No game destroyer, however, is more easily caught than the Cat. In summer, when rabbit-paunches will not keep on account of the weather, a little valerian root is used as a bait. The Cats come to rub themselves on it, finding some unaccountable pleasure in so doing. The valerian root is of a whitish colour, and it has a very strong and disagreeable smell: it is used by us as a medicine in nervous disorders, and its good effects against headaches, low-spirits, and trembling of the limbs are well known. A story is told of a little boy home for the holidays who played an old lady this trick:—He put some valerian root under the hearth-rug, which set the Cat scratching, rubbing her back on it, and performing a hundred antics, till the old lady, getting frightened, thought Puss had gone mad. The boy then quietly took away the valerian. The Cat grew calm again, and the old lady was much astonished.
It is a cruel custom in some parts of the country to cut off the ears of Cats and remove the hairs all round the exposed aperture of the ear, to prevent the animal from poaching in the woods. It is thought that by so doing, the wet off the bushes and grass may get into the internal cavity of the ear, and by the pain cause the Cat to desist from the chase. Cats so mutilated, however, often choose fine days for their poaching expeditions.
A Cat caught in a trap is a dangerous customer to let loose again. If the door be opened incautiously, the Cat will probably fly at the catcher’s face the moment she sees the light. The only safe way of getting the Cat out of the trap is to place a sack over the door end of the trap, and then rattle the other end with a stick. The animal runs at once into the sack.
Wild Cats not only eat birds, but seek eagerly after their eggs, of which they are passionately fond.
Regarding the wild Cat, Pennant says, “It may be called the ‘British Tiger’: it is the fiercest and most destructive beast we have; making dreadful havoc amongst our poultry, lambs and birds. It inhabits the most mountainous and wooded parts of these islands, living mostly in trees and feeding only at night. It multiplies as fast as our common Cats.”
A wild Cat is said to have been killed in Cumberland (my authority gives no date) which measured above five feet in length from the nose to the end of the tail.
Mr. Timbs relates how, in 1850, he saw, at No. 175, Oxford Street, a beautifully-marked tabby Cat weighing 25¾ lbs., and measuring 27 inches round the body, and 37 inches from the tip of the tail to the end of the nose; height to top of shoulders 11½ inches: he was then seven years old.
The tame Cat’s tail ends in a point; the wild Cat’s in a tuft. The head of the wild Cat is triangular and strongly marked, the ears triangular, large, long and pointed.
At the village of Barnborough, in Yorkshire, there is a tradition extant of a serious conflict that once took place between a man and a wild Cat. The inhabitants say that the fight began in an adjacent wood, and that the man and Cat fought from thence to the porch of the church, where each died of the wounds received. A rude painting in the church commemorates the sanguinary event, and the red colour of some of the stones are, of course, said to be blood-stains, which all the soap and water in the world could not remove.
In the reign of Richard II. wild Cats were reckoned among the beasts of the chase, and there was an edict that no man should use more costly apparel than that made of lambs’ or Cats’-skins.