1909-1910-] J^h^ Common Cat. 207 



royal forests the wild cat was an object of chase up to the 

 fourteenth century. Through persistent hunting and trapping, 

 the wild cat has now been almost exterminated from 

 England and Wales, though a few still exist in some of the 

 northern counties of Scotland. It has never existed in Ireland. 

 Euthless hunting and trapping have already exterminated 

 many of our native animals, and sordid individuals still preach 

 a war of extinction against several of our most beautiful and 

 useful animals and birds. 



The wild cat differs in certain important features from the 

 domestic cat : thus, it is of a much stronger build, has a 

 broader head, a tail which does not taper, and a more pro- 

 longed period of gestation. It is of a yellowish-grey colour, 

 with dark stripes which run vertically down its body and 

 across the limbs. These and other features serve to set it in 

 a different group from Felis domesticus. 



The Cat in History. — A fable tells us that in Noah's Ark 

 the lion was greatly feared by the other animals. The mouse, 

 growing bold, stole and ate the provisions stored up. Noah 

 prayed to God to help him in this difficulty, whereupon the 

 lion sneezed violently, and from each nostril a cat jumped. 

 These animals so frightened the mice that they fled into the 

 nearest holes they could find, and so they have continued to 

 dwell in such ever since. 



Both in appearance and by ancestry our common cat is a 

 true aristocrat. His lineage goes far beyond that of any 

 human potentate. The Egyptian cat, from which our domestic 

 cat is most probably descended, was a household pet twenty 

 or thirty centuries before the beginning of the Christian era. 

 The earliest representation of the cat occurs on the tomb of 

 King Hana at Thebes. On it are the effigies of a man and a 

 cat with golden earrings. This tomb is at least 4000 years 

 old. Lepsius, the father of Egyptology, says that the cat is 

 mentioned in the ritual of date 2400 B.C. In a commemora- 

 tive tablet of date 1800 B.C. the hieroglyphic forms part of a 

 woman's name — " Maiu," or the cat. In the Museum of 

 Antiquities at Berlin there is a later tomb of date 1600 B.C. 

 also with the figure of a cat, and in certain inscriptions of 

 date 1684 B.C. the cat is mentioned. 



Not only was the cat kept as a pet by the Egyptians, but it 



