corner and lays himself resignedly down.

The cellar of a closed restaurant, with eyes peering out of the darkness, the eyes of abandoned cats. There must be twenty of them, and two dead kittens lie in a pool of water on the floor. The eyes gleam with terror and hunger, for there was a great noise days ago in the restaurant, trucks rumbling up to the door where the cook used to toss them scraps, and then the cellar door slammed on them, and they have been here ever since, with no scraps. Still it is home, and how the starved creatures dodge and flee from the woman who crawls down the steps to save them.

Midnight on Rivington Street, New York City. It is a sleety night, and most of the people have gone indoors. So the cats come out. Scores upon scores of them, old and young, mostly bony and mangy, creeping among the garbage cans and plunging their claws into the coverless ones, fighting over a fish head or the remains of a sandwich.

A summer station for unwanted cats in Seward Park, New York. Tiers of cages, full of cats, cats of all colors and sizes and ages, handsome cats, hideous cats, cowering cats, bristling cats. More cats arriving, in baskets or clutched in the bringers' hands. Some of the people, reluctant to have any part in destroying an animal, set their cats down on the pavement and hasten away, and the old man in charge picks them up and carries them to cages. A shabby young man of the agitator type loiters by, looks at the cats, stops.

"What you going to do with these cats?" he asks.

The old man has his hands full with an injured cat, and a woman who has been looking at the cages answers. "I suppose most of them will be put into the gas chamber," she says. "What else can be done with so many cats? Who has homes for them?"

"A pretty country, that can't even take care of the cats," the boy grumbles.

"That's what we get all the time," the attendant observes to the woman. "Tryin' to do the best we can with the an'mals, an' lotta folks thinks we're cruel."

Figures are printed telling how many homeless cats there are in this or that city, in this country, in the world. They are guesses; nobody knows. I read that the A. S. P. C. A. estimated that there were 1,500,000 cats in Greater New York, and that

1,000,000 had homes, 500,000 were strays. But I do not believe that two thirds of the cat population have homes. I think it is the other way around.

The homeless cats are not all miserable. Some of them have their moments. It is a great moment in the day of a score of Greenwich Village cats when Dan Fratini, a big-hearted truck-driver, brings them the dinner of broken meats that he has begged from restaurants. He spreads a newspaper in a convenient corner, sets out dinner, and calls. He never has to call more than once; the guests know the hour.

Dan is one of a good many New York people who have a heart for the homeless cat. There is a little stenographer who always spends an hour, after her day's work is done, in looking for strays in the deserted canyons of the financial district, where there is poor picking for cats. Those she finds she takes to an animal refuge, and then she goes to her late dinner. She has done her good deed for the day.

Dan and the stenographer represent the two schools into which the friends of cats are divided. One school believes in gathering up homeless cats and taking them to some humane agency, to be placed in homes if possible, and if not to be mercifully destroyed. The other school thinks that if they are fed they can take care of themselves on the street. But it is to be feared that the samaritans of this school, intending to be kind, are adding to the problem of the homeless cat. The cats they keep alive and at liberty inevitably breed, and so there are more and more strays.

Cats sometimes form colonies and flourish for a time. There was once a handsome tribe living among the rocks in a vacant lot in the upper end of Manhattan. The patriarch of the colony was black and white, and the kittens born there were all black and white, no matter what the color of the cats that moved in. Tenants in a neighboring apartment house fed them, and they looked very prosperous, lying on the rocks on a warm afternoon. Then builders came to blast for a new apartment house, and the colony broke up in terror. There is no security for the unowned cat.