248 RABBITS, CATS, AND CAVIES 



every road or path within the ordinary range of their 

 operations. 



The whiskers of the cat, as in the cases of lions and 

 other large cats, enable them to ascertain the space through 

 which the bodies may pass without the inconvenience of 

 attempting an impossible passage. 



A correspondent relates a case where a boy brought 

 him three young squirrels which he had taken from their 

 nest in a tall fir tree. The little creatures were placed 

 under a cat that had recently lost her kittens, and he 

 found that she at once took to them and suckled them 

 with the same care and affection, as if they had been her 

 own progeny. 



At Elford, near Lichfield, the Rev. Mr Sawlay secured 

 the young leverets from a hare which had been shot. His 

 cat, which had just lost her own kittens, carried them 

 away one by one in her mouth, intending, it was supposed, 

 to make a meal of them ; but it presently appeared it was 

 maternal affection, not hunger, which impelled her prompt 

 action in the matter, as she suckled them with the utmost 

 care and attention, and brought them up as their mother. 



Many of my readers will have heard of and perhaps 

 seen cats which were said by their owners to be more than 

 a match for any dog. One I remember as a boy belonging 

 to a man with I think the uncommon name of Bones, who 

 kept a barber's shop in Nicholas Street, Bristol, before it 

 was widened out and made the important thoroughfare it 

 has since become. 



It was a trick with its owner to stand at the door of 

 his shaving saloon in his leisure moments with the cat on 



