Another correspondent, after describing a Cat and parrot in their amiable relationship, proceeds to the following narration:
"One evening there was no one in the kitchen. Cook had gone upstairs and left a bowl of dough to raise by the fire. Shortly after the Cat rushed up after her, mewing and making what signs she could for her to go downstairs, when she jumped up and seized her apron and tried to drag her down. As she was in such a state of excitement, cook went and found Polly shrieking, calling out, flapping her wings and struggling violently, up to her knees in dough and stuck quite fast.
"No doubt if she had not been rescued she would have sunk in the morass and been smothered."
Mr. Belshaw, writing to "Nature," says: "I was sitting in one of the rooms of a friend's house the first evening there, and on hearing a loud knock at the front door, was told not to heed it, as it was only the kitten asking for admission. Not believing it, I watched for myself, and very soon saw the kitten jump onto the door, hang on by one leg, and with the other forepaw right through the knocker, rap twice."
As being of general interest, I take the following explanation of the common theory that the Cat has nine lives, from "Zoological Recreations," by William J. Broderip, F.R.S.:
"The expostulating tabby in 'Gay's Fables' says to the old beldame:
"'Tis infamy to serve a hag,
Cats are thought imps, her broom a nag;
And boys against our lives combine,
Because, 'tis said, your cats have nine.
"The Cat probably owes this reputation to a nine-fold vitality, not only to its extraordinary endurance of violence and its recovery from injury, which frequently leaves it for dead, but also to the belief that a witch was empowered to take on her a Cat's body nine times."
In demonstrating the finer sensibilities of the feline race, Prof. Wood says: