Do not receive a cat that is suffering from illness of any sort. If a cat should appear to be ill any time during the exhibition, have her carefully removed and sent home. Finally, if possible, have beautifully ornamented prize cards, and send them home neat and clean to the successful exhibitors. These cards are greatly valued, and generally framed and hung in a conspicuous place. No one, except the initiated, can have any idea what an important little creature a cat becomes that has once taken a prize. She is then more than ever the valued pet of her owners, and an object of interest even to the neighbours. CHAPTER NINETEEN. ON CRUELTY TO CATS. "He prayeth well, who loveth well, Both man, and bird, and beast; He prayeth best, who loveth best, All things both great and small, For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all." Coleridge. I am fond of cats, and am never happier than when I am writing about them; nevertheless, it is with feelings the very reverse of pleasant that I commence the present chapter. Were I to consult my own comfort, I should avoid the subject of cruelty to cats, and it is only with the hope, that I may be the means of doing some little good to poor harmless pussy, that I approach the matter at all. I am not a sentimentalist by any means, yet I abominate wanton cruelty. I am fond of animals, yet not maudlinly so. I am not a vegetarian; and, although I neither believe that all animals were made for man's use, nor that man was made for theirs (as, you remember, was the opinion of the pampered goose), still I think we are right to kill and to use them as food. So I am fond of fishing, and fond too of shooting, and I can see nothing in the Bible against either practice. The very reverse, indeed, and everywhere in nature we observe that God permits one animal to prey upon another; and can the Lord Himself do wrong? Yet, albeit I love sport and shooting, I do not think I am cruel. All my animals love me. My fishes know me, and come to be fed; my birds flutter their wings with affectionate excitement when I approach their cage; my white rats run to me when I call; my cat certainly never rushes up the chimney when I enter the room; and when I am dead I know my dogs will miss me.