Nor eat, from nightly ambuscade
With watchful teeth your stores invade.
The story of Dick Whittington and his cat is doubtless true. All the pictorial and architectural relics of Whittington represent him with the cat—a black and white cat—at his left hand, or his hand resting on a cat. One of the figures that adorned the gate at Newgate represented Liberty with the figure of a cat lying at her feet. Whittington was a former founder. In the cellar of his old house at Gloucester there was found a stone, probably part of a chimney, showing in basso-rilievo the figure of a boy carrying in his arms a cat. Cowper has a poem on A Cat retired from Business. Heinrich’s verses are well known, or should be:
The neighbours’ old cat often
Came to pay us a visit.
We made her a bow and a courtesy,
Each with a compliment in it.
After her health we asked,
Our care and regard to evince;
We have made the very same speeches