Cats. 



53 



tears his prey to pieces, and eats it ' anyhow — all over 

 the place ' ; the crows and magpies always peck at the 

 eyes before they touch any part of the body." 



"Again," continues Mr. Frank Buckland, "let the 

 believer in the innocence of Mrs. Puss listen to the crow 

 of the startled pheasant; he will hear him 'tree,' as the 

 keeper calls it, and from his safe perch up in a branch 

 again crow as if to summon his protector to his aid. No 

 second summons does the keeper want ; he at once runs 

 to the spot, and there, stealing with erect ears, glaring 

 eyes, and limbs collected together, and at a high state of 

 tension, ready for the fatal spring, he sees — what ? — the 

 cat, of course, caught in the very attitude of premeditated 

 poaching." . . . 



Of the cat in a state of nature few of us have seen very 

 much. The wild cat has become rare in the British islands, 

 but the specimens shot occasionally by gamekeepers are 

 very superior in size and strength to the familiar occupant 

 of the hearth-rug. I remember that when I lived at Loch 

 Awe, my next neighbour, a keeper on the Cladich estate, 

 shot one that quite astonished me — a formidable beast 

 indeed, to which the largest domestic cat was as an ordi- 

 nary human being to Chang the giant — indeed this com- 

 parison is insufficient. Wild cats are not usually dangerous 

 to man, for they prudently avoid him, but if such a creature 

 as that killed on Lochaweside were to show fight, an unarmed 

 man would find the situation very perilous. I would much 

 rather have to fight a wolf. There is a tradition at the vil- 

 lage of Barnborough, in Yorkshire, that a man and a wild 

 cat fought together in a wood near there, and that the 

 combat went on till they got to the church-porch, when 



Chang was a famous Chinese giant who travelled all over the world exhibit- 

 ing himself. 



