The Cat

ANIMAL AUTOBIOGRAPHIES
LONDON ADAM & CHARLES BLACK 1905
'I had rather be a kitten and cry—Mew!' Shakespeare.
AGENTS IN AMERICA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 64 & 66 Fifth Avenue, New York
UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME. PRICE 6s. EACH. THE DOG. By G. E. MITTON. THE BLACK BEAR. By PERRY ROBINSON. THE RAT. By G. M. A. HEWETT.
TO ANNE CHILD
LOKI.
A cat is of all animals the most difficult to know; it is so intimate, but so detached; so dependent on human beings for its comfort, so loftily indifferent to their wishes. It requires one who has lived with cats and seen their idiosyncrasies, their whims and their strong individuality, to write about them, and in the present author they have found a spokeswoman who knows them through and through. A sense of humour is necessary in dealing with the subject—and the humour is not lacking. Loki is a real cat in more senses than one, and those who follow his life story will find themselves better able to understand their own cats than they have ever been before.
THE EDITOR.
I first saw the light—at least I did not exactly see the light, for I was blind, so they tell me, for about a week after I was born—on the twenty-third of April 19—. There were five of us, three boys and two girls. Our mother was a pure-blooded Persian; so was our father, and it was, I believe, considered by Them a very good match. They arrange all our matches for us in this country, and indeed manage most of our affairs, but then it must be remembered that we are strangers, as the title Persian denotes. Moreover, we belong to that division of the race that is called 'Blue Smokes,' which means, not that our fur is blue, for that would be ugly and loud, but that if you part it and look carefully at the roots you will see that it is exactly the shade of blue that smoke is when you get a lot of it together. Papa's name is 'Blue Boy II.,' and he is excessively handsome, and has taken prizes at cat-shows all over the country. His mistress, Miss Goddard, who lives at West Dulwich, is always travelling about with him to show him, and mother is very proud of that.