******
"Scientist agree that the house cat was not included in the inventory of animate things when the Creator rested from His labors. They do not believe that he joined in the chorus when the morning stars sang together, or sat on the fence surrounding the Garden of Eden and sighed his soul out to the flinty-hearted Maria; yet it is certain that some 8,000 years agone the sad-faced Egyptians knew and loved him. In the land of the Ptolemies he was sacred to Isis, and when the sands of his nine lives had ebbed peacefully away he was embalmed and filed away for future reference. It must be confessed that cat mummies are about as handsome as kiln-dried kings, and they are worth as much per pound to grind up into paint to ornament barn doors and late style picket fences. Tabby's origin got lost in the shuffle, and many nervous people who have been disturbed when enjoying a pleasant tete-a-tete with Morpheus have heartily wished that he had been chained to his origin and got lost likewise.
It matters not whether Tabby was built in accordance with the original plan, or was the result of an afterthought; he is here, and there are not bootjack factories enough on earth to suppress him. He will live as long as anything else does, and when chaos comes he will be on deck calmly dodging the falling timbers.
The common house cat, the felis dowestica of the late lamented Caesars and the modern three-ply college graduate, is built rather long for his elevation, and his component parts are spring-steel, hair, yowl and a propensity to steal. His diet is principally trap-caught mice and canary birds, fresh cream surreptitiously clawed from pans under cover of the night and nothing else, misguided dogs, other cats that inadvertently stray into his bailiwick, and the succulent breath of colicky infants. His principal occupation is minstrelsy. His voice is not bubbling over with melody, but he doesn't appear to be cognizant of this little discrepancy. He sings every time he is asked to, and many times when he could get $4 and a vote of thanks by maintaining an uproarious silence. Some of his admirers claim, however, that he acquired this bad habit by long association with maiden ladies of uncertain age, cracked voices and a penchant for filling the circumambient ether with false notes and fractured chords upon slight provocation. When Tabby isn't on the back fence trying to frighten himself with his own music, or removing the cuticle from some feline rival, he may generally be found pretending to sleep in front of the kitchen fire, but in reality covertly watching for an opportunity to make a sneak on the milk-pail or the fresh beefsteak.
The cat is the sworn enemy of the dog, yet they are generally to be found occupying the same house. So long as cats and dogs can manage to sojourn under the same roof no pen and ink wrestler or rostrum fiend will be able to demonstrate that marriage is an irrevocable failure. The cat and dog hate each other cordially seven days in the week, while there are quite a number of husbands and wives in this land of the brave and erstwhile home of a vigorous foreign policy who don't quarrel more than twenty-eight days in the month. Just why Towser dislikes Tabby, and why Tabby returns the compliment with accrued interest, is a problem I will leave for the scientists to wrestle with after they have determined the complexion of the agile cholera microbe and secured a photograph of the yellow fever germ in the act of eluding the quarantine officers. No dog has any standing as a dog until he has relegated at least one full grown feline to the murky shadows of the has-beens, and according to feline ethics no thomas-cat is entitled to lead the choir or take an honored place in the nocturnal councils of his tribe until he has sent a fifty-pound dog ki-yi-ing under the barn, with one eye swinging in the breeze and the ground plan of a Carian mausoleum etched on his nose.
The cat does not go up and down the earth like a loudmouthed braggart, or a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour; he does not carry a chip on his shoulder and cordially invite every one he meets to knock it off, spit in his eye and tread on his narrative. He is a lover of peace in its most virulent form. He is quick to get his back up, but will climb a tree any time to avoid an unpleasantness with a foolish cur that he knows he can make sausage meat of in one consecutive round. He invariably says: "My dear sir, fighting is not in my line. I hate a beastly row, doncher know; but if you crowd me I'll exert myself to make the occasion one of absorbing interest to you." And he does. The cat has never attended a military school or taken lessons in the more or less manly art of a broken down third-rate pugilist; yet there is nothing of his weight or longitudinal measurement on the earth that can make him sing small when he shies his dicer into the ring, spits defiance at his enemy, girds up his back and announces that he is ready to proceed with the obsequies. A cat that fights at fifteen pounds can make anything but a buzz-saw and a he-cyclone take down its sign and flee the country. Many a blooded bull-dog who has won a dozen battles and a hatful of shekels for his proud and haughty master, has lost his self-conceit and both optics in a little shuffle with a dyspeptic looking cat that he expected would get down on its knees and humbly plead for permission to move out to Mexico with its family.
