than a hustled and hungry grimalkin, first, because it is more alert, and second, because it is cleaner; a hungry and unhappy cat does not keep his coat clean, and the keen-nosed mouse can, therefore, easily sniff out his whereabouts. Now and again, however, one hears of a well-fed cat that is fond of eating mice, but he is usually an old fellow—(like the "Mincing-lane cat" of the Rev. J. G. Wood, the naturalist)—who in the course of a long career has acquired a taste for game. Mr. Wood's story is curious, as illustrating, not only the cat's taste, but also the cat's sense—a sense in this instance closely akin to reason. A cunning old black Tom, who had for years been maintained in a set of wine cellars, took into partnership a spry young fellow. There would seem to have been a solemn league and covenant entered into between them. Tom Senior had suffered much in his inexperienced youth from collision with feet and wine cases in the devious passages of the cellar, and he taught Tom Junior the dodges of his maturity by which he avoided them. Moreover, Tom Senior, who had an epicurean taste for mice, and who had through the inactivity of age and the badness of his teeth for some time seldom caught a mouse, clearly made a bargain with Tom Junior:—"If you, who are young and active, will catch mice for me, you shall have all the cat's-meat to yourself." At any rate, it was regularly observed that Junior steadily brought the mice he caught to Senior, who ate them, and that Senior sat aloof and looked on while Junior consumed both shares of cat's-meat.
"Tom Senior and Tom Junior."
It should be remembered also that not all cats have the instinct for mousing. A cat has been seen to stare in surprise when a mouse has boldly shot from its hole and whisked across her path; many a cat when deprived of her kittens has been known to act as foster-mother to young mice or rats; and not even the pangs of hunger will make a mouser of a cat that has not inherited the instinct of that form of sport—an instinct that seems to run in families—(like a taste for fox-hunting in human beings) rather than in particular breeds of cats.
"A foster-mother."
The true lover of cats, however, does not keep them or care for them because of their utility, but because of their beauty or rarity, their companionship or their intelligence. From their earliest days of infancy cats of all varieties are deeply interesting. The young of all animals are engaging, but kittens, when they first start off open-eyed and free-limbed, are especially amusing and delightful. The kitten, by contrast with other infants, is so graceful, so daring, so spontaneous, and withal so neat in its movement, that it has quite justly been taken as the perfect type and exemplar of gay, irresponsible, and bewitching childhood. To see a wide-eyed little downy creature dance up sideways on all fours at its fellow-kittens, at a
