THE CAT.
The cat is a small animal with four legs and a long tail. The cat is covered with cat fur. In the night cats love to roost on the back fence. They roost lengthways of it, instead of cross ways like a bird or a hen.
When the cat wants to say anything it utters a yowl. No other animal yowls, except a baby, and its yowl is different. Mostly cats make their remarks in the night. The baby is not different from the cat in this respect.
Cats have nine lives, but after a cat has lost one of them she isn't good for much except a cat-skin. If I was a cat I wouldn't be afraid of dogs.
Cats' eyes shine in the dark. Once I was up in our garret, and saw a cat's eyes shining. I came down and went to talking to Ma about things. She said she thought I went up into the garret to stay awhile. I said, "No, I staid as long as I intended to."
The cat has an Ann Tipathy for rats. Cats eat rats. Tastes differ. The Chinese make porcelain cats with yellow glass eyes, and put a candle inside. When the rats see it they go away on the dead run. Of course there is no danger. I forget what I went up into the garret for that time.
The middle of cats' eyes gets big in the dark and small in the light. Girls like cats. A cat goes up a tree frontwards and comes down backwards. They go up because they see a dog, and come down when the dog isn't looking. The more dogs a cat sees the bigger her tail gets. The cats in the Isle of Man don't have any tails, so they are not afraid of dogs.
Once we had a cat whose eyes got so big in the dark that you'd have been afraid if you hadn't known what it was. This was the same cat I saw in the garret. But, pshaw! I knew what it was right away soon as I got down!
That's all anybody knows about cats.