CATS OF THE PAST 



ii 



Moncrieff had to suffer an immense amount 

 of ridicule on account of his charming " Lettres 

 sur les Chats," which the author himself calls "a 

 gravely frivolous book." Victor Hugo had a 

 favourite cat ho called " Chanome," and 

 Gautier's cat slept in his bed, and always kept 

 him company at meals. Petrarch loved his 

 cat as he loved his Laura. Dr. Johnson u^>ed 

 to indulge his cat Hodge with oyster^ which 

 he would go out himself to purchase. Chestei- 

 field provided for his cat in his will. Sir Walter 

 Scott's love of dogs did not prevent him de- 

 lighting in the company of a " conversable 

 cat," and Hunse, of Hunsefield, seems to have 

 possessed a large share of the great man's 

 affection, and when he died his master wrote 

 thus to Richardson : " Alack-a-day ! my 

 poor cat, Hime, my acquaintance, and in some 

 sort my friend of fifteen years, was snapped at 

 even by that paynim, Nimrod. What could I 

 say to him, but what Brantome said to some 

 ferraillcur who had been too successful in a 

 duel : 'Ah, mon grand ami, vous avez 

 tue mon autre grand ami.' " Amongst famous 

 French novelists several have been cat lovers, 

 especially Dumas, who in his " Memoires" makes 

 notable mention of " Le Docteur." Cowper, 

 Shelley, Wordsworth, Swinburne, and Matthew 

 Arnold all wrote lovingly of cats. But Shake- 

 speare, although he makes forty-four distinct 

 mentions of cats, never has a good word for 

 poor pussy. In " All's Well that Ends Well " 

 he gives vent to his dislike. Bertram rages 

 forth : 



" I could endure anything before me but a cat, 

 and now he's cat to me." 



In " Cymbeline " occurs this passage : " In 

 killing creatures vile as cats and dogs " ; and 

 in " Midsummer Night's Dream " Lysander is 

 made to exclaim : " Hang off, thou cat, thou 

 burr, thou vile thing." 



Romeo cries out : 



" Every cat and dog 

 And little mouse, every unworthy thing." 



From these quotations alone we may infer 

 that, at any rate, dogs and cats were not favour- 



ites with the great bard. There is only one 

 mention of cats in Dante. He compares to 

 cats the demons who, with their hooks, claw the 

 "barterers" (i.e. abusers of their office as magis- 

 trates), when these sinners try to emerge from 

 the hot pitch wherein they are punished. He 

 says of one of these wretches : " Tra male gatte 

 era venuto il sorco." (Inf. XXII., 58.) Trans- 

 lation: "Among wicked cats the mouse 

 came." 



In the " Westlosthcher Divan " of Goethe, 

 written in his old age, but full of youthful spirit 

 and of the freshest allusions to Eastern things, 

 the cat is called one of the four " favoured 

 beasts/' i.e. animals in a state of grace, admit- 

 ted into Paradise, in a verse very near the end 

 of the poem, which being literally translated, 

 reads thua : 



" This cat of Abuherriras " (a friend of 

 the prophet Mahomet) ''purrs about the 

 Lord, and coaxes. Since he is ever a holy 

 beast whom the Prophet stroked." 



Robert Listen, who, as everyone knows, 

 was the leading London surgeon in the middle 

 of the nineteenth century, was passionately 

 attached to his cat, and used to introduce 

 it to his guests at the dinner parties 

 which, according to the custom of a past 

 generation, he gave his medical friends. On 

 these occasions the cat would gravely walk 

 round the dinner table during dessert to be 

 admired by the guests in succession, and it 

 once happened that the top of its tail got into 

 the wineglass of Dr. Anthony Todd Thoruson, 

 Listen's famous colleague at University College 

 Hospital. This man promptly struck the 

 animal. Listen was so enraged that he started 

 from his seat and denounced his guest in lan- 

 guage more forcible than elegant. 



Jeremy Bentham, who introduced by their 

 names to Lord Brougham the cats seated on 

 chairs round his table, deserves honour, not 

 only as the foremost of modern jurists but 

 also because, in his " Principles of Morals and 

 Legislation," he had expressed better than 

 others the claims of brutes to kind treatment. 



The great scholar and eminent writer, St. 

 George Mivart, has given the world a wonder- 



