Some Poets' Cats. 353 



cat " next door." The truth is, we are all too fond of our 

 cats to continue long in wrath witli them. 



Yet in fable and fairy tale they are not treated with the 

 tenderness and consideration one would expect for such a 

 universal favourite, and the poets accept this tendency of 

 foik-lore to laugh at and depreciate Grimalkin. All the 

 cat-poems banter the animal, or place it in a ridiculous 

 light. Besides those already noted, there is Allan Ramsay's 

 fable of the cats and the cheese, of which the monkey ate 

 two-thirds in trying to make an exactly equal division, and 

 kept the other third for his trouble. In the fable of the 

 cat and the fox that reproach the wolf for killing a lamb, 

 and immediately go off and kill a chicken themselves, as 

 also in the stories where the cat is fooled by the mice, made 

 to take the hot nuts oif the bars by the ape, and beguiled 

 into the oven by the sparrows, the motive seems always to 

 turn the laugh against puss. 



In Cowper's poem of the "Retired Cat," an excellent 

 illustration is given of the creature's complacent self-assur- 

 ance that ever}'thing in a household is specially arranged 

 wnth relation to its own comforts. She finds the garden 

 draughty, and, searching the house for a convenient couch, 

 "some place of more serene repose," discovers an open 

 drawer half-filled with linen of "the softest kind, such as 

 merchants introduce, from India for the ladies' use," and 

 curls herself up for sleep " lulled by her own humdrum 

 song." By-and-by Susan, "housewifely inclined," comes in 

 and shuts the drawer, "all unconscious whom it held," — 

 pussy taking it for granted that this is done for her greater 

 tranquillity. 



*' Was ever cat attended thus ? 

  The open drawer was left, I see, 



Merely to prove a nest for me ; 

 For soon as I was well composed, 

 Then came the maid, and it was closed. 



Z 



