40 LITTLE FOLKS 
In China too they are fond of cats — though it is in a stew — 
and they fat them as carefully as we do our turkeys. 
The Japanese find cats so useful in the house, that they make 
imitations of them in china, so much like the genuine animal that 
it cheats the mice. One has only to put a little light into one of 
the china mousers, to scare all the mice from the pantry. 
In Geneva, Switzerland, cats who have no homes run about 
the streets, as dogs do with us, and every body feeds them. 
In Rome, and also in London, cats' meat men go through the 
streets with a peculiar cry, and when Pussy hears it she runs out 
eagerly for her dinner. The man is paid by the month, by masters 
and mistresses of the cats. 
There are several kinds of cats. In the Isle of Man they 
have no tails, and in Siberia they are bright red. In Africa they 
are striped, and in China their ears hang down. 
But Pussy has a history, you must know. The first account of 
her is given by an Arabian naturalist, who says that the Lion 
sneezed the first cat out of his nostrils. You may believe that — if 
you can. I wonder why he didn't say the Tiger, since the cat and 
the tiger are own cousins. 
She has also suffered from the superstitions of men, especially 
when she has been so unfortunate as to wear a black coat. In the 
middle ages some of her race were burned at the stake for witch- 
craft ! And as if that wasn't bad enough, she has had her head 
burned to ashes — you'd never guess what for — to apply to a blind 
man's eyes as a remedy! Whether blindness was ever cured in 
that way, history does not say. 
An Englishwoman — Mrs. Cust — has written a doctor book 
for cats, to teach us how to relieve their sufferings, and the first 
thing to do when you want to give them medicine — she says — is to 
wrap the poor creature up in a cloth like a mummy, leaving only 
her head out. A useful precaution, I dare say, if the medicine is 
bad to take. 
An English gardener has contrived a use for his cat, w r hich is 
quite funny. He wanted to keep the birds from eating his straw- 
berries, so he fastened Madam Puss by a short cord, to a long rope 
he had stretched across the bed. She could run all over the bed 
but not further, and she was provided with a comfortable house in 
an old barrel. Of course no birds came near her quarters, and 
there she stayed through the strawberry season. 
