Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/195

Rh so unceasingly that she was sent on to the new abode. Her first object was now to get somebody to interpret her desires. At last her master divined them, and started off with her to the barn. As soon as they were inside, the cat went to the horse's stall, made herself a bed near his head, and curled herself up contentedly. When Mr. Huntington visited the pair next morning, there was puss close to Narragansett's feet, with a family of five beside her. The horse evidently knew all about it, and that it behooved him to take heed how he moved his feet. Puss afterward would go out, leaving her little ones to the care of her friend, who would every now and then look to see how they were getting on. When these inspections took place in the mother's presence, she was not at all uneasy, although she showed the greatest fear and anxiety if any children or strangers intruded upon her privacy.

A gentleman in Sussex had a cat which showed the greatest affection for a young blackbird, which was given to her by a stable-boy for food a day or two after she had been deprived of her kittens. She tended it with the greatest care; they became inseparable companions, and no mother could show a greater fondness for her offspring than she did for the bird.

Lemmery shut up a cat and several mice together in a cage. The mice in time got to be very friendly, and plucked and nibbled at their feline friend. When any of them grew troublesome, she would gently box their ears.—A German magazine tells of a M. Hecart who placed a tame sparrow under the protection of a wild-cat. Another eat attacked the sparrow, which was at the most critical moment rescued by its protector. During the sparrow's subsequent illness its natural foe watched over it with great tenderness.—The same authority gives an instance of a cat trained, like a watch-dog, to keep guard over a yard containing a hare, and some sparrows, blackbirds, and partridges.

A pair of carriage-horses taken to water at a stone trough, then standing at one end of the Manchester Exchange, were followed by a dog who was in the habit of lying in the stall of one of them. As he gamboled on in front, the creature was suddenly attacked by a mastiff far too strong for his power of resistance, and it would have gone hard with him but for the unlooked-for intervention of his stable-companion, which, breaking loose from the man who was leading it, made for the battling dogs, and with one well-delivered kick sent the mastiff into a cooper's cellar, and then quietly returned to the trough and finished his drink. In very sensible fashion, too, did Mrs. Bland's half-Danish dog Traveler show his affection for his mistress's pet pony. The latter had been badly hurt, and, when well enough to be turned into a field, was visited there by its fair owner and regaled with carrots and other delicacies; Traveler, for his part, never failing to fetch one or two windfall apples from the garden, laying them on the grass before the pony, and hailing its enjoyment of them with the liveliest demonstrations of delight.