Page:St. Nicholas, vol. 40.1 (1912-1913).djvu/110

A cat’s eyes of two colors

Kansas City, Mo.

Dear St. Nicholas: I have a little two-months-old Persian kitten which has one light blue eye and one green gray eye. Could you please tell me why it is so?

Your very loving reader,
Louise Meckes (age 11).

Such differences in the color of the eyes often happen with white kittens, both long- and short-haired, but with a cat of no other color of which I have ever heard. Such cats are called by fanciers “odd-eyed,” but I have never heard any cause given, or, rather, explanation offered, for the phenomenon. I have several at the cattery now, and they are curious-looking “little beasties.” The mother, in both cases, is endowed with the most beautiful of blue eyes. The blue eye is the ideal color for a white cat. The orange eye makes it second best, all other points being equal. But the blue eyes in the white cat are frequently accompanied by deafness, while the orange- and odd-eyed cats never are. deaf, except, of course, from local trouble, as sometimes happens to any animal or human.

J. R. Cathcart.

A racoon as a pet

Nashville, Tenn.

Dear St. Nicholas: My uncle has a pet ’coon which washes everything he eats; you give him a nut and he will wash it and wash it, and then he eats it. This ’coon is very mischievous, and has to be kept chained. He seems to know when they have ice-cream, for he hears them freezing the cream, and whines until they give him some. If you give him a pan of clear water and some soap, he will wash his face and hands with the soap. Then give him some more clear water, and he will wash the soap off and wipe his hands and face. He always likes to play with some one, but when there is no one to play with him, he goes to sleep.

If he is let loose, he climbs into a little hole in the roof, and stays in there all day and sleeps, and comes out at night. I don’t think it would be better to let him roam in a cage, for he loves to play in the grass. We feed him anything, mostly nuts and bread, and he likes everything sweet.

He is kept chained in the garden in the shade in the summer, and under the house in the winter, and sometimes on the back porch.

Your friend,
Edward Weston Hamilton.

The lovableness of a ‘coon depends upon the age at which it is taken from the wild woods.
A young racoon taking milk from a bottle. Ernest Thompson Seton truly says, “The old racoon is sullen, dangerous, and untamable if kept captive, but the young, if taken at an early age—that is, before they have begun to hunt for themselves—make intelligent and interesting pets, being easily tamed and evincingconsiderable affection for their master.”

The editor of “Nature and Science” recently found a very young racoon in the woods, and it is now attracting much attention by the eagerness with which it takes milk from a bottle.

A rainbow at night

Elizabeth, Col.

Dear St. Nicholas: Will you please tell me the cause of a rainbow in the night? Last fall, about nine o’clock in the evening, a rainbow appeared in the north, and no one knew the cause of this. I shall be very grateful if you will explain this for me.

Yours respectfully,
Marguerite Barnett.

Nothing can make a true “rainbow” except a combination of sun or moon and rain or fog. At nine P.M. a rainbow should not be visible unless the sun or moon is shining. Possibly you have mistaken a bow of the aurora borealis, or “northern lights,” for a rainbow. We have some reports of aurora on October 10 in northern New York. We shall be glad to get particulars as to the date and appearance and location of the “rainbow” before we can speak more definitely. Could it have been a meteor?—Cleveland Abbe.