CAT. 
38b 
rf My friend “ says Mr. White, in his Natural 
History of Selbbrne'- had a little helpless leveret 
broughtto him, which the servants fed with milk 
from a spoon ; aad about the same time his cat 
kittened, and the young were dispatched and 
buried. The hare was soon lost ; and was sup- 
posed to have been killed by some dog* or cat. 
However, in about a fortnight, as the master was 
sitting in his garden, . in the dusk of the evening, 
he observed his cat, with tail erect, trotting to- 
wards him, and calling with little short inward 
notes of complacency, such as these animals use 
towards their kittens ; and something gamboling 
after her, which proved to be the leveret, that the 
cat had nourished with her milk, and continued 
to support with great affection. Thus was a gra- 
nivorous animal nurtured by a carnivorous and 
predacious one 1 This strange affection was pro-* 
bably occasioned by those tender maternal feelings, 
which the loss of her kittens had awakened ; and 
by the complacency and ease she derived from the 
procuring of her teats to be drawn, which were 
too much distended with milk. From habit, she 
became as much delighted with this foundling as if 
it had been her real offspring/' 
ff A hoy c<r says the same gentleman" had taken 
three young squirrels in their nest. These small 
creatures he put under a cat who had lately lost 
her kittens ; and found that she nursed and suckled 
them with the same assiduity and affection as if 
they had been her own progeny. So many persons 
went to see the little squirrels suckled by a cat, 
that the foster-mother became jealous of her 
charge, and in pain for their safety ; and therefore 
hid them over the ceiling, where one died.— This 
circumstance shewed her affection for these found- 
lings, and that she supposed the squirrels to ba 
her own young/' 