The house cat is no relation to the cat-o'-nine-tails. Tabby contents himself with one tail, but insists on nine lives. There are instances on record where the entire nine lives have been extinguished at one fell swoop but recent researches have shown that the veracity of the record aforesaid is as wobbly and uncertain as the hind legs of a newly-arrived red calf, or the choice political morceau floating about in the heat and smoke of a vigorous gubernatorial campaign. When the cat is very new; before it has learned that there is just as much fun, and infinitely more profit, in going from door to door in the glad hours of the early morning and sampling the various brands of lacteal fluid furnished by poor but honest milkmen, than in chasing a ball of worsted, it may be safely and successfully suppressed by anchoring it to a two-ton grindstone and gently but firmly dropping it into twelve fathoms of pure spring water; but after its voice has fully developed and it has got thieving down to a fine art it is harder to kill than a mop-peddler or a divorce scandal.
The cat is perhaps the only thing, with the exception of a bunion and a persistent creditor, that an unfortunate man can't manage to lose. Just when you begin to congratulate yourself that Tabby is irrevocably lost you inadvertently step on his tail and he comes back at you with all fours. After you have tried poison, a shotgun, hot water and a brick on a worthless cat that persists in recognizing you as its master, your wife cheers your despairing soul with the suggestion that you lose him. Happy thought. You procure a meal-sack and a horse. After much labor you succeed in inserting Tabby in the sack, at the same time sliding your sore thumb into his mouth to amuse him and give you something to think about and divert your conscience from the shabby trick you are about to play upon a confiding non-English speaking cat. You mount your fiery Bucephalus, take the sack, ride twelve miles in one direction, sixteen in another, describe a few circles and obtuse triangles, tie the cat loose and gallop home. The next morning while you are trying to adjust yourself to the smell of arnica and a cushioned chair and wondering if your liver has not been jolted out of its natural orbit by the unusual exercise, the liverymen calls to inform you that you have ridden his best horse to death and that it will take a round century to square the matter. You protest and he threatens to bring suit and have you indicted for cruelty to animals besides. You weaken, pay the money, go to the dining-room to look for a little comfort on the sideboard,-and find that wretched cat quietly sleeping the sweet sleep of innocence on the hearthrug.
Some people believe that it is bad luck to kill a cat. Perhaps it is. It may also be bad luck to swindle a Yankee tin-peddler in a horse-trade."
The Works of Brann, The Brann Publishers Inc., New York, 1919, Volume 2, pp201
****
Scientists believe that members of the cat family gradually developed from a small weasel like animal called Miacis, which lived more than 50 million years ago. Miacis also was probably the ancestor of such mammals as bears, dogs, and raccoons. Members of the cat family first appeared about 40 million years ago.
No one knows exactly how or where cats were first tamed. But many authorities believe the domestic cat is a direct descendant of an African wildcat that the Egyptians tamed--possibly as early as 3500 B.C. Domesticated wildcats killed mice, rats, and snakes and so prevented these pests from overrunning Egyptian farms and grain storehouses. The cats became pampered pets and were honored in paintings and sculptures.
By about 1500 B.C., the Egyptians had begun to consider cats sacred. They worshiped a goddess of love and fertility called Bastet, or Bast, who was represented as having the head of a cat and the body of a woman. If a person killed a cat, the punishment was usually death. When a pet cat died, the Egyptians shaved off their eyebrows as a sign of mourning. They made dead cats into mummies. Scientists have found an ancient cat cemetery in Egypt containing over 300,000 cat mummies.
Greek and Phoenician traders probably brought domestic cats to Europe and the Middle East about 1000 B.C. The ancient Greeks and Romans valued cats for their ability to control rodents. In Rome, the cat was a symbol of liberty and was regarded as the guardian spirit of a household.
Domestic cats spread from the Middle East throughout Asia. In the Far East, cats were used to keep rodents from destroying temple manuscripts and from attacking silkworm cocoons, from which silk is made. People of the Orient admired the beauty and mystery of the cat. The animal became a favorite subject of artists and writers in China and Japan.
In Europe during the Middle Ages, the cat was considered a symbol of evil. Superstitious people associated the cat with witchcraft and the Devil. For this reason, people killed hundreds of thousands of cats.
Experts believe that the destruction of so many cats led to a huge increase in the rat population of Europe and contributed to the spread of the Black Death, an epidemic of plague. This disease, transmitted to people by rat fleas, killed about a fourth of the people who lived in Europe during the mid-1300's.
By the 1600's, Europeans had begun to realize once again the importance of cats in controlling rodents. Cats gradually regained popularity. European explorers, colonists, and traders brought domestic cats to the New World during the 1600's and 1700's. Throughout the 1800's, settlers took cats with them as they moved westward. Most cats in the United States and Canada today are descendants of these cats.
A number of sayings:
"After dark, all cats are grey."
"More ways than one to skin a cat."
"Slicker than cat s..."
Which somehow reminds me of today's politicians.
