FOREST AND STREAM. 
[April 4, 1908. 
530 
cravings of his appetite. Rabbits were very 
scarce and squirrels and chipmunks were too 
nimble or too wily to be caught. 
Late one night, as the cat was prowling 
through the bushes, seeking for the supper he 
had failed to make, he detected a strange odor 
in the air—a delightful odor, but one he was 
not acquainted with. It bore more or less 
resemblance to the smell of cattle, but it also 
suggested fresh blood. He approached the spot 
with caution, and found a noble bull moose 
dead in the bushes. Save for a still-wet patch 
of blood on his side, he showed no signs of hav¬ 
ing met a violent death. Two days previously 
the moose had answered a call; and, on his 
emerging from the bushes, found himself the 
target for two rifles in the hands of a couple 
of city sportsmen. Both men suffered from 
buck fever in its worst form. Both were poor 
shots. The moose turned and ran. He only 
felt one little sting in his side, hardly more than 
the bite of a moose-fly. The guide followed the 
tracks for a mile or so, and seeing no hair on 
the ground or blood on the bushes, he naturally 
concluded that his patrons had missed their 
game. The moose shambled through the woods 
for half an hour, then he realized that his side 
was aching, and he was very tired. The pain in 
his side and the lassitude grew worse. Finally 
he lay down and never rose again. A nickel- 
jacketed bullet had entered his flank, gone 
through his paunch and passed out near his 
shoulder, missing all the larger bones but sever¬ 
ing an artery. His end had been painless, a 
very different one to that of his father, who met 
his death from slow starvation in a snare. 
The moose was still warm when Pussy Tom 
found him. The cat circled round the carcass 
until he assured himself that there was no trace 
of man connected with it, then he tore at the 
protruding tongue and the soft muzzle until his 
hunger was satiated. He did not return to the 
den in the rocks; he slept off his debauch in a 
tangle of windfalls. He slept until the next 
evening, and just at moonrise he repaired to 
the carcass again. A huge black form was busy 
with it. and two smaller ones whined and 
squabbled over the entrails that had been 
dragged out. A bear and her two cubs had 
scented the kill, and decided that moose meat 
was preferable to blueberries. The cat ap¬ 
proached. but drew back as the old bear rose on 
her hind legs and struck at him with her paw. 
Had his mother lived, she would doubtless 
have told her kittens of the feud which exists 
between the bear and the wildcat—a feud due to 
the fact that baby bears make capital food for 
cats in the early spring, should their mothers 
leave them unprotected, when the suckers are 
still under the ice and rabbits are scarce. 
When the hound had tackled him, Pussy Tom 
had fled for his life as soon as lie had beaten 
off his antagonist. He did not run from the 
bear; he retreated out of her reach, and lay in 
the bushes, watching her and the cubs, and 
wondered how long it would be before their 
feast was finished and his would begin. He was 
afraid of the bears, although he had never seen 
a bear before. The yapping of a nondescript 
cur or the baying of a beagle would have sent 
him into the top of the tallest tree. The bears 
had no such terrors for him. They were wild, 
as he was. They were stronger—and yet they 
were bears and nothing more. Finally the feast 
came to an end. I he mother bear and her cubs 
left the carcass, the cat approached. He was 
ignorant of the fact that without the bears as¬ 
sistance he would not have made such a sub¬ 
stantial supper. The tough hide of the moose 
was torn and ripped. The bears had taken the 
choice parts, but ample meat remained. 
Morning came. Pussy Tom and his uninvited 
guests retired to cover and the jays and whiskey- 
jacks descended on the carcass. Late in the 
afternoon Pussy Tom managed to kill a whiskey- 
jack who had stuffed himself with moose meat 
until he was hardly able to fly. Night after 
night the feast continued. At last nothing re¬ 
mained but the skull, some fragments of the 
larger bones and the antlers. The bear and her 
cubs departed in search of convenient denning 
quarters; the cat resumed his pursuit of small 
game.- The porcupines gnawed the spreading 
antlers until little remained of them; then the 
snow fell and blotted out all traces of the 
tragedy. 
December and January passed. They were 
hard months for the cat and his kindred. Then 
the disease known as “epizootic” broke out in 
Connor’s camp. The camp employed four span 
of horses and a yoke of oxen. The disease was 
of a most virulent type. Horse after horse 
sickened and died, and early in February Con¬ 
nor abandoned the camp, a ruined man. He 
was only a sub-contractor. The company would 
not advance money to replace the horses he 
had lost, so he took the remaining ones and the 
oxen and made his way out of the woods, leav¬ 
ing five carcasses on the snow. The cat soon 
found them. It was almost as hard to make a 
meal off frozen unskinned horse flesh as it was 
to catch grosbeaks and rabbits. Still the meat 
was there, and day after day the cat and a soli¬ 
tary red fox tore and dragged at the carrion. 
