HUMANITARIAN LONDON.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 144, 19 June 1926, Page 40

HUMANITARIAN LONDON.

CARE OF ANIMAL LIFE. MANY AGENCIES FOR CARE OF DUMB CIUEATTJRES.

(By CONSTANCE CLYDE.)

" Like to drive through London In the eat cart?" The question was asked mc after I had been some years in the metropolis. But one can be a decade in that city without knowing every species of strange vehicle that often, quite unnoticed, goes through its busy and farreaching thoroughfares. "The cat cart?" I repeated the question. A cat's meat cart I knew very wcli, but the vehicle referred to proved to be very different. To myself, on seeing it, the construction looked very like a baker's cart, but when let down at the back, the shelves showed not loaves, but on each of them an alarmed* looking feline. Before inviting mc to ascend the front seat with her, the lady driver ran down into an alley, enticed to her another possible cat traveller, who proved so far gone, however, that she took it into a chemist's, and superintended its quick euthanasia there.

" The rest we take home,"* aha eaid, " after I have gone up Hoxton way. That has not been done for a time." So we " did" up Hoxton way, and collected a few more strays. Then we took our guests "home," which proved to be a villa in one of the suburbs. Here most of the cats are given a last •rood meal and a sleep before the fire prior to entering the chloroform box for a more lasting slumber. A few of the creatures are kept out of pure sentiment, and, in a large compartment, I watched many of them, guests of the society for life. It is not considered advisable to allow kindly people to offer them a home in a world which once already abandoned them.

In other great cities, streets may thus be cleared for sanitary purposes—with? out the daily migrations of this cart ;n one or other part of London the city would soon become a plague-stricken .\rea. So the authorities informed mc. But in what other part of the world would so much sentimentalism be intermingled with the business? All through London then, at least, one saw this sentimentalism towards animal life. This manageress of the cats' refuge told mc of a cat treed once in a London park, and how she and others came several times for three days, a man even risking injury with a ladder, in order to get the creature down.

Cats are the usual pets of the London poor. They' are seldom half starved intentionally—the reason of the cat cart is really the softness of the Londoner, who hates destroying the kittens. Also the dust cart man was at that time forbidden to take them, 10 one lady, I remember, solved the problem by " posting them." In other respects puss is well cared for. Iv almost every London suburb, thete is a special shop for her provender, two enormous felines for petting and advertising purposes being on the counter. Behind is always the room where those that suffer from "cat influenza," ad incurable complaint, receive their quietus. The shabby London woman, coming in With her pet, always goes behind to see its end, because of " them doctors." • Bhe is invariably very suspicious of a possible vivisector with whom the cat man may be in infamous league. I have met one woman, the landlady of poor lodgings, whose pet was under sentence of death, to be chloroformed after her own decease, not with a superstitious desire for a follower in the next Wdrld, but because of the vivisector in this. Not a Londoner in those grey, squalid streets but seems to have a gritting of the teeth over " them doctors." Thus, owing to linguistic limitations, is a worthy body of men, branded with the sins of scientists, whose especial name takes overmuch manipulation. What is the reason of this softness towards dumb creatures in the Londoner stigmatised so often, and so unjustly, as relentless and hard? The idiosyncrasy i_, I think, due to the loneliness Of his life, and, paradoxically, to his Very sensitiveness towards suffering that is human. Until he is qiiile "<lown-and-Out" —Whereupon a new life-care-, lessness and social freedom are created— the Londoner, man or woman, living singly or in a family, Is often quite friendless. However cosmopolitan, be draws away from real intimacy. "Keep yourselves to yourselves," is a metropolitan axiom. He clings desperately to his always precarious hold on the industrial system, and is afraid of the needy hand that may be stretched out. A friend to him means someone who, sooner or later, may have to be refused, whether the asking is open or tacit. He does Sot want to add to his own discomfort by seeing a real friend "go down." Possibly he does not always realise this reason for his own friendliness, but sometimes he quite openly admits this.

However that may be, it is certain that the Londoner, male or female, is strangely, almost childlessly we' "colonials" would think, sentimental about the creature life that pervades the big fcity. Dogs not so much, perhaps, though he may visit the dogs.' receiving home at Battersea, where, owing to Royal intervention, the canine strays have vow seven days of grace given them before, if unclaimed, they go to a painless end. Dogs are not much kept by the poorthere is the tax —but cats, as already mentioned, Hi. numerous. A newspaper Story tells of one Old woman iii the vicinity of Nelson Square, who kept open house, Or, rather, underground cellar room—it)—' Only _nmfr==fof some thirty feline friends, until death took her. Then there are the pigeon, of St. Paul's and the bridges. Always there seemed to be some one smiling affably as he scattered the pieces of bun and cake td them. Always also there Wad gome beggar Of derelict looking on, smiling also. I have been told, and my own observations lead* id the same belief, that the latter never feels the slightest bitterness at the sight, but rather rejoices in it. Perhaps a .harder spirit has come now, but this was London before the war, and before the strike.

It is the equine. species, however, that receives perhaps Most of the Londoner's affection and admiration, those survivall of the past moving here and thefe aihidst petrol-driven machines, with perhaps an aerobian* or two floating overhead! How they interest the true Londoner as he pats their usually- quite plump sides. How angry he becomes iii the correspondence column of, perhaps, the "Baily _firfror," if any injury is done them, a* ingry as when r. London tree is cut down; and there is a fine racket When that occurs. Then there is the coster's moke, and its owner, proud df its. good condition, and his boy patting its soft nose, or even unhygienically kissing it. Then near I Westminster, is, or was, the Home for

Tired Horses—such is the simple title above the door—where the poor man's moke will be received as guest whenever his master can spar, him a holiday.

Then there is the frequent bird in the cage, less cften, however, a native bird than was formerly the case. The traveller wiU See enough, however,-to assure him that, for true sentimentalism, he must go not to the country or the "colonies," but to England's metropolis. Perhaps some humorist will whisper of less desirable animal life in come if its lower quarters, but to this one can but answer that the city is much more hygienic than it used to be, and the black beetle among the bread is no longer taken as a matter of course.