676 
ON THE DISEASES OF CATS. 
is about the tenth or twelfth day, and is followed by a gradual 
return of health. 
[We are much obliged to Mr. Ernes for this interesting account 
of the epidemic among cattle, See. in some of the continental 
states. The subject of the epidemic must soon come seri- 
ously before us. — Ed.] 
ON THE DISEASES OF CATS. 
I am not aware that there is, throughout the panes of your 
Journal, a single paper on the diseases of the cat. That this is 
a most valuable animal, I think every one must allow, and it adds 
no little, with a faithful dog, to the comfort of a house. If it is 
thus useful, it surely deserves some attention and regard. I am 
sorry, however, to say there are those in our town, and some of 
them assume the gait of and would wish to be considered as 
gentlemen, ay, and 1 have seen it among some of the students 
at the College, who, instead of alleviating their sufferings, took a 
base pride in hunting and torturing the poor animal with dogs, 
and for this purpose they were in the habit of stealing these ani- 
mals from any house they could for their low, base, grovelling 
sport; but to such I would say, 
“ Remember, He who made thee made the brute ; 
Who gave thee speech and reason, form’d him mute ; 
He can’t complain : but God’s omniscient eye 
Beholds thy cruelty — He hears his cry ; 
He was design’d thy servant and thy drudge ; 
But know, that his Creator is thy Judge.” 
Sometimes these animals live to a great age. I know that 
several have died in this town that have been from eighteen to 
twenty-five years old, and, as a matter of course, they must have 
been highly valued. 
There is at times a great mortality amongst them, particularly 
in the houses of painters and those who deal in lead, with whom 
it is almost an impossibility to keep them to their full growth. 
Their death is probably occasioned by the lead adhering to their 
feet, and being afterwards licked off by them. Sometimes at 
these places, and even at others, they will run about as if they 
were mad, and, after awhile, become weak and debilitated, and 
ultimately die. 
I once saw a cat’s eye torn from the orbit with a dog’s claw, 
and which hung on the edge of the lower eyelid partially attached 
