I know of many instances in which cats have so attached themselves to their owners, that, when the latter have died, they have refused all food, and in a few days succumbed to grief, and gone, I fondly hope, to meet the loved one in a world that's free of care. "But the largest cat," writes one of my numerous correspondents, "I ever saw belonged to my mother's mother, and was wise and sedate in proportion to its size. Its good mistress was often distressed with palpitation of the heart, and during the silent hours of night paced the bedroom floor in pain--but not alone, for the faithful creature would walk slowly at her side, seeming by his look to pity her condition, and when she lay down he would still stand sentinel at her head. He never could be persuaded to leave the house while she lived, yet a few hours before her death he suddenly took flight, but only to the lower apartments, which my parents occupied, and from which he never stirred again." I never think, somehow, that a fireside has the same cheerful look of an evening unless there be a cat there, to sit on the footstool, and sing duets with the tea-kettle. And I do not wonder at old women, whose friends have all long since gone before, and who have no one left to care for them, getting greatly attached to a faithful pussy; for people must have something to love. "But, fancy loving a cat!" I think I hear some churl remark. Yes, cynical reader, and I have, myself, before now, often shared my heart with stranger pets than cats; and I don't mind betting you that what I have left of it is bigger than yours now. Figuratively speaking, I think a man's or a woman's heart is like a blacksmith's arm--_it grows with use_. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. HINTS UPON BREEDING AND REARING CATS FOR EXHIBITION, AND A WORD ABOUT CAT-SHOWS. At nearly all the cat-shows which I have visited of late, I have been invariably impressed with this one idea: here, in these shows, we see pussy as she is in the present day--the live mouse-trap, the barn cat, at best the fireside favourite--but, at all events, the animal, of all our domestic animals, that is least cared for, and the only animal we possess, whose improvement in condition and species we have never cared to study. What this animal--the domestic cat--can become, the perfection to which she may attain through judicious selection and careful breeding, it is for future years to show. Other nations--such as the Persians and different other Asiatics--know far more about the domestic cat than we do, and quite put us to the blush with their splendidly-bred and high-blooded animals.