Skeletons and Cobwebs
New times give the keeper new excuses. Taxed with a cat's disappearance, he blames the motor-car; some day he will blame the flying-ship; where a railway is at hand he always has a ready
excuse. We would be the last to suggest
that when the mortal remains of a cat are found on a road frequented by motor-cars the presumption is always justified that the cat was slain by a keeper who endeavoured to put the blame on an innocent driver. We are confident that many cats in game-preserved places live to die from old age. Ten years is a ripe age for a cat, but some die from accidents more natural than execution or murder. Like the birds, when they know their hours to be numbered, cats creep away to some quiet hiding-place to await death—perhaps beneath the floor of an old barn, or among the rafters of a familiar roof, where they hunted rats and mice in youthful days.
Now and again, in old buildings, death-chambers are discovered where the skeletons of cats have been hidden among cobwebs and dust, perhaps for hundreds of years.
