300 BIRDS IN LONDON 



Now this very painful condition of things 

 ought not to continue, and my only reason for 

 going into the subject is to suggest a remedy. 

 This is that the metropolitan police be instructed 

 to remove all stray cats and send them to a 

 lethal chamber provided for the purpose. The 

 ownerless cats, we have seen, do not roam about 

 the town, but have a home, or at all events a 

 house, to which they attach themselves, and which 

 they refuse to leave, however inhospitably or even 

 cruelly they may be treated. On making some in- 

 quiries at houses in my own neighbourhood on the 

 subject, I find that most people are anxious to 

 get rid of the stray cats they may happen to have 

 about the place, but are at a loss to know how 

 to do it. In some instances they succeed in 

 straying them again, but the cats are no better off 

 than before, and the starving population is not 

 diminished. But it would be a simple way out 

 of the difficulty if they could have them removed 

 by reporting them to the nearest policeman. We 

 have seen, as a result of the muzzling order 

 imposed by the County ^Council, that upwards 

 of forty thousand unclaimed dogs have been 

 destroyed in the course of a year (1896), and 

 the presumption is that these dogs were little 



