PERFORMING CATS. 213 



by a man by the name of Austin, and to which I have 

 already referred. This man was a lover and trainer of 

 animal life, and an adept. His " Happy Family " generally 

 consisted of a cat or two, some kittens, rats, mice, rabbits, 

 guinea pigs, an owl, a kestrel falcon, starlings, goldfinches, 

 canaries, etc. — a most incongruous assembly. Yet among 

 them all there was a freedom of action^ a self-reliance, and 

 an air of happiness that I have never seen in ' performing 

 cats." Mr. Austin informed me that he had been a number 

 of years studying their different natures, but that he found 

 the cats the most difficult to deal with, only the most gentle 

 treatment accomplishing the object he had in view. Any 

 fresh introduction had to be done by degrees, and shown 

 outside first for some time. It was quite apparent, how- 

 ever, that the cats were quite at their ease, and I have seen 

 a canary sitting on the head of the cat, while a starling was 

 resting on the back. But all are gone — Austin and his pets 

 — and no other reigns in his stead. 



Occasionally one sees, at the corners of some of the 

 London streets, a man who professes to have trained cats 

 and birds ; the latter, certainly, are clever, but the former 

 have a frightened, scared look, and seem by no means com- 

 fortable. I should say the tuition was on different lines to 

 that of Austin. The man takes a canary, opens a cat's 

 mouth, puts it in, takes it out, makes the cat, or cats, go up a 

 short ladder and down another ; then they are told to fight, 

 and placed in front of each other \ but fight they will not 

 with their fore-paws, so the master moves their paws for 

 them, each looking away from the other. There is no 

 training in this but fear. There is an innate timidity, the 

 offspring of long persecution, in the cat that prevents, as a 

 rule, its performing in public. Not so the dog ; time and 

 place matter not to him ; from generation to generation 

 he has been used to it. 



In "Cats Past and Present," by Champfleury, there are 

 descriptions of performing cats, and one Valmont de Bomare 

 mentions that in a booth at the fair of St. Germain's, during 

 the eighteenth century, there was a cat concert, the word 



