Cats can be trained to shake hands, jump over a stick, sit up on hind legs, come at a whistle, beg like a dog, but we seldom take the trouble to find out how easily they can be taught. Madame Piozzi (Mrs. Thrale) tells us of Dr. Johnson’s kindness to his cat, named Hodge. When the creature had grown old and fastidious from illness, and could eat nothing but oysters, the gruff old lexicographer always went out himself to buy Hodge’s dinner. Boswell adds: “I recollect Hodge one day scrambling up Dr. Johnson’s breast apparently with much satisfaction, while my friend, smiling and half whistling, rubbed down his back and pulled him by the tail, and when I observed he had a fine cat, saying, ‘Why yes, sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this,’ and then, as if perceiving Hodge to be out of countenance, adding, ‘But he is a fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.’ He once gave a ludicrous account of the despicable state of a young gentleman of good family. ‘Sir, when I heard of him last he was running about town shooting cats.’ And then, in a sort of friendly reverie, he added, ‘But Hodge sha’n’t be shot; no, Hodge sha’n’t be shot.’” And this from the gruff, dogmatic thunderer who snubbed or silenced every antagonist. Even the selfish, courtly Lord Chesterfield left a permanent pension for his cats and their descendants. Robert Southey has written a Memoir of the Cats of Greta Hall. He liked to see his cats look plump and healthy, and tried to make them comfortable and happy. When they were ill he had them carefully nursed by the “ladies of the kitchen,” and doctored by the Keswick apothecary. Indeed, cats and kittens were so petted and fondled at Greta Hall by old and young that Southey sometimes called the place “Cats’ Eden.” In a letter to one of his cat-loving friends he says that “a house is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment unless there is a child in it rising three years old, and a kitten rising three weeks.” This memorial gives such truthful and impartial biographies of his rat-catching friends that he deserves to be known and admired as the Plutarch of Cats. The history was compiled for his daughter. He begins in this way: “Forasmuch, most excellent Edith May, as you must always feel a natural and becoming concern in whatever relates to the house wherein you were born, and in which the first part of your life has thus far so happily been spent, I have for your instruction and delight composed these memoirs, to the end that the memory of such worthy animals may not perish, but be held in deserved honour by my children and those who shall come after them.” The sketch is too long to be given, but it is sparkling with fun and at times tragic with sad adventures. Their names were as remarkable as their characters: Madame Bianchi; Pulcheria Ovid, so called because he might be presumed to be a master in the art of love; Virgil, because something like Ma-ro might be