COLD-STORAGE RATS AND CATS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9635, 6 October 1894, Page 2 (Supplement)

COLD-STORAGE RATS AND CATS.

The Pittsburg Dispatch says that in the cold-storage warehouses in that city there were no rats and mice. The temperature in the cold rooms was too low. The keepers soon found, however, that tho rat is an animal of remarkable adaptability. After some of these houses had been in operation for a few months, the attendants found that rats were at work in the rooms where the temperature was constantly kept below the freezing point. They were found to be clothed in wonderfully long and thick fur, even their tapering, snake-like tails being covered with a thick growth of hair. Rats whose coats have adapted themselve to the conditions under which they live have domesticated themselves in all the storage warehouses in Pittsburg. The prevalence of rats in these places led to the introduction of cats. Now, it is well known that pussy is a lover of warmth and comfort. Cats, too, have a great adaptability to conditions. When cats were turned loose in the cold rooms, they pined and died because of the excessive cold. One cab was finally introduced into the rooms of the Pennsylvania Storage Company which was able to withstand the low temperature. I She was a cab of unusually thick fur, and she thrived and grew fab in quarters where the temperature was below 30deg. By careful nursing a brood of oeven kittens was developed in this warehouse into sturdy, thick-furred cabs that lovo an Icelandic clime. They have been distributed among the other coldstorage houses of Pittsburg, and have created a peculiar breed of cats, adapted to the conditions under which they musb exist to find their prey. These cats are shorttailed, chubby pussies, with hair as thick and full of under-fur as the wild cabs of the Canadian woods. One of the remarkable things about them is the development of their " feelers." Those long, stiff hairs that protrude from a cab's no3o and eyebrows are, in the ordinary domestic feline, about three inches long. In the cats cultivated in the cold warehouses the "feelers" grow to a length of five and six inches. This is probably because the light is dim in these places, and all movements musb be the result of the feeling sense. The storage people say that if one of these furry cats is taken into the open air, particularly during this hot spell, ib will die in a few hours. It cannot endure a high temperature, and an introduction to stove, would send ib into a fib.