A Blameless Cat 



By WILLIAM BREWSTER 



"Sans peur et sans reproche" might be said of her no less appropriately than 

 it was of the illustrious Chevalier Bayard in days of old. What matters it 

 that she catches no mice, since birds are similarly immume from her attack! 

 She sits beside me now, this maltese-and-white pussy, gazing intently at the 

 two dogs lying at my feet, whose eyes are correspondingly fixed on her. Just 

 how and why she came to be so installed — nay even cherished — in a household 

 not overgiven to favoring such a pet may interest Bird-Lore's readers. It 

 happened thus. 



Like many another elsewhere in New England, the grassy dooryard, looked 

 upon from southern windows of our old farmhouse at Concord, Mass., 

 is shaded by large elms and partly enclosed within moss-grown stone walls 

 overrun by poison ivy and fringed with barberry, elder, and other bushes. It 

 has also bordering flower-beds and two pools of water, one deep enough to 

 harbor fish, frogs, and turtles, the other shallow enough for birds to drink and 

 bathe in fearlessly. From it a lane, similarly walled and leaf -screened, leads to 

 woodlands not far away. Thus conditioned and environed, the dooryard does 

 not fail, of course, to attract various birds and other creatures, including some 

 ungiven to venturing equally near human habitations. Chipmunks inhabit it 

 numerously at every season — although not seen in winter, when hibernating 

 underground. They have troubled us increasingly within recent years by dig- 

 ging up and eating the bulbs of crocuses, tulips, and other early-flowering 

 plants. These depredations became so frequent and widespread last spring 

 that we could no longer tolerate them. The chipmunks might easily have been 

 shot or trapped but were not, for their familiar and ever-pleasing presence 

 was even more valued than that of the flowers they destroyed. How to safe- 

 guard the latter without losing the former was therefore the problem that must 

 be solved. We first tried small-meshed wire netting, spread out flat over the 

 beds, but it impeded plant-growth, and the squirrels soon learned to burrow 

 under it. Their evident fear of prowling cats, who sometimes justified it by 

 preying on them, was next thought of as something that might be employed 

 to our advantage. For obvious reasons, no living cat was desired about the place, 

 but the stuffed skin of what once had been one would perhaps serve quite as 

 well or better. So the maltese-and-white pussy mentioned in the prelude to 

 this narrative was purchased from the M. Abbott Frazar Company, Boston 

 taxidermists. Admirably mounted, in an attitude characteristic of all her tribe 

 when on the watch for prey, and having glaring yellow eyes, she was so very 

 lifelike that to come on her suddenly amid rank herbage seldom failed to 

 startle members of our household ignorant or forgetful of her presence there. 

 As for the chipmunks, the merest gHmpse of her sufficed to fill them with such 

 abiding terror that for days afterward they dared not return to any spot where 



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