****
"Scientist agree that the house cat was not included in the inventory of animate things when the Creator rested from His labors. They do not believe that he joined in the chorus when the morning stars sang together, or sat on the fence surrounding the Garden of Eden and sighed his soul out to the flinty-hearted Maria; yet it is certain that some 8,000 years agone the sad-faced Egyptians knew and loved him. In the land of the Ptolemies he was sacred to Isis, and when the sands of his nine lives had ebbed peacefully away he was embalmed and filed away for future reference. It must be confessed that cat mummies are about as handsome as kiln-dried kings, and they are worth as much per pound to grind up into paint to ornament barn doors and late style picket fences. Tabby's origin got lost in the shuffle, and many nervous people who have been disturbed when enjoying a pleasant tete-a-tete with Morpheus have heartily wished that he had been chained to his origin and got lost likewise.
It matters not whether Tabby was built in accordance with the original plan, or was the result of an afterthought; he is here, and there are not bootjack factories enough on earth to suppress him. He will live as long as anything else does, and when chaos comes he will be on deck calmly dodging the falling timbers.
The common house cat, the felis dowestica of the late lamented Caesars and the modern three-ply college graduate, is built rather long for his elevation, and his component parts are spring-steel, hair, yowl and a propensity to steal. His diet is principally trap-caught mice and canary birds, fresh cream surreptitiously clawed from pans under cover of the night and nothing else, misguided dogs, other cats that inadvertently stray into his bailiwick, and the succulent breath of colicky infants. His principal occupation is minstrelsy. His voice is not bubbling over with melody, but he doesn't appear to be cognizant of this little discrepancy. He sings every time he is asked to, and many times when he could get $4 and a vote of thanks by maintaining an uproarious silence. Some of his admirers claim, however, that he acquired this bad habit by long association with maiden ladies of uncertain age, cracked voices and a penchant for filling the circumambient ether with false notes and fractured chords upon slight provocation. When Tabby isn't on the back fence trying to frighten himself with his own music, or removing the cuticle from some feline rival, he may generally be found pretending to sleep in front of the kitchen fire, but in reality covertly watching for an opportunity to make a sneak on the milk-pail or the fresh beefsteak.
The cat is the sworn enemy of the dog, yet they are generally to be found occupying the same house. So long as cats and dogs can manage to sojourn under the same roof no pen and ink wrestler or rostrum fiend will be able to demonstrate that marriage is an irrevocable failure. The cat and dog hate each other cordially seven days in the week, while there are quite a number of husbands and wives in this land of the brave and erstwhile home of a vigorous foreign policy who don't quarrel more than twenty-eight days in the month. Just why Towser dislikes Tabby, and why Tabby returns the compliment with accrued interest, is a problem I will leave for the scientists to wrestle with after they have determined the complexion of the agile cholera microbe and secured a photograph of the yellow fever germ in the act of eluding the quarantine officers. No dog has any standing as a dog until he has relegated at least one full grown feline to the murky shadows of the has-beens, and according to feline ethics no thomas-cat is entitled to lead the choir or take an honored place in the nocturnal councils of his tribe until he has sent a fifty-pound dog ki-yi-ing under the barn, with one eye swinging in the breeze and the ground plan of a Carian mausoleum etched on his nose.
The cat does not go up and down the earth like a loudmouthed braggart, or a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour; he does not carry a chip on his shoulder and cordially invite every one he meets to knock it off, spit in his eye and tread on his narrative. He is a lover of peace in its most virulent form. He is quick to get his back up, but will climb a tree any time to avoid an unpleasantness with a foolish cur that he knows he can make sausage meat of in one consecutive round. He invariably says: "My dear sir, fighting is not in my line. I hate a beastly row, doncher know; but if you crowd me I'll exert myself to make the occasion one of absorbing interest to you." And he does. The cat has never attended a military school or taken lessons in the more or less manly art of a broken down third-rate pugilist; yet there is nothing of his weight or longitudinal measurement on the earth that can make him sing small when he shies his dicer into the ring, spits defiance at his enemy, girds up his back and announces that he is ready to proceed with the obsequies. A cat that fights at fifteen pounds can make anything but a buzz-saw and a he-cyclone take down its sign and flee the country. Many a blooded bull-dog who has won a dozen battles and a hatful of shekels for his proud and haughty master, has lost his self-conceit and both optics in a little shuffle with a dyspeptic looking cat that he expected would get down on its knees and humbly plead for permission to move out to Mexico with its family.
