RULED OVER BY PETS

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 17, 21 January 1931, Page 13

RULED OVER BY PETS

AMERICAN LADY'S WILL

"People professed astonishment the other day when they heard that a wealthy American lady had made a will in which she left her mansion and her staff of servants to her cat, '' states a London writer. "There was really no call for astonishment. Probably the cat had been the virtual owner of the mansion for years, turning night into day to suit its own feline requirements, ordering its own food or, at least, declining what it did not like —:. raiding the larder at all times and sleeping on the beds—-in short, behaving exactly like every other cat. ; "There are thousands of these house-' holds that are ruled over by their pets. We are all familiar with homes,, where the people cannot go away because of the eat and where their friends cannot come in because of the dog; houses where the door . must be kept shut because of the kitten and the window must not be opened because of the canary. Even a sixpenny | goldfish swimming sunnily in a bowl the i size of a football can throw an entire family into a tumult every time the g'oldfish's bathwater is changed. A BLASPHEMOUS BIED. "I once knew an old lady who kept a parrot. It was a lean, gaunt harridan of a bird, with a fanatical staring eye like an assassin's. Any human being so unattractive in appearance, so blasphemous and repetitive a conversationalist, ana so lazy in habits, would not have been tolerated in that spinster establishment for a moment. But the old lady worshipped that bird like an idol. "Every morning at 8.30, when the cage was tidied, the parrot had fresh water ana millet seed and gravel. Grapes and cuttle fish followed at noon. A cloth was spread over the cage from 2 to 4 for the parrot to onjoy a siesta. More grapes and a handful of nuts came along at 7. And the cloth went over the eago again at 10.30. Then the old lady (who was a chronic invalid) snatched a little rest. I soon saw that it was the old lady and not the parrot that was in the cage."