One thing I found out very early in my researches, and that was, that nine out of ten among my authorities were prejudiced against the animal about which they wrote, and furthermore, that they knew very little indeed upon the subject. Take for instance our old friend Mavor, who thus mis-teaches the young idea in his celebrated Spelling Book. “Cats,” says Mr. Mavor, “have less sense than dogs, and their attachment is chiefly to the house; but the dog’s is to the persons who inhabit it.” Need I tell the reader who has thought it worth his while to learn anything of the Cat’s nature, that Mr. Mavor’s was a vulgar and erroneous belief, and that there are countless instances on record where Cats have shown the most devoted and enduring attachment to those who have kindly treated them. Again, nothing can be more unjust than to call Cats cruel. If such a word as cruel could be applied to a creature without reason, few animals could be found more cruel than a Robin Redbreast, which we have all determined to make a pet of since somebody wrote that pretty fable about the “Babes in the Wood.” And apropos of the Robin, do you remember Canning’s verses?

“Tell me, tell me, gentle Robin,
What is it sets thy heart a-throbbing?
Is it that Grimalkin fell
Hath killed thy father or thy mother,
Thy sister or thy brother,
Or any other?
Tell me but that,
And I’ll kill the Cat.
But stay, little Robin, did you ever spare,
A grub on the ground or a fly in the air?
No, that you never did, I’ll swear;
So I won’t kill the Cat,
That’s flat.”

But all the cruel and unjust things that have been said about poor pussy I will tell you in another chapter. I mean to try and begin at the beginning. In the first place, what is the meaning of the word “Cat.” Let us look in the dictionary. A Cat, according to Dr. Johnson, is “a domestick animal that catches mice.” But the word has one or two other meanings, for instance:—

In thieves’ slang the word “Cat” signifies a lady’s muff, and “to free a cat” to steal a muff. Among soldiers and sailors a “Cat” means something very unpleasant indeed, with nine tingling lashes or tails, so called, from the scratches they leave on the skin, like the claws of a cat.

A Cat is also the name for a tackle or combination of pulleys, to suspend the anchor at the cat’s-head of a ship.

Cat-harping is the name for a purchase of ropes employed to brace in the shrouds of the lower masts behind their yards.

The Cat-fall is the name of a rope employed upon the Cat-head. Two little holes astern, above the Gun-room ports, are called Cat-holes.

A Cat’s-paw is a particular turn in the bight of a rope made to hook a tackle in; and the light air perceived in a calm by a rippling on the surface of the water, is known by the same name.

A kind of double tripod with six feet, intended to hold a plate before the fire and so constructed that, in whatever position it is placed, three of the legs rest on the ground, is called a Cat, from the belief that however a Cat may be thrown, she always falls on her feet.

Cat-salt is a name given by our salt-workers to a very beautifully granulated kind of common salt.