27 
Dangerous Friends. 
Topsell (p. 106) writes of tlie cat with the interest of 
intimate personal acquaintance:— 
“ It is needlesse to spend any time about her loving nature to man, 
how she flattereth by rubbing her skinne against ones legges, how she 
whurleth with her voyce, having as many tunes as turnes ; for she 
hath one voice to beg and to complain, another to testifie her delight 
and pleasure, another among hir own kind by flattring, by hissing, 
by spitting, insomuch as some have thought that they have a peculiar 
intelligible language among themselves” 
Topsell also notices the various peculiarities of the 
cat, her dislike to water, her fondness for dwellings 
rather than persons :— 
“ Although their maisters forsake their houses yet will not these 
beastes beare them company, and being carried forth in close baskets 
or sackes, they will yet returne againe or loose themselves. As this 
beaste has beene familiarly nourished of many, so have they payed deare 
for their love, being requited with the losse of their health, and some¬ 
times of their life for their friendship ; and worthily, they who love 
beasts in a high measure, have so much the lesse charity unto man.” 
This last remark is not without truth ; but the author is 
somewhat vague as to the injuries inflicted by the cat on 
its benefactor. 
It has been said that the cat owed the consecration 
and divine honours it received among the Egyptians to 
a peculiar physical attribute, the power of contracting 
and dilating the pupil of the eye, exhibiting so mys¬ 
terious a representation of the moon’s changes, as to give 
rise to the notion that the animal was in some degree 
under the influence of that luminary, and therefore to be 
propitiated. 
The absence of any mention of the cat in the Bible, 
except in the Apocrypha, is probably owing to the venera¬ 
tion of this animal by the Egyptians. The Jews would 
naturally have unpleasant associations both with dogs 
and cats, as animals that they had seen idolized during 
their captivity in the land of Pharaoh. But fondness for 
animals of any kind seems to have been entirely wanting 
