RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30191, 24 July 1963, Page 22

RANDOM REMINDER

CATACLYSM

Who says the hardy spirit of the pioneers no longer exists? And who says women are weak creatures, forever looking for a male on whom to lean? Let us quote the case of a Merivale woman whose household is addicted to cats. And has been for years. The women of the household will sit up of nights nursing ailing ones, searching for missing ones, caring for littleones. They like cats.

Their collection, seldom reduced to anything under a strength of three, lives a life equivalent to a luxurious existence on the Riviera. The cats eat welL sleep comfortably. Thel’ are short of nothing. And for their safety, their owners have provided them with a wire netting-enclosed run of generous proportions, entrance to which is won through a disused washhouse, and then through a small opening cut in the side of the wall. But late one recent

winter afternoon, one of the women, going into the wash-house to render some small services to the feline flock, inadvertently locked herself in. It was an hour and a half before she won her release, which she did by crawling through the opening into the enclosed yard and then, in the best traditions of escapology, burrowing a tunnel beneath the wire netting deep enough to lift the stuff clear. V It was not a bad effort for a woman. Especially for one in her early 80’s.