In many other parts of Nova Scotia the foxes 
would have come to the feast almost in packs, 
and there would have been several cats instead 
of one. In this particular district the lesser 
carnivora had emigrated when the outbreak of 
rabbit plague had cut off their staple food 
supply. The foxes had moved nearer to civili¬ 
zation, along the lower slopes of the North and 
South Mountains; the wildcats had traveled west 
into the forests round Bear, Sissiboo and Tusket 
rivers. 
With the commencement of March, this soli¬ 
tude ceased. The spring courtship of the wild 
people commenced. Fox after fox came through 
the woods in search of a mate, scented the dead 
horses, fed on them and returned to them again 
the next night. The clearing round the 
abandoned shanty was the scene of more than 
one savage battle between rival dog foxes. 
Even the lone beaver, who may still be living 
on the headwaters of La Have, remembered his 
younger days and swam up and down the par¬ 
tially thawed river uttering alternate love calls 
and challenges. Pussy Tom became restive; one 
night he loped for two hours through the woods, 
traveling west toward the headwaters of Fales 
River. In two days he returned; another cat 
was with him and for a week or ten days they 
feasted on horse flesh and rambled for miles 
every night. Then the spring thaw commenced 
in earnest. The stream drivers came into the 
woods and Pussy Tom and his consort parted 
company forever. The bear cubs came forth 
from their den, found the dead horses, and 
feasted to repletion on them after their winter’s 
fast. The she-bear had denned apart from 
them. Long before the snow melted she was 
the mother of two whining, snuffling little balls 
of black fur. When they arrived in the world, 
they were little larger than newly born setter 
pups, almost naked and blind. They grew 
apace, however, and when they were two 
months old, the mother bear took three or four 
short expeditions into the woods in search of 
food. One morning early in April she left the 
den for good, taking the cubs with her. She 
traveled up wind, and as the wind came from 
the west and the dead horses lay to the east, she 
did not catch the scent of them. 
Pussy Tom was also traveling in the same 
direction. The previous morning a new and 
terrible thing had happened to him. The car¬ 
cases were partially thawed; both he and the 
bears had banqueted off the flesh, then they had 
retired to divers convenient places to sleep. 
Pussy Tom selected a pile of spruce tops, close 
to a road. The road had not been traveled for 
weeks, and when Peter Glode, the Indian, came 
down the path, the cat did not hear him until 
he was within half a gunshot. Fortunately for 
him, the Indian carried a muzzleloader. By the 
time he had thrown off the leather nipple shield, 
cocked and fired, the cat was almost out of 
range. Two or three stinging pellets of BB 
shot reached him, however. The Indian re¬ 
loaded, and went on toward Connor’s deserted 
camp. A brief investigation of the dead horses 
showed him that there were bears in the vicinity, 
and a week later he was the richer by two 
yearling bear skins, and two bounties. 
The spring and early summer passed. Food 
became more plentiful, and as long as wild live 
meat was to be had for the catching, the cat had 
no desire to return to a diet of carrion.- One 
day in August he was following the fresh scent 
of a young rabbit. Suddenly he felt something 
round his neck. He gave a spring, the con 
striction increased, something snapped, and h< 
found himself lifted almost off his feet. Luckih 
for him the wire snare into which he had thrus 
his head was attached to at stout sapling whicl 
had been bent down, not to a spring-pol 
fastened in a crotched tree. The snare had been se 
for two years, the sapling had lost most of its elas 
ticity, and the top to which the wire was attache 
was dead and weak. In spite of this Pussy T01 
almost strangled before lie could cut the six 
ply brass wire with his teeth. Luckily for hit 
the wire was somewhat corroded. For sever; 
days he wore the hateful thing around his necl 
but finally he managed to scratch it off. < 
further investigation of the roads and patl 
showed him a number of similar contrivance 
In one of them was all that remained of a fo: 
in another one.'set with a spring-pole, was tl 
fresh carcass of a wildcat. Evidently the 
were things to be avoided. A week or two lat 
the cat came to an obstruction in the shape of 
rough brush fence. It was laid across the na 
row neck of land which divided two dead watei 
It was in the form of an obtuse angle, and 
the apex there was an opening or “gate,” as t 
gentleman who built the fence would have styl 
it. The construction of the fence was such tl 
any animal wishing to cross the little bro 
which ran from one pool into the other had 
