THE CAT. 



[CHAP. i. 



are pits containing a multitude of cat mummies. The cat was an 

 emblem of the sun to the Egyptians. Its eyes were supposed 

 to vary in appearance with the course of that luminary,* and 

 likewise to undergo a change each lunar month, on which account 

 the animal was also sacred to the moon. Herodotus (ii. 66) re- 

 counts instances of the strangely exaggerated regard felt for it hy the 

 dwellers on the Nile. He tells us that when a cat dies a natural 

 death in a house, the Egyptians shave off their eyebrows, and that 

 when a fire occurs they are more anxious to save their cats than to 

 extinguish the conflagration. 



From Egypt it must have been introduced into Greece, and the 

 intimate knowledge of Egyptian customs which became common in 

 Eome from the time of Julius and Augustus must have brought 

 into it amongst many other animals a knowledge of the domestic 

 cat. A fresco painting of such a cat was discovered in Pompeii. f 



It was not a domestic animal amongst the Hebrews, though it was 

 known in India two thousand years ago. 



It has been suggested by Professor Eolleston,J that the domestic 

 animal of the Greeks (used by them for the purposes for which we 

 now use the cat) was the white -breasted marten. But however 

 this may be, there can be no question as to the cat having been 

 domesticated . in Europe before the Christian era. There are 

 signs that it was domesticated amongst the people of the Bronze 

 period, and the supposition that it was first introduced into Western 

 Europe by the Crusaders, is of course an altogether erroneous one. 

 They may however have introduced a distinct race, for if it be true 

 that our domestic cats have mainly descended from the Egyptian 

 cat, it does not follow but that blood from other sources may have 

 mingled with that of the Egyptian breed. 



Pope Gregory the Great, who lived towards the end of the sixth 

 century, is said to have had a pet cat, and cats were often inmates 

 of nunneries in the Middle Ages. The great value set upon the 

 cat at this period is shown by the laws which in "Wales, Switzerland, 

 and Saxony, and other European countries, imposed a heavy fine on 

 cat-killers. As compensation, a payment was required of as much 

 wheat as was needed to form a pile sufficient to cover over the body 

 of the animal to the tip of its tail, the tail being held up vertically, 

 with the cat's muzzle resting on the ground. 



The WILD CAT (Felis catus) differs from our ordinary domestic 

 cat in that it is more strongly built and larger, with a stouter head 

 and shorter and thicker tail, which is not tapering but of about the 

 same thickness throughout. Its whiskers also are more abundant, 

 and the soles of its feet are, in the males, deep black. Its body is 

 of a yellowish-grey colour, with a dark longitudinal mark along the 



* Mr. ,T. Jenner "Weir has found that 

 the eyes of cats will really change colour. 



f^See Plate 81 of Kaccolta de piu belli 

 Dipinti, from the collections in the Eoyal 

 Museum (Napoli, 1854). The cat is 



represented as seizing a thrush, and is 

 very well drawn. 



See Cambridge Journal of Anatomy 

 and Physiology, 1868, vol. ii. pp. 47 and 

 437. 





