THE CAT 19 



Tliose velvet paws cover her most deadly weapons^ 

 her claws^ which even the well-fed fireside cat is 

 always careful to keep clean and sharp, using the 

 legs of your best table for the purpose. The points 

 of these claws are as sharp as needles, as some of us 

 know to our cost. If they were not hidden away 

 the claws would become blunt by contact with the 

 ground as the dog^s claws are. Unlike our nails, 

 which are immovable, the cat and her relations have 

 sharp nails worked by two sets of muscles, one of 

 which extends the claws, thus forming the velvet paw 

 into a murderous weapon, and the other draws the 

 claws into their sheaths of skin. 



The cat has five fingers on her fore-legs or arms, 

 but the thumb you will find raised above the level 

 of the other fino^ers. On her hind leo^s she has but 

 four toes. 



Her elbow-joint is bent so as to enable her to 

 thrust her arms forward when leaping, and the 

 ankle and hip-joints are bent to the same end. In 

 crouching she often lays the whole of her foot, to 

 the ankle-joint, on the ground. If you try to draw 

 her legs and arms, and then beside your sketch 

 make a drawing of the legs and arms of a horse 

 or cow, you will find that wrists and elbows, ankles 

 and hips, do not always bend in the same way. 



We may assume that the cat has within recent 

 times been a native wild animal in Britain, and it is 

 occasionally met with in the forests of the west of 

 Scotland, but cats have no near relatives in Britain 

 now. Their relations for the most part inhabit the 

 hotter climates of Asia and Africa, though the tiger 



