Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 10/Curiosities of cats
CURIOSITIES OF CATS.
Genius has been defined to be the power of seeing wonders in common things. A man might justly be supposed to lay claim to no small share of it who should undertake to discern marvels in such ordinary every-day animals as cats. All must have noticed, however, that the commonest things frequently repay a careful consideration, just as our own age has found it profitable to work over again the cinders which the Romans flung away as useless in extracting lead. When Opie left Cornwall to push his way to London, he painted portraits (which may be seen at an old house in the West) not only of the Prideauxes who were his patrons, but also of the servants, and even the household cats. In like manner we will honour these useful animals by giving them a niche along with more dignified characters, though certainly not more curious animals.
The first question that meets us is, are our domestic cats indigenous to Great Britain? Probably not. It is true that wild cats roam in our larger forests and less populous districts; but their colour is invariably grey, and their build is firmer and more powerful than that of our tame cats. They are irreclaimably savage, too; and house-cats which have run wild to the woods, though perhaps more incorrigible poachers than even the native wild cat, never show any tendencies of reverting to it as the original stock. They are most likely a foreign importation, like the Persian and Angola cats of the present day. Conjecture may fancy some unknown Whittington, in prehistoric times, drifting on our shores from the Continent with a cat under his arm, the mother of all the cats in our land. The tailless Manx cats approach the wild cat very nearly in ferocity and appearance. House-cats, on the contrary, are of all colours, and sports" are perpetually being bred.
A positive argument for their introduction may be founded on the terms in which they are mentioned amongst the old Welsh laws of Howell the Good (943 a.d.). They were evidently scarce at that time, for it is there laid down: "The worth of a kitten until it shall open its eyes is one legal penny; from that time till it shall kill mice, two legal pennies; after it shall kill mice, four legal pence, and so it shall always remain." A law of one of our own Edwards made the killing a cat punishable with death—a remnant of barbarism only expuned from the statute-book, we believe, by the late Sir R. Peel. Both the ancient Welsh and our own law concurred in a curious penalty for killing the king's cat, "the guardian of the royal barn." The offender was mulcted in a heap of corn sufficient to cover the defunct animal, when held up by the tip of its tail with its whiskers touching the floor.
The palmy days for cats were in the of Egypt's power as a nation, some 500 years b.c. They were held then as sacred as dogs or crocodiles, and death was the penalty for killing them. From their nocturnal habits and the Egyptians deemed them symbolical of the moon, and a golden cat was worshipped at Syene. Herodotus tells us some marvels about them. The "toms," it seems, in his time had a peculiar liking for making away with kittens,—a very fortunate thing too, or the land would have been over-run with cats. Crowning wonder of all, when fire breaks out, the sole care of the natives is to keep the cats from it, to do which they post themselves as guards round the burning house, and take no thought for putting out the flames. A divine impulse, however (says the chronicler), seizes the cats; they dart under the men, or leap over them, and fling themselves into the flames. Then great mourning takes possession of the land. If a cat were found dead in any one's house, the inmates had to shave off their eyebrows. The defunct animals were carried into the temples, where they were embalmed and solemnly deposited in the city Bubastis. Specimens may be seen in the British Museum. Very different is their fate at modern Rome. A recent traveller tells us they are there as highly esteemed for culinary purposes as puppy-dogs in China. If you have a roast hare for dinner, you had better not make too many inquiries as to what kind of "Pussy" it was before it came into the chef's hands.
The ancient physicians had a firm belief in the healing powers of different portions of this animal, probably from some confusion existing in their minds with regard to its own nine lives. One of them gives us, as a valuable receipt to cure fevers, two pints of water mixed with three drops of blood taken from the ear of an ass, and certain parts of a cat's digestive organs! The claw of an owl, or a wolf's eye bound on to the patient, was a good external application to accompany this dose. Catching at the slightest verbal resemblence, their system of medicine would be well represented by presribing a cat in a case of catalepsy. The very ashes of the animal, sprinkled where mice were, would prove quite sufficient to scare them away, according to Pliny's belief.
If we are surprised at the respect cats obtained in the infancy of nations, we need only remember how much our own childhood was charmed by "Puss in Boots," and still more by that excellent fairy-tale of "Whittington and his Cat." This may be one of "the fairy tales of science," however, and is not without its particle of truth in witnessing to the early importation of the cat into our country that we mentioned above. Antiquarians have fought over the inferences of the story, perhaps with much the same results at the battle of the far-famed Kilkenny cats themselves. It is certain that a wealthy family of Whittingtons possessed land and houses at Gloucester in Henry the Sixth's time, and quite recently a sculptured stone was dug up from this land, representing a youth with a cat in his arms. The legend is common enough, however, both in Europe and Asia, and existed years before the probable historic date of our Whittington. Remembering, too, how many tricks are played off on antiquaries, the incident of the sculptured stone, instead of causing us to pin our faith to any hypothesis, ought simply to make us suspect them all. A curious testimony to the value of imported cats has been disinterred from an account sent in by one Bragge to the East India Company in 1621:—
Item, for 20 Dogges and a greate many Catts which, under God, ridd away and devoured all the Ratts in that Iland (Bermuda), which formerly eate up all your corne, and many other blessed fruites which that land afforded. Well, fur theis, I will demand of you but 5lb. apiece for the Dogges, and let the Catts goe.
