The Book of Cats. 1 1 3 



monastery, a Cat, and a dinner-bell. Every day 

 at a certain hour the bell was rung, and the monks 

 and the Cat had their meal together. There how- 

 ever came a time when, during the bell ringing, the 

 Cat happened to be locked in a room at the other 

 end of the building. Some hours afterwards she was 

 released, and ran straight to the refectory, to find, 

 alas ! nothing but bare tables to welcome her. Pre- 

 sently the monks were astonished by a loud sum- 

 mons from the dinner-bell. Had the cook, in his 

 absence of mind, prepared another dinner .? Some 

 of them hurried to the spot, where they found the 

 Cat swinging on the bell-rope. She had learnt from 

 experience that there never was any dinner without 

 a bell ringing ; and by force of reasoning, no doubt, 

 had come to the conclusion that the dinner would 

 be sure to come if she only rang loud enough. 



But that story is not half so wonderful as another, 

 about an Angora Cat belonging to a Carthusian 

 monastery at Paris. This ingenious animal dis- 

 covered that, when a certain bell rang, the cook left 

 the kitchen to answer it, leaving the monks' dinners, 

 portioned out in plates, unprotected. The plan the 

 Cat adopted was to ring the bell, the handle of 

 which hung outside the kitchen by the side of a 

 window, to leap through the window, and back 



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