244 USEFUL CATS 



The gamekeeper, on the other hand, regards a useful cat with the 

 greatest aversion, and spares no effort to compass its destruction. 

 The owner of the cat, especially of a female one, may be partly 

 to blame, for kittens must be inducted by the mother into the 

 art of procuring their own livelihood, the natural instinct always 

 predominating in this respect ; hence they are presented with 

 live or freshly-killed food betimes from mice up to leverets, and 

 from unfledged birds up to young partridges and pheasants, even 

 the swift hare and bouncing rabbit rinding place in the cat's menu. 

 Rearing cats near game preserves, therefore, almost always results 

 in the disappearance of the mother, and the progeny in their turn 

 fall to the gun of the gamekeeper, or are allured by tempting bait 

 into torturing traps. This may to some extent be prevented by 

 drowning surplus kittens within twenty -four hours of their birth, 

 then the parent will be less prone to poach, and may elude the 

 gamekeeper for many years. 



When domiciled in farm-buildings, stables, and sheds in gardens, 

 the cat appears to great advantage ; as having free ingress and 

 egress, it keeps a watchful eye on intruding mice, and seldom 

 permits meadow voles to exist in the neighbourhood. Poaching 

 mainly occurs, as before stated, when the cat has kittens, which 

 are brought forth from three to six at a litter and remain blind 

 for nine days, the period of gestation being sixty-three days. 



Cats are also great scarers of birds, and have been utilized for 

 protecting fruit, of which an example (Fig. 136) will be suggestive : 



" When at the Rev. H. L. Ewen's, the Rectory, Offord D'Arcy, 

 Huntingdon, some time ago, I was struck with the novelty of both 

 cats and kittens being employed as bird scarers, not by tethering, 

 as is sometimes done, with string or chain to a particular place, 

 but by a sort of continuous running line. In this particular in- 

 stance the cats, adults as well as kittens the one as far as I could 

 see being as good as the other were employed to protect straw- 

 berries from the thrushes and blackbirds. The strawberry-beds 

 were 4 to 6 ft. wide, with an .alley between. At each end of the 

 alleys a peg was driven into the ground, and between these pegs 

 galvanized wire, I think No. 10, was stretched about an inch from 

 the ground, though it rested on the ground in some places. Before 

 securing the wire to the pegs a piece of small chain about 12 in. 

 long was secured to the wire by passing the wire through a ring 

 at one end of the chain, and at the other end of chain was a swivel 

 ring, such as is used for dog-chains, only both chains and rings 

 were smaller. The cats were secured to the chains by small collars, 

 and the cats could run the whole length of the strawberry beds 

 without let or hindrance ; and that they answered their purpose 

 was evident by the fine fruit, principally President, being unmo- 

 lested. It is necessary to state that at each end of the " run " a 

 drain tile (about 9 in. diameter) was laid on its side in the line 



