Concerning Cats in England 



find suitable homes for unclaimed cats and dogs, and 

 to painlessly destroy useless and diseased ones. 

 There is a commodious caf s house where pets may 

 be boarded during their owner's absence; and a sepa- 

 rate house where lost and deserted felines are shel- 

 tered, fed, and kindly tended. 



Since long before Whittington became Lord Mayor 

 of London, indeed, cats have been popular in Eng- 

 land : for did not the law protect them .' As to the 

 truth of the story of Whittington's cat, there has 

 been much earnest discussion. Although Whitting- 

 ton lived from about 1360 to 1425, the story seems 

 to have been pretty generally accepted for three hun- 

 dred years after his death. A portrait still exists of 

 him, with one hand holding a cat, and when his old 

 house was remodelled in recent times, a carved stone 

 was found in it showing a boy with a cat in his arms. 

 Several similar tales have been found, it is argued, 

 in which the heroes in different countries have started 

 to make a fortune by selling a cat. But as rats and 

 mice were extremely common then, and it has been 

 shown that a single pair of rats will in three years 

 multiply into over six hundred thousand, which will 

 eat as much as sixty-four thousand men, why 

 shouldn't a cat be deemed a luxury even for a king's 

 palace ? The argument that the cat of Whittington 

 was a "cat," or boat used for carrying coal, is dis- 

 proved by the fact that no account of such vessels in 

 Whittington's time can be found, and also that the 



