Page:010 Once a week Volume X Dec 1863 to Jun 64.pdf/25

 Rh charmed by "Puss in Boots," and still more by that excellent fairy-tale of "Whittington and his Cat." This may be one of "the fairy tales of science," however, and is not without its particle of truth in witnessing to the early importation of the cat into our country that we mentioned above. Antiquarians have fought over the inferences of the story, perhaps with much the same results at the battle of the far-famed Kilkenny cats themselves. It is certain that a wealthy family of Whittingtons possessed land and houses at Gloucester in Henry the Sixth's time, and quite recently a sculptured stone was dug up from this land, representing a youth with a cat in his arms. The legend is common enough, however, both in Europe and Asia, and existed years before the probable historic date of our Whittington. Remembering, too, how many tricks are played off on antiquaries, the incident of the sculptured stone, instead of causing us to pin our faith to any hypothesis, ought simply to make us suspect them all. A curious testimony to the value of imported cats has been disinterred from an account sent in by one Bragge to the East India Company in 1621:—

The popular sayings connected with cats are so numerous, that they might be utterances of Father Cats himself, whose poems are so grateful to the Dutch peasantry. Their tenacity of life comes out in the proverb, "Care killed the cat." Their familiar presence at every one's hearth is alluded to in "A cat may look at a king." Indeed, there could be no legal hamlet in the old Welsh constitutions unless it possessed a cat. We confess ourselves puzzled as to the explanation of the Scotch proverb, "grinning like a Cheshire cat," unless it alludes to their uniform cheerfulness in that county; but as "all cats are black in the dark," we pass on to see how Shakespeare embalms the animal in his amber verses. Lady Macbeth taunts her husband, when he hangs back from the murder, with—

alluding to that animal's fondness for fish ("what cat's averse to fish?"), but its unwillingness to wet its feet in catching them. Falstaff seizes upon another feature of the animal's character, so detested by all wakeful sleepers in town, Sblood! I am as melancholy as a gib-cat!" When Mercutio longs for a fray with Tybalt, he accosts him, "Good king of cats, I would have nothing but one of your nine lives; that I mean to make bold withal, and, as you shall use me hereafter, dry-beat the rest of the eight;" and thereupon receives that celebrated "scratch," which was "not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church-door." How subtly, too, does our great poet hit off the character of those who are fond of being led!—they "take suggestions as a cat laps milk." While upon the proverbial sayings connected with cats, we may mention that the Madras catamaran, which invariably rights itself in the wildest surf, has been ingeniously derived from the Italian gatta marina, "sea-cat," alluding to the faculty a cat possesses of always falling on its feet.

In our old literature the word "cat" had a more generic sense than obtains at present. So Tyndall, in his New Testament of 1525, calls a leopard a "catt off the mountain." The Laureat, who lets nothing slip by him, places the Princess on her throne, guarded by two leopards, and then speaks of—

One of the most common natural antipathies is an utter abhorrence of cats. We know a lady who cannot stay in the same house with one, and know its hateful presence instinctively, before she sees it. Blue-eyed cats, oddly enough, are always deaf. Mr. Darwin has a curious speculation how a scarcity of cats in any rural district would soon affect the neighbouring vegetation; as the field animals they prey upon would, of course, proportionably increase, and their greater numbers would in turn tell upon vegetable life. Cats have always been known to have a strong passion for the scent of valerian; they are also very fond of rolling over the pretty blue nemophila of our gardens—so horticulturists should take precautions accordingly. The best mode of prevention, we may suggest, is to keep a small terrier. Much as we hate cats about our houses, however, they are capable of strong attachments. We have known more than one instance where they have followed their benefactor in his country walks like a dog. It is upon record, too, how an ancestor of Wyatt the poet was fed and preserved by a cat when confined in the Tower by Richard III. As for its sagacity, we knew one that belonged to an old lady which, at her invitation, would ascend the tea-table after she had finished her potations, look askant a minute at the narrow-necked cream-jug, and then (quietly sitting down by it) would insert the tip of her tail, and