32 THE MODEL MERCHANT 



His followers at Damascus, in consequence of their prophet's attach- 

 ment to the animal, established a college of cats, which were attended 

 to with the greatest regard. These instances show that the animal 

 had then, at least, been occasionally domesticated. 



Goldsmith" says that "it is one of those quadrupeds which is common 

 to the new as well as the old world, for when Columbus first discovered 

 that country, a hunter brought him one which he had found in the 

 woods ;" but this, of course, was not a domestic cat. Pennant 

 argues that " cats were not aborigines of these islands, or known to 

 its earliest inhabitants. The large prices set on them (if we consider 

 the high value of specie at that time), and the great care taken of the 

 improvement and breed of an animal that multiplies so fast, arc almost 

 certain proofs of their being little known at that period." 



The scarcity of cats in Europe in its earlier ages is also well known, 

 and in the tenth and eleventh centuries a good mouser brought a high 

 price. Domestic cats were probably first imported from Egypt to 

 Cyprus, and thence to England. In a letter to the Editor of the 

 Antiquarian Repertory,^ a correspondent says — " There is a tradition 

 I have somewhere met with, that cats were brought from Cyprus 

 by * some foreign merchants who came hither for tin." The ancient 

 Laivs and Listitutes, supposed to be enacted by Hoel Dha,' or Howell 

 the Good, have some very stringent clauses as to the preservation of 



g Goldsmith's Natural Sistory. (Cat.) h Pennant's Zoology. (Cat.) 

 i Antiquarian Repertory, vol. 2, pp. 364-5. 



k A Natural llintory of Quadrupeds, 2 vols. 8vo. printed and published by 

 Brightly and Co., Bungay, 1811, gives the following curious account of cats, 

 showing the value of them and respect paid to them from an early period down 

 to a comparatively recent date : — 



At Aix, in Provence, on the festival of Corpus Christi, "the finest Tom Cat in 

 the country, wrapped in swaddling clothes like a child, was, on this occasion, 

 exhibited to the admiration of the gaping multitude in a magnificent shrine. 

 Flowers were strewed before him, every knee bent as he passed, and the adorations 

 he received unequivocally pointed him out as the god of the day. The strongest 

 circumstance attending this ceremony is that it continued in all its splendour in 

 the eighteenth century, and was not finally suppressed till about the year 1757." 



I Published by the Commissioners of the Public Kecords of the Kingdom, 1841. 



It is a little circumstance not unworthy perhaps of note, that one of the charges 

 against the Knights Temjdars in 1309 was "quod adorabant quendain cation sibi 

 in ipsa congregationc apparentcm." "That they worshiped a certain cat which was 



