wherefore of everything that perplexed him by defacing or destroying it. Peace fled my house; nothing could escape the prying eyes and busy fingers of this imp, in whose mischief there was so much method that I was sometimes inclined to ascribe it to intention. To put aught carefully aside was enough to attract his restless eyes and tempt him to pluck out the heart of the mystery. My domestics accounted for whatever was missing by saying, “The monkey has taken it.” Like the cat in London lodgings, he became the scapegoat for the sins of the whole household. He had an ignorant love of literature, and if indulged with pen and ink would spend hours in scribbling; but his cacoethes scribendi leading him to deface my books and papers, I was obliged, in self-defence, to interdict writing materials. He spent much of the time not devoted to these grave pursuits in the garden; destroying more fruit than he ate, for, like the poet Thomson, he ate only the sunny side of what he plucked; or prowled round the hen-roost, for he was as fond of eggs as a weasel, and preferred them fresh-laid. During my dinner he perched on the back of my chair, and generally behaved with tolerable propriety till the advent of dessert, when he insisted on helping himself to fruit and sweetmeats, and was very indignant unless he had at least a sip of wine; for, having once been tipsy on liqueur, he was constantly haunted by the memory of that strange delight, and anxious to renew it.
Having once seen me shoot a hawk, and examined its carcase with something of the perplexed awe of the savage on first witnessing the effect of fire-arms, he was so impressed by the occurrence that merely to point a stick at him, as if taking aim, threw him into an agony of terror.
Feeling somewhat out of sorts one evening, I prescribed to myself a couple of blue-pills, and retired early to bed, inadvertently leaving the box from which I took them on the table. A couple of hours afterwards, I was aroused from a feverish slumber by an unaccountable commotion in the adjoining room, as if some one were in sore distress; and on entering it there was my monkey stretched out on the floor, groaning and writhing with pain, and looking piteously towards me for compassion and assistance. The empty pill-box beside him explained the mystery. He recovered from the effects of this indiscretion, but he became eventually so troublesome that I banished him to a snug box in the garden at the base of a pole to which his chain was attached by a ring sliding on it, and permitting him to climb to the cross-piece at its summit. A few days after his rustication, the poor wretch was found hanging by the neck from his perch as dead as if Calcraft had operated on him. His chain had somehow got entangled, and in leaping towards the pole in order to descend, he committed suicide, whether accidentally or from depression of spirits I cannot say.
I will not, however, from fear of being deemed effeminate, dissimulate that my peculiar tenderness is for cats. Why should I scruple to confess a feeling that has been entertained by so many eminent men?
Whether considered in her frisky kittenhood, discreet maturity, or pensive age, none of the inferior animals exceed the cat in beauty of form, grace of movement, or gentleness of demeanour. In none is ferocity so strangely associated with sensibility, great muscular strength with a feminine softness of nature. Such being her attributes, it is not surprising that the cat should be thought the analogue of woman. Her very sobriquet of Grimalkin—the grey maiden—intimates that she suggested to our ancestors the idea of a fair spirit emergent from the gloom, like the White Lady of Avenel. Her vagueness of colour, and the luminousness of her eyes in the dark, led the ignorant to conceive that there was something supernatural about the cat, and gave birth to superstitions not yet quite eradicated from the popular mind; and a very disagreeable impression is undoubtedly made by the weird and uncanny aspect of a black cat under certain circumstances.
Adopting the more kindly view, Gray, in a charming poem, familiar to all, terms puss a “nymph;” and indeed what better representative of the grace, sensibility, witchery, artifice, and malice of the sex can be found among brutes? The frisky volatility of the kitten, yet innocent of blood of mice, irresistibly reminds us of the wild glee of a girl yet ignorant of the power of her charms; and the noiseless movements and sedate demeanour of the mature Tabby recall the silent activity and thoughtful composure of the experienced matron. From this involuntary association of ideas, the volatile girl is spoken of as “a mischievous kitten,” the Frenchman fondly addresses his spouse as “ma chatte,” and some persons by a strange mental obliquity vituperate any obnoxious old woman as “that old cat!”
What is more suggestive of the comfort and repose of home than the cat dozing by the fire? What associate of our domestic life interferes less with ease and meditation? The soft murmur whereby she expresses her enjoyment of our caresses, does not pain us like the plaintive cry of a bird doomed to imprisonment for life. Her eyes, if not so lucidly intelligible, so expressive of a community of feeling as those of the dog, are transparent abysses of golden light, the very mystery of whose depths fascinates while it bewilders the thoughtful gazer. Her voice is more capable of inflexion, and more variously expressive of her feelings than is generally supposed, and can at times be subdued to a melodious cooing far sweeter and tenderer than that of the dove.
As the wild cat formerly abounded in the British Isles, being enumerated among beasts of chase in a charter of Richard II., it has been argued by some that our domestic cat descended from it, or in other words, that the domestic cat is the wild cat reclaimed; but specific structural differences are fatal to this theory. That our puss is of foreign origin is indicated by the high esteem in which she was formerly held; the British Prince Howel Dha, for instance, thought her a fit subject for legislation, and determined by law her value at various ages, the price even of a kitling before it could see being fixed at one penny—a much larger sum then than now.
Our Saxon sovereigns employed cats in the