OD 



o T!ie Poets' Beasts. 



Some, for instance, are pure wild animals in miniature. 

 One is an undeniable lynx, only half-size, and another a 

 mimic ocelot ; a third imitates the puma, and a fourth is 

 an excellent imitation of a raccoon. In colour of course the 

 range is very large, from pure whites and blacks to smudged 

 tortoiseshells. Some wear the pelts of rabbit and hare, 

 others the soft blue greys of the lemurs or the silvery fur 

 of the Arctic foxes. They are blotched, and barred, and 

 brindled, "ringstraked, speckled, and spotted," their pat- 

 terned hkins producing in combination or by accident of posi- 

 tion the most singular results of expression. Indeed, nothing 

 is more surprising than the immense diversity of character 

 which the faces illustrate. Placid dignity and street-boy 

 impudence are caged side by side, and a very little trouble 

 would give an artist the whole series of human types. The 

 cat with a black blotch in the middle of a white counten- 

 ance is obviously a burglar among his kind, and what deeds 

 of midnight violence would be too dreadful for some of 

 those smudged-faced Toms to commit. They seem to 

 have deliberately disguised themselves, as if they were 

 Thugs out on a murderous errand, and peer at you, as from 

 behind a mask, from a confusion of red and tan and black 

 fur like the demon cat of the Japanese. One would almost 

 hesitate to leave such a cat alone in a room with one's 

 purse. 



Yet, all the same, in spite of their Merovingian length 

 of disorderly fur, or their furious aspect, in spite too of 

 their surpassing elegance of colour and form, a suspicion 

 widely prevails that the town-cat is abandoning its taste for 

 mice. 



Daily familiarities with milkmen, the certainty of regular 

 and ample meals, have dulled its appetite for the chase. 

 Though it may not have forgotten that tlie mouse is tooth- 

 some, it remembers more than it used to do that the mouse 

 is nimble, and very troublesome to catch. An ordinary cat 



