From a New Book CAT HORDE’S ONSLAUGHT

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 119, 13 February 1935, Page 7

From a New Book CAT HORDE’S ONSLAUGHT

It was the first evening in the new camp (Mesopotamia). . \ . The men sat round waiting, for they bad nor eaten a square meal for 24 hours, when, from some rocks nearby, came a cat. a reddish cat, long-bodied and with pointed ears, like those in - the Egyptfau tombs, but mangy and starved. It came warily, treading carefully, expecting to be chased off, but a cook threw it a piece of meat offal, whereupon out from the rocks raced two more cats as lean and starved as the first, and to these also the cook threw some bits. At once a dozen more followed them, then more again, dashing at the first cats, fought with, them and .then stalked; up close to the cooks miaowing and eyeing them, and one, with a bound, leapt up the cauldron and fell into the boiling stew. . . . it was dusk now : . . when the cats came back, and this time not as a dozen or so but from every side and in hundreds, grey shapes, close to the ground, creeping forward, stalking in tlie vague gloaming. Some made for the offal pile . . . others for the spoilt stew, and devoured it, the dead cat as well. ... As it grew darker they grew bolder and their numbers increased and without warning they attacked. . . . They came, claws out, snarling, an avalanche of cats, sweep-

ing over everything. ‘-The men joined the cooks, fighting them back with sticks and stones, lashed at them with whips, in desperation fired at them with their revolvers, but nothing could stop. them. They seized all the food. They raced through the tents. They bit and scratched at the men’s unprotected feet, legs and hands. They leapt on the horses and clawed at 1 their necks and backs so that the poor beasts lashed ofit and some broke their headropes and dashed through the camp, tails in air. A stallion caught up in a tent, came down, and the cats, screaming and howling, swarmed over him, at his throat, his eyes, his belly, any soft place where they could get their claws and teeth, and tore him.

screaming, to pieces. Leo . ~ • shouted • an order. . . . He ran for his horse; the men in panic, leaving all, ran hel-ter-skelter after him, scrambling bareback on their horses, and raced but of the camp, not stopping until they were a mile away. Panting and sweating in the torrid heat, they halted and looked back. . . . When they saw that the cats were close behind them. . . . They were coming down the hillsides, eyes glaring, thousands of moving eyes. . .Terror, wild, uncontrollable terror, seized the men, terror behind their shoulderblades. terror of the relentless creeping forms in the dark. Flogging tlieir horses mercilessly, erojtching low as if being shot at from behind, out over the wild, broken country blindly, not caring what risks they took, the horses as terrified as the men. they galloped mile after mile. Not until they had gone a great distance and forded a broad stream did they halt and tiiug themselves down exhausted, but even then they watched all night, expecting to see those eyes coming a’t them out of the darkness.—“ Unending Battle,” by H. C. Armstrong/