_A Cat deserting one Home for another_.--A tortoiseshell-and-white cat,
belonging now to a friend of mine, came into his possession in rather a
singular way. The cat was originally the property of a neighbour of my
friend, whose house was on the opposite side of the street, and about
thirty yards off. There she stayed, apparently perfectly contented and
happy, until she became the mother of four kittens. Then, for some
reason or other known only to herself, she determined to shift her
quarters, and one day my friend was astonished to see Kate, as she was
called, march into his house with a kitten in her mouth, which she
deposited in a safe and comfortable corner, and then set off for the
others, which she brought one by one. Remember this, the cat had never
been in my friend's house before! Kate's kittens were taken back again
to her old home, and Kate marched them all over again to the home of her
choice. And this was done every day for a whole week.
"It's no earthly use, you know," Kate seemed to say. "What I says I
means, and what I does I sticks to."
And so my friend had to adopt both Kate and her family, previously
having failed in an attempt to starve her out, for Kate had adopted a
system of house-to-house begging, but always came home in the evening.
This cat for fourteen years used to sit patiently on the arm of her
master's chair until dinner was done and she was helped.
It is exceedingly rude, I know, to doubt a lady's word, but _can you
believe_ what follows? 'A lady assures me that she has such an
inexplicable and innate antipathy to cats, that if she enters a strange
room she can tell at once if there is a cat there, whether she sees it
or not. And if a cat is carried suddenly into a room where she is, she
"faints dead away."
Another lady friend of mine, who is very fond of animals of all sorts,
while living down in Brighton last October, was hastening home one
evening just about dusk, when she suddenly found that she was not alone,
but accompanied by some little black creature, which, immediately she
came under the gas-lamp, she found was a poor little stray kitten. As
this wee puss bounded into the house as soon as the door was opened, of
course she believed it belonged to the house. Going to her bedroom to
dress for dinner, there was little Miss Puss sitting on the bed singing,
and apparently perfectly satisfied with her new quarters, for the lady
soon found it did not belong to the house.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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