THE LORE OF THE CAT

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 260, 3 August 1928, Page 9

THE LORE OF THE CAT

A professor in the United States has taken the field against the cats. It . darkens the horror of the deed that she is a woman. Among men, as Mr. Kipling in his deplorable lampoon upon the cat, has boasted, anti-cat prejudice is common. But the other, the more sensitive, the subtler sex is usually free from this emotion of the obtuse. Professor Georgia Strickland Gates is said to have made an extensive study of cats. From this delightful occupation she comes incredibly to deny the cat the wisdom and virtue vouched for by all the ages. Under the cold scrutiny of Professor ’’Gates, a,, cat cannot, see in the dark, it does not land on its feet, and it will not find its way home, and to sum up, it cannot “reason properly.” What is propriety? How should a cat reason? Knowing nothing of any of the cats investigated by Professor Gates, we make bold (says the London “Daily Telegraph”) to say that, howsoever low as their opinion of them, it is not so low as their opinion of professors. For that is the nature of the animal, and to persons of modesty and humour, its charm. We make no doubt that another course of professorial research will prove much else in the traditions of the cat fallacious. It will be announced with academic pomp and circumstance that cats have not nine lives, that all cats are not grey in the dark, that 1 the cat will not. after kind, that when the cat is away the mice do not play, and finally, that a cat may not look at a king, or even a professor. Let us answer iii the words of another American philosopher, “I guess the gran’thers, they knowed something, too.” There have always been, as Shylbek remarked, some that are mad when they behold a cat. But, in'our respect for the feline race, we rely upon Ihe best opinion of all the ages. The wisdom of the Egyptians is proverbial. Was it not a law of Egypt I hat he who killed the cat should die the death though the horrid felicide were proved an accident? Our own excellent British Prince Howel .he Good decreed that any one who stole his cat. should be fined a milch ewe and lamb. Consider Ihe cats of honour and renown, the pensive Selima of Horace Walpole, Dr. Johnson's Hodge, the Atossa sage of Matthew Arnold, composed and bland, inscrutable anil grand, and Swinburnes “friend of loftier mind.” Not all the professors in the United States shall deny our cat also his genius and his charm.