260 THE DOMESTIC CAT. 



When the kittens are a few weeks old, and full of fun and 

 frolic, mischief and inquisitiveness, nothing can be more enter- 

 taining than to watch their sly and playful movements j one 

 minute quizzing and teazing their mother, jumping over her back 

 and making sport with her tail j then stealing up to a pendant 

 and moving string, a ball of cotton, or a marble, and playing 

 with it in the most gleesome manner ; and then again returning 

 to pester their demure parent, and ever and anon bo-peeping at 

 her from behind some of the furniture. These scenes are 

 familiar to all 



" Ye who can smile, to wisdom no disgrace, 

 At the arch meaning of a kitten's face." 



(Bloomfiel*.) 



" A cat belonging to Professor Coventry, of Edinburgh, lost 

 its tail by accident when it was young j and subsequently had 

 many litters of kittens, and in every litter there was one or 

 more without a tail."* 



A hereditary variety or breed of tailless cats is very abundant 

 in the Isle of Man, especially in that part called the Calf of 

 Man, where specimens may be purchased for a trifle. The 

 Rev. W. B. Clarke, who in 1820 saw several in the huts of 

 the peasantry, amongst the mountains between Ramsay and 

 Peel Town, says that he was informed by a person at Balla 

 Salla, not far from the Calf, that a vessel from Prussia, or 

 some port in the Baltic, was wrecked many years ago on the 

 rocky shore between Castle Rushen and the Calf, and that, 

 on her driving close in to land, two or three cats without tails 

 * Anderson's Recreations in Agriculture (1790). 



