30 



The Cat a Birdcatcher in Ancient Times. 

 The ancients recognized the cat as a destroyer of birds. If 

 we may judge from pictorial representations on the buildings, 



tombs and monuments of tlie 

 ancient Egyptians, the principal 

 early use made of the animal 

 was as a killer and retriever of 

 birds. To the ancient Egyp- 

 tians, birds (except the sacred 

 ibis and the hawk) meant just 

 so much meat. Apparently these 

 people were able to utilize the 

 birdcatching propensities of the 

 cat, and to train her even to 

 enter the water and catch or re- 

 trieve waterfowl. In the Egyp- 

 tian gallery of the British 

 Museum there is a painting of 

 a man in a boat engaged in 

 throwing a crooked instrument 

 like a boomerang at a flock of 

 birds, and on the same tablet 

 a cat much like our common, 

 striped tabby, ^ but with longer legs and tail, is represented as seiz- 

 ing a duck by one wing while she has a short-tailed bird like a 

 quail and another, apparently a songbird, under her feet. In 

 such situations puss appears often on the monuments of the Middle 

 Empire, but so far as I can learn 

 she is not represented as catching 

 mice or rats. Diodorus tells of a 

 mountain in Numidia inhabited by 

 a "commonwealth" of cats, so that 

 no bird ever ventured to nest in its 

 woods. 



No remains of cats were found 

 in Herculaneum or Pompeii, but in 

 the museum at Naples are some 

 mosaics that came from Pompeii 

 which show that cats were known there, as they are represented 

 as attacking or killing birds. Agathius, a writer of epigrams and 

 a scholasticus at Constantinople, who lived from 527 to 565, in 



• The word "tabby" does not refer to the sex of the cat but to its inarkings, which resemble those 

 on watered silk, which was once known by the same name. See Harrison Weir in Our Cats and All 

 about Them, 1889, p. 137. 



The oat as a bird killer. (From an ancient 

 Egyptian painting at Thebes.) 



Cat strangling a bird. (From an 

 ancient moaaic in the Neapolitan 

 Mui<eum.) 



