THE CAT OF ANTIQUITY ii 



names signifying rat-eater and mouse-enemy, to de- 

 note the useful character of her occupations. She 

 figures also in some of the oldest Indian fables, 

 always as an arrant hypocrite, fair-spoken and full of 

 guile. Her first entrance into the Chinese Empire 

 appears to have been about 400 a. d., and she is 

 described in ancient documents as a hunter of mice 

 and slayer of hens, unmistakable characteristics, 

 both of them. There is also a venerable proverb 

 which says, with true Chinese sententiousness, that 

 a lame cat is better than a swift horse when rats 

 infest the palace. The rampant creature that rears 

 itself aggressively on the royal banners of Korea is 

 some fierce wild cousin of the cat ; just as the ani- 

 mal held sacred for centuries along the Pacific 

 coast of South America, and which we see over and 

 over again in the terra cottas of lost Peruvian cities, 

 was forest born and bred, — ocelot perhaps, or jag- 

 uar, — ^^not the sweet domestic deity of the Nile. 



The saddest gap in the chronicles of the cat is 

 her conspicuous absence from " the glory that was 

 Greece," from "the grandeur that was Rome," — 

 an absence which extended over many hundreds of 

 years. No Greek monument shows her sitting at 

 her master's feet, as the Egyptian Bouhaki sat for 

 centuries at the feet of King Hana, in the Necrop- 

 olis of Thebes. Homer, who tells us the touching 

 story of the hound, Argus, has never a word for 



