Concerning Cats

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Concerning Cats (My Own and Some Others)

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Title: Concerning Cats My Own and Some Others
Author: Helen M. Winslow
Release Date: December, 2005 [EBook #9501] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on October 6, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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CONCERNING CATS
My Own and Some Others
By Helen M. Winslow
Editor of "The Club Woman"

To the
"PRETTY LADY"
WHO NEVER BETRAYED A SECRET, BROKE A PROMISE, OR PROVED AN UNFAITHFUL FRIEND; WHO HAD ALL THE VIRTUES AND NONE OF THE FAILINGS OF HER SEX
I Dedicate this Volume

CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I.
CONCERNING THE PRETTY LADY. II. CONCERNING MY OTHER CATS. III. CONCERNING OTHER PEOPLE'S CATS. IV. CONCERNING STILL OTHER PEOPLE'S CATS. V. CONCERNING SOME HISTORIC CATS. VI. CONCERNING CATS IN ENGLAND. VII. CONCERNING CAT CLUBS AND CAT SHOWS. VIII. CONCERNING HIGH-BRED CATS IN AMERICA. IX. CONCERNING CATS IN POETRY. X. CONCERNING CAT ARTISTS. XI. CONCERNING CAT HOSPITALS AND REFUGES. XII. CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF CATS. XIII. CONCERNING VARIETIES OF CATS. XIV. CONCERNING CAT LANGUAGE.

Concerning Cats
CHAPTER I
CONCERNING THE "PRETTY LADY"
She was such a Pretty Lady, and gentle withal; so quiet and eminently ladylike in her behavior, and yet dignified and haughtily reserved as a duchess. Still it is better, under certain circumstances, to be a cat than to be a duchess. And no duchess of the realm ever had more faithful retainers or half so abject subjects.
Do not tell me that cats never love people; that only places have real hold upon their affections. The Pretty Lady was contented wherever I, her most humble slave, went with her. She migrated with me from boarding-house to sea-shore cottage; then to regular housekeeping; up to the mountains for a summer, and back home, a long day's journey on the railway; and her attitude was always "Wheresoever thou goest I will go, and thy people shall be my people."
I have known, and loved, and studied many cats, but my knowledge of her alone would convince me that cats love people--in their dignified, reserved way, and when they feel that their love is not wasted; that they reason, and that they seldom act from impulse.
I do not remember that I was born with an inordinate fondness for cats; or that I cried for them as an infant. I do not know, even, that my childhood was marked by an overweening pride in them; this, perhaps, was because my cruel parents established a decree, rigid and unbending as the laws of the Medes and Persians, that we must never have more than one cat at a time. Although this very law may argue that predilection, at an early age, for harboring everything feline which came in my way, which has since become at once a source of comfort and distraction.
After a succession of feline dynasties, the kings and queens of which were handsome, ugly, sleek, forlorn, black, white, deaf, spotted, and otherwise marked, I remember fastening my affections securely upon one kitten who grew up to be the ugliest, gauntest, and dingiest specimen I ever have seen. In the days of his kittenhood I christened him "Tassie" after his mother; but as time sped on, and the name hardly comported with masculine dignity, this was changed to Tacitus, as more befitting his sex. He had a habit of dodging in and out of the front door, which was heavy, and which sometimes swung together before he was well out of it. As a consequence, a caudal appendage with two broken joints was one of his distinguishing features. Besides a broken tail, he had ears which bore the marks of many a hard-fought battle, and an expression which for general "lone and lorn"-ness would have discouraged even Mrs. Gummidge. But I loved him, and judging from the disconsolate and long-continued wailing with which he rilled