chase, and officials named Catatores, whose functions resembled those of “masters of the hounds,” had the care of them. In the course of time puss was transferred from the granary and the stable to the lady’s bower, and became the object of a tenderness which tacitly acknowledged the analogy between cats and women. Her society also relieved the melancholy gloom of the cell, the English rule of nuns in the thirteenth century considerately excepting her from the category of “beasts” which nuns were forbidden to caress. The Church regarded puss with particular favour. Wolsey, Richelieu, and other distinguished churchmen, lavished caresses on her, perhaps because the combination in her of silken suavity with a ruthless will was an exact reflection of the ecclesiastical genius.
The cat was also frequently introduced into churches as an architectural detail, of which there is an instance in the group of an old woman and her cat carved on a miserere in a church in the Isle of Thanet; and was even admitted into sacred paintings, such as the “St. Cecilia” at Bologna, wherein puss appears as an enraptured auditor of the strains an angel is eliciting from that very unangelic instrument the violoncello. During the middle ages a custom prevailed at Aix, in Provence, of exhibiting in a shrine, on the day of Corpus Christi, a cat arrayed in swaddling-clothes, before which incense was burnt and flowers strewn. On St. John’s day, on the contrary, a number of cats, enclosed in a basket, were borne in solemn procession with the chants of the clergy through the city, and burnt in the market place. The origin of this strange custom is unknown.
Down to a very late period it was fancied that various parts of the cat had medicinal virtues, three drops of blood from the tail being, for instance, considered a specific in epileptic cases. These fancies were merely silly, but others existed which had a malevolent tendency. Reminiscences of Pagan superstitions and magical rites,—such as the Scottish Taigherm, or sacrifice of a black cat to the subterranean powers,—seethed in the popular mind at a time when, agitated by great political and religious questions, it was in a transitional state, and assumed the form of an elaborate system of demonology, which Scripture was perverted to sanction, and which our British Solomon wrote a learned treatise to expound. The feminine love of cats became a crime: any lonely old creature who kept one was assumed to be in league with the powers of darkness, and liable to the penalty enunciated by the Mosaical law. Thousands suffered as witches on such evidence. At the very period when this holy horror of cats and their associates prevailed in England and America, they were in such esteem elsewhere that the four cats of the lady of the Protestant Bishop of Odensee, in Denmark, were interred beside her in the Cathedral of St. Knud, in that city, arrayed in white satin, and with a plumed black velvet cap on each feline head!
Mohammedans regard cats with kindly favour, from a tradition that the prophet, when called to prayer, cut off his sleeve rather than disturb one slumbering on it. The dog is considered unclean, but the cat is allowed to eat from the Moslem’s dish, and benevolent institutions for cats exist in various places. At Damascus there is an hospital for infirm cats. At Cairo there is a charitable fund for the maintenance of destitute cats, administered by the Cadi, to whose care the citizens consign superfluous kittens; and every afternoon, at the hour of Asser, these pensioners of the public receive a fixed dole.
The Chinese, in place of feeding, eat cats. Pleasant M. Huc says that, like the ancient Egyptians, they have a notion that the contraction and dilation of the cat’s pupils have some relation to the movements of the spheres, and look into its eyes to learn the time of day, as our old women prognosticate rain on seeing it wash its face, and as seamen gravely shake their heads and augur a coming storm when it is unusually frolicsome.
Like the good bishop in Victor Hugo’s tale, my heart has, with an occasional interregnum, been ruled by a dynasty of cats ever since the days when those entrancing myths, the White cat, Whittington’s cat, and Puss in boots had for me the authority of history. In after life, when a cat did not share it, my domestic comfort seemed incomplete; and now that my hair is grey I cannot pass a cat in the street without pausing to salute her.
When in India, I possessed a feline friend of remarkable sagacity. Seeing her one day eating raw fish, and enquiring whence it came, my domestics smilingly replied that Jenny must have caught it herself, as she often fished in the neighbouring brook. In consequence of this extraordinary statement I watched her movements for some days, and had finally the satisfaction of seeing her take her way to the brook, pause on its margin to contemplate the small fry sporting in its shallow waters, and when one came within her reach, capture it by a swift extension of her paw. This feat I saw frequently repeated afterwards. On a subsequent occasion, when travelling in Assam, my camp was pitched on a sandy islet in a tributary of the Brahmaputra, for security from the tigers which infested the banks. In the afternoon succeeding my arrival there, on looking around for Jenny, she was nowhere to be seen, and the encampment was searched for her in vain. During the discussion as to what could have become of her, the truant was espied by a sharpsighted fellow, snugly ensconced in the fork of a shady tree across the river; though it seemed incomprehensible how she could have got across the channel which was a hundred feet in width. When the sun approached the western horizon the mystery was solved by her composedly swimming back; and so long as we remained on that arid spot, impatient of the heat and lack of shade, she passed part of each day in the same tree! It was my habit, when in cantonments, to pace up and down before my door in the cool of the evening, and Jenny always attended me, unweariedly following me to and fro, as if, like myself, she felt the need of exercise. If my walk extended beyond my own domain she was eager to accompany me; and when I returned from abroad, warned of my approach by the sound of horsehoofs, she would advance a considerable