The house cat is no relation to the cat-o'-nine-tails. Tabby contents himself with one tail, but insists on nine lives. There are instances on record where the entire nine lives have been extinguished at one fell swoop but recent researches have shown that the veracity of the record aforesaid is as wobbly and uncertain as the hind legs of a newly-arrived red calf, or the choice political morceau floating about in the heat and smoke of a vigorous gubernatorial campaign. When the cat is very new; before it has learned that there is just as much fun, and infinitely more profit, in going from door to door in the glad hours of the early morning and sampling the various brands of lacteal fluid furnished by poor but honest milkmen, than in chasing a ball of worsted, it may be safely and successfully suppressed by anchoring it to a two-ton grindstone and gently but firmly dropping it into twelve fathoms of pure spring water; but after its voice has fully developed and it has got thieving down to a fine art it is harder to kill than a mop-peddler or a divorce scandal.
The cat is perhaps the only thing, with the exception of a bunion and a persistent creditor, that an unfortunate man can't manage to lose. Just when you begin to congratulate yourself that Tabby is irrevocably lost you inadvertently step on his tail and he comes back at you with all fours. After you have tried poison, a shotgun, hot water and a brick on a worthless cat that persists in recognizing you as its master, your wife cheers your despairing soul with the suggestion that you lose him. Happy thought. You procure a meal-sack and a horse. After much labor you succeed in inserting Tabby in the sack, at the same time sliding your sore thumb into his mouth to amuse him and give you something to think about and divert your conscience from the shabby trick you are about to play upon a confiding non-English speaking cat. You mount your fiery Bucephalus, take the sack, ride twelve miles in one direction, sixteen in another, describe a few circles and obtuse triangles, tie the cat loose and gallop home. The next morning while you are trying to adjust yourself to the smell of arnica and a cushioned chair and wondering if your liver has not been jolted out of its natural orbit by the unusual exercise, the liverymen calls to inform you that you have ridden his best horse to death and that it will take a round century to square the matter. You protest and he threatens to bring suit and have you indicted for cruelty to animals besides. You weaken, pay the money, go to the dining-room to look for a little comfort on the sideboard,-and find that wretched cat quietly sleeping the sweet sleep of innocence on the hearthrug.
Some people believe that it is bad luck to kill a cat. Perhaps it is. It may also be bad luck to swindle a Yankee tin-peddler in a horse-trade."
The Works of Brann, The Brann Publishers Inc., New York, 1919, Volume 2, pp201
****
Scientists believe that members of the cat family gradually developed from a small weasel like animal called Miacis, which lived more than 50 million years ago. Miacis also was probably the ancestor of such mammals as bears, dogs, and raccoons. Members of the cat family first appeared about 40 million years ago.
No one knows exactly how or where cats were first tamed. But many authorities believe the domestic cat is a direct descendant of an African wildcat that the Egyptians tamed--possibly as early as 3500 B.C. Domesticated wildcats killed mice, rats, and snakes and so prevented these pests from overrunning Egyptian farms and grain storehouses. The cats became pampered pets and were honored in paintings and sculptures.
By about 1500 B.C., the Egyptians had begun to consider cats sacred. They worshiped a goddess of love and fertility called Bastet, or Bast, who was represented as having the head of a cat and the body of a woman. If a person killed a cat, the punishment was usually death. When a pet cat died, the Egyptians shaved off their eyebrows as a sign of mourning. They made dead cats into mummies. Scientists have found an ancient cat cemetery in Egypt containing over 300,000 cat mummies.
Greek and Phoenician traders probably brought domestic cats to Europe and the Middle East about 1000 B.C. The ancient Greeks and Romans valued cats for their ability to control rodents. In Rome, the cat was a symbol of liberty and was regarded as the guardian spirit of a household.
Domestic cats spread from the Middle East throughout Asia. In the Far East, cats were used to keep rodents from destroying temple manuscripts and from attacking silkworm cocoons, from which silk is made. People of the Orient admired the beauty and mystery of the cat. The animal became a favorite subject of artists and writers in China and Japan.
In Europe during the Middle Ages, the cat was considered a symbol of evil. Superstitious people associated the cat with witchcraft and the Devil. For this reason, people killed hundreds of thousands of cats.
Experts believe that the destruction of so many cats led to a huge increase in the rat population of Europe and contributed to the spread of the Black Death, an epidemic of plague. This disease, transmitted to people by rat fleas, killed about a fourth of the people who lived in Europe during the mid-1300's.
By the 1600's, Europeans had begun to realize once again the importance of cats in controlling rodents. Cats gradually regained popularity. European explorers, colonists, and traders brought domestic cats to the New World during the 1600's and 1700's. Throughout the 1800's, settlers took cats with them as they moved westward. Most cats in the United States and Canada today are descendants of these cats.
A number of sayings:
"After dark, all cats are grey."
"More ways than one to skin a cat."
"Slicker than cat s..."
Which somehow reminds me of today's politicians.
****
Joe Wortham's Home Page , About Joe Wortham , Directory
Questions? Comments? [email protected]