510 



THE CAT. 



[CHAP. xiv. 



seen tens of thousands of them occupying the lungs ; the infested 

 animal perishing in consequence of the inflammatory action set up 

 by their presence." 



" A certain number of the embryos of Olulanus escape by the bowel 

 of the host. These when swallowed by mice become encysted within 

 the little rodents' muscles, very much after the fashion of Trichinae. 

 So that one may say the mice become olulanised in the same way 

 that we say people or animals become trichinised. All this has been 

 experimentally proved by Leuckart, who fed a cat with olulanised 

 mouse-flesh, and afterwards found the escaped young in the cat's 

 alimentary canal. As, however, these encapsuled Olulani from the 

 mouse had not become sufficiently advanced in their larval * organi- 

 sation, Leuckart did not succeed in rearing the sexually mature 

 parasite in the feline stomach. But there could be no doubt as to the 



ultimate destiny of the encapsuled young Tcenia crassicoUis, 



which is common to both the tame and wild animal, is obtained by 

 the cat from eating the livers of rats and mice, in which organ the 

 larvae of the parasite reside. Tcenia lineata is found only in the wild 

 cat. Bothriocephalus decipicm is extremely rare, and only known in 

 the house 'cat. The most common of all the species is Tcenia 

 elliptical Tcenia litterata exists in Iceland, but has also been found 

 to infest the cheetah. It must therefore have a wide distribution. 



One of the most remarkable instances of the destruction of cats 

 by internal parasites is that recorded by Dr. Romano, of Gemona. 

 The animals perished from colic, diarrhoaa, epileptiform convulsions, 

 wasting, and complete prostration. All these symptoms resulted 

 from tapeworms (Tcenia crassicoUis) within the stomach. The out- 

 break occurred at Osoppo, where the fortress was over-run by rats. 

 The vermin were combated by means of the cats, and thus the most 

 successful felines became the earliest victims. Those which killed the 

 rats and ate their livers swallowed the larvae of the Tcenia, which 

 latter, en revanche, brought about the destruction of their feline hosts. f 



Another internal parasite is the worm-like animal Pentastoma 

 denticulatum, which is a very aberrant member of the class 

 Arachnida. 



As to the cat's external parasites, they belong to two orders of 

 the class Insecta (the order Aphaniptcra, which contains the fleas, 

 and the order Aptera, which is the order to which lice belong), 

 and to the class Arachnida. 



The cat's flea, J Pulex cati, is very like the flea of the dog, but is 

 one-fourth smaller. 



The louse-like animal of the cat does not belong to the same 



* The tape-worms have two stages of 

 existence, corresponding with the grub 

 (or larval) condition, and the perfect (or 

 imago) state of the beetle or butterfly. 



f See Cobbold's account (Parasites, 

 Z. c.), abridged from Komano's report in 

 Giornale di med. vet. pratica for August, 

 1877. 



t See a paper by Dr. Alexander La- 

 boulbene, on Les Metamorphoses de la 

 Puce du Chat, in the Annales de la Soc. 

 Entomologique de France, 5th series, 

 vol. ii., 1872, p. 267, plate 13 ; also 

 P. Megnin's Parasites, Masson, Paris, 

 1880, 63. 



