Little boys, and those too, sometimes the sons of respectable parents who ought to have taught them better, are often dreadfully cruel to cats, stoning them wherever found, and setting dogs to worry them to death.
A lady, a friend of mine, once attracted by the heartrending cries of a cat, found two young fiends, with a pretty pussy tied in an apron, gouging its eyes out with a nail!
A common form of cruelty to cats, in some rural districts of England, is that of tying two of them together by the tails and hanging them over a rope or pole to fight to the death.
Such cases as that of cutting cats’ tails off for wanton mischief, burning or boiling cats alive, though not unknown, I am happy to say are very rare.
Now, considering how very useful an animal a cat is, I think it is high time the law interfered to protect her from violence and ill-usage.
I should like to see a tax imposed upon all cats, and a home for lost cats, precisely on the same principles as the home for lost and starving dogs, only with this difference, that there should be no reward offered for bringing a cat to the home. Remember this, that a stranger or starving cat will come to anyone who says a kind word to it, so policemen would have no difficulty in catching them.
The revenue from the imposition of even a small tax would be very large, and it would not only help to clear the country of a whole army corps of thieving, prowling, homeless cats, but give to the cats of respectable people a greater value in the eyes of the law, and a greater chance of taking their walks abroad without being molested.
We have a law to protect even our wild birds, why not one for the protection of my friend the harmless, useful cat?
In conclusion, let me assure lovers and owners of cats, that, as the law stands at present, the only way to keep their favourites alive, and free from danger, is to be kind to them, feed them well and teach them, as far as possible, to keep to the house at night.
We think that men who kill, and trap, and injure our cats are exceedingly cruel. And so they are, and I hope they will in time learn to be a shade more merciful. At the same time, don’t forget that the temptation to take revenge upon a cat for vines destroyed, beautiful flowerbeds torn up, favourite rabbits murdered in their hutches, and valuable pigeons torn and eaten in their dovecots, is a very great temptation indeed. You see, reader, there are two sides to every question.