20 



THE BOOK OF THE CAT. 



to the wicked. Garrotting was virtually stamped 

 out by its use. Wife-beating would be less 

 common if the brute-husband were treated 

 to a taste of the cat-o'-nine-tails. This imple- 

 ment of torture consists of nine pieces of cord 

 put together, and in each cord are nine knots. 

 Consequently every stroke inflicts a large 

 number of long and severe marks not unlike 

 the clawing and scratching of a savage cat, 

 producing crossing and re-crossing wounds. 



In my long and varied 

 experience of cats, I have 

 noticed that more of 

 these creatures succumb 

 to the common enemy at 

 about nine years of age 

 than at any other period. 

 We have heard of cats 

 attaining the age of 

 twenty years, but the 

 following account sur- 

 passes all previous re- 

 cords of longevity in 

 the feline world : 



To THE EDITOR OF THE 

 Stock-Keeper, 



Sir, Seeing you have 

 a column in your paper de- 

 voted to cats, I thought it 

 might interest your read- 

 ers to hear that in our vil- 

 lage there is a cat thirty- 

 one years old. She is quite 

 lively, and looks like living 

 a few more years. It 

 belongs to a poor widow, who told me she had 

 it as a kitten when she married. (Her hus- 

 band lived twenty-seven years, and has been 

 dead four.) 



Newbury, Bucks. W. B. HERMAN. 



It is strange that the poor dead bodies of 

 cats have often been used as objects of foolish 

 and vulgar so-called sport. Dead cats and 

 rotten eggs were, and are sometimes still, con- 

 sidered legitimate missiles to make use of at 

 borough and county elections. 



All sorts of stories are related of pussy's 

 superhuman intelligence, but the most uncanny 



KITTEN BELONGING TO MRS. E. S. OWEN, 



DETROIT, MICHIGAN. 



BY "KlNG OF THE SILVERS" "BLESSED DAMOZEL." 

 (Pflota : Albany Art Union, New York.} 



one of very recent date I will refer to here. 

 It may be remembered that in the winter of 

 1901 a vessel named the Salmon was wrecked. 

 On the morning of the accident, this vessel 

 was lying alongside the Sturgeon, and her 

 two cats, who had all their lives shown the 

 most perfect contentment with their home 

 and surroundings, made desperate efforts to get 

 on board the Sturgeon. The crew drove them 

 off again and again, and the ship's dog attacked 

 them, but they would not 

 be deterred, and when 

 the Salmon at last cast 

 off, the two cats landed 

 with one frantic and final 

 spring on to the Sturgeon's 

 deck. It seems absurd 

 to argue that those cats 

 knew of the coming dis- 

 aster, yet why should 

 they take such a sudden 

 and utterly unreasonable 

 aversion to the ship which 

 had always been their 

 home ? And why should 

 they insist on making 

 their way to another 

 vessel from which they 

 had been so inhospitably 

 repulsed ? 



We have many proofs 

 of the extraordinary ex- 

 tent to which a cat's 

 sense of hearing and smell 

 are developed. On my 

 voyage out to Australia flying fish would some- 

 times fall on to the deck. The cats that are 

 always somewhere about the ship might be 

 comfortably curled up asleep below, but the 

 peculiar sound would fetch them up in a greal 

 hurry, and they would rush to secure the prize. 

 The crew used to amuse themselves sometimes 

 by trying to imitate the noise in various ways 

 to deceive them ; but the cats were not to be 

 " had " they could distinguish the peculiar 

 thud of the flying fish from all other sounds. 



Various theories have been put forward to 

 account for the marvellous instinct which a 



