Show STORIES ABOUT CATS t THE LARGEST CAT RANCH IN A3IEK IOA Several parties in this city gratified grati-fied their curiosity this week in a walk half a mile south of town to I visit perhaps the largest cat ranch I in Texas or for that matter n America The cats we presume are the property of Col B J Chambers i Cham-bers In the summer of 1SS1 the wheat on the farm was threshed I and a considerable quantity if straw was left in rail pens A few j i cats at once took possession of the j pens They have multiplied until now at least 500 cats black white yellow gray spottedin fact every color known to the feline tribe to say nothing of kittenscan be seen with but little trouble by visiting the pens Jleburne Chronicle I II I SHOUTLIVED GRIEF FOR LOST OATS When a woman loses a favorite cat she is entirely broke up paralyzed j para-lyzed as it were with grief She brings it to me to stuff and then totters home in despair Well I work at it all day skinning stuffing and putting glass eyes in it But it takes a week or ten days to dry I it for the skin has been saturated with arsenical solution and by that time its owners grief has cooled j down to such an extent that she forgets to call for it and it is left on j my hands Now if it were a valuable valu-able dog or bird I could easily sell j i it and pay myself but there aint no enthusiasm in the trade for I stuffed cats and I am stuck So now when a woman comes in a cryin an a goin on about a dead i cat which she wants me to stuff j I I sympathize but I dont stuff until she puts up the snekels A taxidermist taxi-dermist in Brooklyn Eagle j REMARKABLE CASE OF INSTINCT I IN A CAT I I About seven weeks ago Mr A M 0 Sargent of this city brought from i the town of Haverhill favorite 1 cat The cat remained in the store apparently quite contented for I three or four days but one morning I upon opening the store she was I missing Nothing was heard of her I and it was supposed she had been J i killed when one day this week fshe I was heard scratching at the window of her old home in Haverhill She looked jaded and weather beaten I but was otherwise in fair condition The time that had elapsed between I her departure from Lynn and her arrival in Haverhill was just six weeks and one day Whether she was traveling all that time is of course not known She was brought I in a close box on the railroad by the way of Georgetown Danvers and Salem and the distance she must have traveled on her return could not have been less than thirty or forty miles How she succeeded in finding her old home which was a mile a da half westerly of the center or tine town without any scent or possible means of guidance except her own instinct crossing the Merrimac River and several small streams which lay in her direct di-rect track must ever remain mystery mys-tery If any one knows of a more remarkable case of instinct in a cat i we should like to hear of itLynn Reporter WHITTINGTON AND HIS CAT According to the chapbook legend le-gend young Whittington purchased a cat with the only penny he possessed pos-sessed in the world not out of pity but with the sensible view of keeping keep-ing down the rats and mice by which he was annoyed in his garret gar-ret The cat being sent out as a venture one of his masters ships fetched a high price in Barbary where rats and mice were rife but cats were unknown and so laid the foundation of his fortunes Sir Richard Whittingtons biographers have made a touching stand in defense de-fense of the authenticity of this highly improbable story Dr Ly sons refused to yield a jot to the argument that as the tale had been told over and over again in many lands and had been known in Persia Per-sia before Whittington was born therefore the author of the legendary legend-ary life of his hero probably borrowed bor-rowed the incident He even held that the very fact of the story being so widely spread goes to prove that it has some foundation of reality Mr Besant in the bright and graphic memoir of Whit tington which he contributed to the New Plutarch after justly dismissing dismiss-ing Mr Rileys ingenious suggestions sugges-tions as to cat being a corruption corrup-tion of acJiat a purchase or a term meaning a collier goes on to argue in favor of the credibility of the story on the following grounds There used to exist in the Mercers Hall a portrait of Whittingtondated 1530 in which a black and white cat figured at his left hand A still existing ex-isting portrait by Reginald Elstract who flourished about 1590 represents repre-sents him with his hand resting on a cat The story is told that the hand originally rested on a skullbut that in deference to public opinion a cat was substituted which proves the legand or the history had been by that time completely spread That i s also proved by a reference to the cat legend in Heywoods If You Know Not Me and by another an-other in Beaumont and Fletchers Knight of the Burning Prestle Newgate jail was rebuilt by Whit tingtons executors and his statue with a cat at his feet is said to have been set up on the gate and to have remained there till the fire 16GC Moreover a piece of plate on which figured heraldic cats was presented pre-sented to the Mercers company in 1572 and in the house at Gloucester which the Whittingtons occupied till 1460 there was dug up a stone when repairs were being made in 1862 on which in basso relievo is represented the figure of a boy carrying car-rying in his arms a cat The workmanship work-manship appears to be of the fifteenth fif-teenth century |