Drink. It will save you a great deal of trouble, if you have a proper dish for pussy’s drink; and let it stand constantly in the same corner of the room. It must be a double dish, that is, two saucers joined together, one for water and the other for milk; and remember, it must be carefully cleaned every morning, for a highly-bred cat will not drink milk, if it is the least unsavoury, nor water unless it is pure and free from dust. It perhaps is not very generally known, that cats nearly always prefer pure water to milk, when they are really thirsty.
A great treat for pussy, when she is a little bit seedy—of a morning, perhaps, after having been on the spree all night, and the best of cats will go on the spree occasionally—is a saucer of nice creamy milk, made warm with water, and slightly sweetened with sugar. It sets her all to rights straight away, and you will not find her ungrateful for such kindness.
Housing. It is not at all an uncommon practice, in some parts of the country, for people to turn their cats out at night, before they themselves retire to rest. They do so, they will tell you, to prevent pussy from misbehaving in the house. Now such a practice cannot be too severely condemned. First and foremost, no well-trained cat, unless under the most extreme circumstances, such as sudden illness, etc., will make any filth in the house where she resides; for, as I have said before, there is no animal in the world more cleanly in its habits than the domestic cat. Secondly, the practice of turning pussy out of doors at night, is the very thing to engender filthy habits in her during the day. And lastly, people who treat their cats in this manner, are accountable, for all the weight of crime, that falls upon pussy’s shoulders. Badly-housed cats become vagrants and thieves, poor, starved-looking, beggarly brutes, and adepts at all mischief, besides being unhealthy, ugly, and filled with fleas. These are the cats that plunder pigeon lofts, steal chickens, tear up beautiful flower-beds, and murder valuable rabbits in cold blood. They—
“Sleep all day, and wake all night,
And keep the country round in fright.”
A cat that has been well fed and cared for by day, will seldom want to go out at night. If she does not feel sleepy, she will betake herself to the cellar, and have a little innocent flirtation with the mice or rats, or kill cock-roaches when everything else fails her.
Make your pussy’s bed on a couch or on the parlour sofa, or let her make it herself. Apropos of making beds: the other night I was lying on the sofa, prior to turning into bed—I had lowered the gas and admitted the moonlight—when Muffie entered, apparently in a great hurry to go to sleep. Seeing her master lying there, she placed her two forepaws on the sofa, and looking in my face,—
“Will you kindly get up out of that and let me lie down,” she said, speaking with her eyes.
“Not till I’m ready; I’ll see you hanged first,” replied I, speaking with mine.
“Very well, then,” said pussy; and she went straight to the table, jumped up and pulled off the cloth, deliberately rolled herself in it, and went to sleep. She pulled down the ink along with it, and soiled the carpet, but that was a matter for me and my landlady to settle between us; puss did not care a rat.
Never turn your cat out at night unless she asks to go.