CATS AND THEIR FRIENDSHIPS. 99 



member of the family, and to go and call him to dinner if he was 

 tardy. My cat in like manner nsed to look to her mistress and to 

 no other person for tidbits from the breakfast-table. " Daisy," of 

 Belfast, who stayed with her mistress during an illness, missed 

 her from the room and went out to look for her. Meeting her 

 unexpectedly, she looked np, says the mistress, " as frightened as 

 if she had seen a ghost. My voice, however, reassured her, and, 

 if ever a cat smiled, I am sure she did." Another cat of the 

 Belfast group, not a favorite and shy toward all other persons, 

 became attached to a sickly infant and its faithful nurse, never 

 failing to respond to its cries by going to its cradle and soothing 

 it by purring and caresses till it became quiet. The cat of M. 

 Arbousset, a French missionary in Africa, refused food when the 

 child to which it was attached died, sought and mourned for its 

 friend in a marked manner, and in a few days was found dead on 

 its grave. The suggestion has been made, and is worthy of con- 



Fig. 9. — Archangel Blue Cat. By permission, from Harrison Weir's Our Cats and all about 

 Them. Published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York. 



sideration, that when pets die in this way soon after their human 

 companions, it may be because they caught the disease from them 

 rather than from intensity of affection. But this can not apply 

 to the cat told of in the Leisure Hour, which, when the child its 

 playmate died, refused food at first, but afterward, having found 

 its companion's grave, spent most of its time there, going to 

 the house for its meals. A critic, in the Saturday Review, claims 

 to have known more than one instance of a cat, ordinarily con- 

 stant to its own habits of comfort, breaking through its self-made 

 rules to sit outside the door of an invalid as if waiting for news. 

 The Rev. J. G. Wood's " Pret " was capable of the most earnest 

 manifestations of gratitude. One day, when, having been forgot- 

 ten, she had become very hungry, she flew " like a mad thing " at 

 the meat and milk her master gave her ; but hardly lapped a 

 drop before she went to him purring loudly and caressing him to 

 express her thanks ; then went to the plate, " but only just touched 



