This bundle of fur we call by the short name of cat was born in other climes and trained in other ways than the dog, and is as sly and sleek as the dog is rough and boisterous. It knows how to make itself at home and dearly loves a soft spot, but it has never quite got rid of its wild-life ways and is often as hard to make a friend of as the dog is easy. Rarely does it follow at man's heels in the dog's faithful fashion.
When did man first take the cat into his house and make it one of his pets? That is hard to say. If we go back to the early days of civilization we find the cat an inmate of man's house as well as the dog, and quite as much at home. It was kept in Egypt several thousand years ago and thought so much of in those far-off days as to leave the dog almost out of sight.
The people of that old land loved and worshiped the cat, made it into a mummy when it died, and any one who killed a cat was punished as if he had committed a great crime. That was the golden age of the cat, for one of the goddesses was said to have a cat's head, and the cat had a sacred city of its own, the city of Bubastis, where a festival in its honor was held every year and attended by more than half a million of people.
The people of Greece and Rome also thought much of the cat—perhaps because it helped them to get rid of the rat, which was as great a pest then as it is now. In later Europe also the cat was a favorite, and it was the custom at Aix, in Provence, to get the finest male cat that could be found, dress it like a baby, and seat it in a splendid arm-chair for the people to bow down to and worship.
The time came at length when the cat lost its good name and people began to look upon it as an imp of evil and the companion of the witch and the sorcerer. A black cat was the worst of all and its life was a hard one. In those evil days for the cat it became the fashion to fling cats from the tops of high towers, and at Metz, at the festival of St. John, cats were thrown by the dozen into a blazing fire and burned alive.
But better days have now come to pretty puss, and she is cared for as much as the dog, making the house her nest while the dog lives largely out-of-doors. It is chiefly at the late hours of the night that the cat goes abroad. I need not tell any of you what follows. You have all heard the music of a cat concert and felt as if you would like to treat those midnight howlers as the witch-cats were treated of old. Caterwauling we call it, and of all the noises of the night it is far the worst.
Where did the cat come from? That no one can tell exactly. There are wild cats in many parts of the world, we find them in Asia, in Europe, in Africa, in America, but none of them just like our household cat. The fact is that cats differ in different parts of the world and they may have come from several species. The Gloved Cat of Nubia comes nearest to the house cat in size and the shape of the head and tail, but in other ways is unlike it. So, on the whole, we are still in the dark about the origin of the cat.
One thing we do know, and this is that the cat has kept more of its wild ways than the dog. In its nightly rambles it is like the wild-cat of the woods. And even in the house it is a little too ready to show its claws. It will scratch where a dog would not think of biting. It is said that the cat loves places much more than it does people, and in moving from one house to another it is hard to get the cat away. It loves its old haunts more than its old friends.
The cat walks on its toes like the lion and tiger and all its other wild relations. But its claws do not touch the ground. They are drawn up into a sort of sheath and kept sharp for use as a soldier keeps his sword sharp in its scabbard. The paws being covered with fur, its step is silent and its movements are quiet and cautious, as many a mouse has found out.
