2 3 o RABBITS, CATS, AND CAVIES 



the door for my home-coming. For a long time, too, it 

 was customary to hear weird footfalls at night outside 

 the bedroom doors, and visitors to the house were 

 a little more superstitious as to their cause than we were 

 ourselves. We set a watch upon the supposed ghost, but 

 sudden opening of the doors discovered only the mystic 

 form of Peter sitting purring on the stairs. 



" He was, however, ultimately caught in the act of 

 lifting the corner of the doormat, and letting it fall back 

 in its place, and he had grown quite expert in his method 

 of raising and dropping it at regular intervals, until he 

 heard that his signals had produced the required effect, 

 and the door was opened to admit him. Watch your 

 own cat, and you will see that he will change his sleeping 

 quarters occasionally, and if he can find a newspaper 

 conveniently placed, he will prefer it to lie upon before 

 anything, perhaps except a cane-bottomed chair, to which 

 all cats are very partial. If you keep a number of cats, 

 as I do, you will find them very imitative, and what one 

 gets in the habit of doing they will all do in time. For 

 instance, one of my cats took to sitting with his front 

 paws inside my tall hat and his body outside, and this has 

 become a catty fashion in the family, whether the object be 

 a hat, cap, bonnet, small basket, box or tin." 



I remember when Mr Harrison Weir's charming 

 book, Our Cats, came out in 1889, I was much struck 

 with the account he gave (p. 87) of a cat belonging to a 

 granary at Sevenoaks, in Kent, where the distinguished 

 author then lived, catching two mice at once, and I really 

 thought his informant had " drawn the long bow." 



