Concerning Cats 



with us on this narrow vessel ? ' Then Noah betook 

 himself to prayer, and entreated the Lord God. Im- 

 mediately fever came down from heaven and seized 

 upon the king of beasts." This was the origin of 

 fever. But constituents in Noah's time, as now, were 

 ungrateful ; and no sooner was the lion disposed of, 

 than the mouse was discovered to be an object of sus- 

 picion. They complained that there would be no 

 safety for provisions or clothing. " And so Noah 

 renewed his supplication to the Most High, the lion 

 sneezed, and a cat ran out of his nostrils. From that 

 time the mouse has been timid and has hidden in 

 holes." 



In the Egyptian gallery of the British Museum 

 there is an excellent painting of a tabby cat assisting 

 a man to capture birds. Hieroglyphic inscriptions as 

 far back as 1684 b.c. mention the cat, and there is 

 at Leyden a tablet of the eighteenth or nineteenth 

 dynasty with a cat seated under a chair. A temple 

 at Beni-Hassan is dedicated to Pasht or Bubastis, the 

 goddess of cats, which is as old as Thothmes IV of 

 the eighteenth dynasty, 1 500 B.C. ; and the cat appears 

 in written rituals of that dynasty. Herodotus tells of 

 the almost superstitious reverence which dwellers 

 along the Nile felt for the cat, and gravely states 

 that when one died a natural death in any house, the 

 inmates shaved their eyebrows as a token of grief; 

 also, that in case of a fire the first thing they saved 

 was the household cat. Fortunate pussies ! 



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