Concerning Cats 



couch. But conscience has not to upbraid me with 

 any of these things. I flatter myself that I bear even 

 this patiently ; I remember to have often made sleepy 

 but pleasant remarks to the faithful little friend whose 

 affection for me and whose desire to behold my coun- 

 tenance was too great to permit her to wait till break- 

 fast time. 



If I lay awake for hours afterward, perhaps getting 

 nothing more than literal " cat-naps," I consoled my- 

 self with remembering how Richelieu, and Wellington, 

 and Mohammed, and otherwise great as well as dis- 

 criminating persons, loved cats ; I remembered, with 

 some stirrings of secret pride, that it is only the artistic 

 nature, the truly aesthetic soul that appreciates poetry, 

 and grace, and all refined beauty, who truly loves 

 cats ; and thus meditating with closed eyes, I courted 

 slumber again, throughout the breaking dawn, while 

 the cat purred in delight close at hand. 



The Pretty Lady was evidently of Angora or coon 

 descent, as her fur was always longer and silkier than 

 that of ordinary cats. She was fond of all the family. 

 When we boarded in Boston, we kept her in a front 

 room, two flights from the ground. Whenever any 

 of us came in the front door, she knew it. No 

 human being could have told, sitting in a closed room 

 in winter, two flights up, the identity of a person 

 coming up the steps and opening the door. But the 

 Pretty Lady, then only six months old, used to rouse 

 from her nap in a big chair, or from the top of a 



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