CATS AND RATS

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 55, 7 March 1922, Page 10

CATS AND RATS

' TO Til KIT4R.

Sir, —If your splendid' patience is not already over-ridden, I should wish to make further comment on the above sub-, ject, and " Ida Robinson's " final reply to me of 3rd March. I do not desire to have the last word, especially as my controversial colleagues seem to' be both ladies, and are delightfully enthusiastic. I would point out, however, that they are not quite correct in affirming that tho 'flesh of a healthy rat is unwholesome. During the war rats were sold as human diet. If a domestic cat does not eat a rat, I feel sure it is, -first, because the cat is not (hungry; and, secondly, because it will not go to the trouble to .remove the rat's "fur costume." Your correspondents only bear me out by stating, in effect, that the rat, under its own unaided conditions, would have such marvellous energy as to baffle the onslaught of pussy, which is precisely the desired condition I prescribed for cats, if they were left more to their own resources. Now, as to starving a cat. It is next to impossible (if i free); pussy's well-known powers of cunning and resource should easily dispel such ah idea. Again, a hungry cat could . surely never (as your correspondents assert) be so weak as not to be . able to capture and kill a rat, which is, I should say, ten times less in power and size, to say nothing of the "proverbial nine lives" attached to "gpuss " as an indication of her durability., In Australia I have had "reason to come in contact with the wild cats of the bush, antf for size they are actual tigers, dreaded by poultry farmers and others. They will tackle poultry and other animals equal to' and larger than themselves; they tear them to mincemeat, leaving the bones bare. I have found them (the ■wild cats) very superior in type, though similar in size, to our hand-fed, domestic cats; but they could by ■no means be' "ratified" in the same " category. "— I am, etc., ' • mi . B.W. DARRAGH. 6ih March. ' '

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