It seems unjust to assert that the cat is incapable of personal attachment, when she has won the affection of so many of earth’s great ones. The skull of Morosini’s cat is preserved among the relics of that Venetian worthy. Andrea Doria’s cat was painted with him. Sir Henry Wyat’s gratitude to the cat who saved him from starvation in the Tower of London by bringing him pigeons to eat, caused this remark: “You shall not find his picture anywhere but with a cat beside him.” Cowper often wrote about his cats and kittens. Horace Walpole wrote to Gray, mourning the loss of his handsomest cat, and Gray replied: “I know Zara and Zerlina, or rather I knew them both together, for I can not justly say which was which. Then, as to your handsomest cat, I am no less at a loss; as well as knowing one’s handsomest cat is always the cat one likes best, or, if one be alive and the other dead, it is usually the latter that is handsomest. Besides, if the point were so clear, I hope you do not think me so ill bred as to forget my interest in the survivor—oh, no! I would rather seem to mistake, and imagine, to be sure, that it must be the tabby one.” It was the tabby; her death being sudden and pitiful, tumbling from a “lofty vase’s side” while trying to secure a goldfish for her dinner. Gray sent Walpole an ode inspired by the misfortune, in which he said: What woman’s heart can gold despise? What cat’s averse to fish? and thus describes the final scene: Eight times emerging from the flood, She mewed to every watery god Some speedy aid to send. No dolphin came, no Nereid stirred, Nor cruel Tom nor Susan heard. A favourite has no friend. Upon Gray’s death, Walpole placed Zerlina’s vase upon a pedestal marked with the first stanza. Jeremy Bentham at first christened his cat Langbourne; afterward, Sir John Langbourne; and when very wise and dignified, the Rev. Sir John Langbourne, D. D. Pius IX allowed his cat to sit with him at table, waiting his turn to be fed in a most decorous manner. Théophile Gautier tells us how beautifully his cats behaved at the dinner table. A friend visiting Bishop Thirlwall in his retirement, thought he looked weary, and asked him to take the big easy-chair. “Don’t you see who is already there?” said the great churchman, pointing to a cat asleep on the cushion. “She must not be disturbed.” Helen Hunt Jackson devoted a large book to the praise of cats and kittens. We know that Isaac Newton was fond of cats, for did he not make two holes in his barn door—a big one for old pussy to go in and out, and a little one for the kitty?