The popular sayings connected with cats are so numerous, that they might be utterances of Father Cats himself, whose poems are so grateful to the Dutch peasantry. Their tenacity of life comes out in the proverb, "Care killed the cat." Their familiar presence at every one's hearth is alluded to in "A cat may look at a king." Indeed, there could be no legal hamlet in the old Welsh constitutions unless it possessed a cat. We confess ourselves puzzled as to the explanation of the Scotch proverb, "grinning like a Cheshire cat," unless it alludes to their uniform cheerfulness in that county; but as "all cats are black in the dark," we pass on to see how Shakespeare embalms the animal in his amber verses. Lady Macbeth taunts her husband, when he hangs back from the murder, with—
Letting I dare not wait upon I would,
Like the poor cat i' the adage,
alluding to that animal's fondness for fish ("what cat's averse to fish?"), but its unwillingness to wet its feet in catching them. Falstaff seizes upon another feature of the animal's character, so detested by all wakeful sleepers in town, "'Sblood! I am as melancholy as a gib-cat!" When Mercutio longs for a fray with Tybalt, he accosts him, "Good king of cats, I would have nothing but one of your nine lives; that I mean to make bold withal, and, as you shall use me hereafter, dry-beat the rest of the eight;" and thereupon receives that celebrated "scratch," which was "not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church-door." How subtly, too, does our great poet hit off the character of those who are fond of being led!—they "take suggestions as a cat laps milk." While upon the proverbial sayings connected with cats, we may mention that the Madras catamaran, which invariably rights itself in the wildest surf, has been ingeniously derived from the Italian gatta marina, "sea-cat," alluding to the faculty a cat possesses of always falling on its feet.
In our old literature the word "cat" had a more generic sense than obtains at present. So Tyndall, in his New Testament of 1525, calls a leopard a "catt off the mountain." The Laureat, who lets nothing slip by him, places the Princess on her throne, guarded by two leopards, and then speaks of—
The two great cats
Close by her, like supporters on a shield.
One of the most common natural antipathies is an utter abhorrence of cats. We know a lady who cannot stay in the same house with one, and know its hateful presence instinctively, before she sees it. Blue-eyed cats, oddly enough, are always deaf. Mr. Darwin has a curious speculation how a scarcity of cats in any rural district would soon affect the neighbouring vegetation; as the field animals they prey upon would, of course, proportionably increase, and their greater numbers would in turn tell upon vegetable life. Cats have always been known to have a strong passion for the scent of valerian; they are also very fond of rolling over the pretty blue nemophila of our gardens—so horticulturists should take precautions accordingly. The best mode of prevention, we may suggest, is to keep a small terrier. Much as we hate cats about our houses, however, they are capable of strong attachments. We have known more than one instance where they have followed their benefactor in his country walks like a dog. It is upon record, too, how an ancestor of Wyatt the poet was fed and preserved by a cat when confined in the Tower by Richard III. As for its sagacity, we knew one that belonged to an old lady which, at her invitation, would ascend the tea-table after she had finished her potations, look askant a minute at the narrow-necked cream-jug, and then (quietly sitting down by it) would insert the tip of her tail, and draw it forth with the liquid covering it. The process she repeated till the jug was empty, with much apparent satisfaction. Another had the curious taste strongly developed in it of ascending to the open bedroom windows of an old mansion by means of the climbers on the walls, and then making away with all the soap the washing-stands contained.
Considering how much the cat abhors cold water, our readers must often have wondered why seafaring men are so fond of taking the animal with them on a voyage. This is explained by two circumstances. Marine insurance does not cover damage done to cargo by the depredations of rats; but if the owner of the damaged goods can prove that the ship was sent to sea unfurnished with a cat, he can recover damages from the shipmaster. Again, a ship found at sea with no living creature on board is considered a derelict, and is forfeited to the Admiralty, the finders, or the Queen. It has often happened that, after a ship has been abandoned, some domestic animal—a dog, a canary-bird, or most frequently a cat, from its hatred of facing the waves—has saved the vessel from being condemned as a derelict. A singular occurrence of this kind was related in the papers last winter. A vessel was found abandoned on the banks of Newfoundland with only a cat on board: a crew that boarded her navigated her safely across the Atlantic to the Kintyre coast, when another storm broke upon the ill-fated ship. She soon went to pieces, and the crew were drowned with the exception of the mate, who drifted to shore on a piece of wreck. At the last moment the cat sprang on to his neck and clung there till they were both washed ashore, when she concealed herself amongst the rocks, and will not probably care any more to tempt the sea.
We spoke above of the value of cats in medicine amongst the ancients; in conclusion, we beg leave to extract a receipt for catching fish, from a very old collection called "The Young Angler's Delight." It is so old indeed that it was evidently published before fishing became the gentle craft; so all anglers of nice susceptibilities had better accept this warning, or at all events not read it "fasting." It gives us no very elevated view of the humanity of our forefathers, and may well serve to finish our enumeration of a cat's good qualities. "Smother a cat to death," says this remorseless author; "then bleed him, and having flea'd and paunched him, roast him on a spit without larding; keep the dripping to mix with the yolks of effs, and an equal quantity of oil of spikenard; mix these well together, and anoint your line, hook, or bait therewith, and you will find 'em come to your content."