THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
which seems so familiar, although you have never seen it before, 
stands the parent of our ‘‘fireside sphinx.” It is the Egyptian, 
or Caffre, or Libyan, or gloved cat — for by so many names 
does Felis libyca go into our books and museums. 
“The caffre cat,” as described by Lydekker, ‘‘is about the size of a 
large domestic cat, and is generally of a yellowish color (becoming more 
or less gray in some specimens), darker on the back, and paler on the under 
parts. The body is marked with faint pale stripes, which assume, how- 
ever, on the limbs, the form of distinct dark horizontal bands; and the tail, 
which is relatively long, is also more or less distinctly ringed towards its 
tip, which is completely black. The sides of the face are marked by two 
horizontal streaks. Very generally the soles of the hind feet are black.” 
Its habits are simple. It hunts largely by night, yet is 
often seen abroad by day, catching the various birds and small 
mammals of the desert. Anderson, whose magnificent work 
on Egyptian zodlogy contains a portrait from which our plate 
has been drawn, informs us that it “inhabits dry situations in 
rocks or wooded districts . . . and lives in deep holes which 
extend underground for a considerable distance’? — holes 
dug by other animals. The cat is known all over the more 
open parts of Africa, and is so variable that formerly several 
specific names were given to its different phases. Everywhere 
it seems to cross freely with domestic cats; and Anderson was 
told by Stanley Flower that he had seen house cats near Suez 
which could scarcely be told from Felis libyca. 
That this cat was domesticated by the people of ancient Egypt is evi- 
dent not only by the identity with it of the mummy skeletons, but is demon- 
strated by an old Egyptian wall painting preserved in the British Museum, 
representing a family hunting expedition into the reed beds along the Nile 
where waterfowl abounded. A prominent figure is a cat, unmistakably 
the libyca, whose business evidently is to retrieve if not to catch the birds 
slain by arrows or throwing-sticks. She has just caught one in her mouth, 
while she holds another with her forepaws and a third between her hind- 
paws! Truly, a useful cat. 
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