The Departure of Cats
We suppose that more cats disappear from the domestic hearth in February than in any other month. The gamekeeper may or may not know more about this than he will admit—it is certain that the cats go, and it is true that many of them turn up again. Whatever the February fate of the cat, the nearest keeper to its home bears the blame of having spirited it away. He may deny all—that he knows anything about the cat or its colour or its fate—but the more he denies the more strongly will he be suspected, the more furiously accused. One old keeper met all inquiries about the departure of cats with this sound piece of wisdom: "If ye makes 'em bide at 'ome, there won't be no need for wantin' 'em to come back."
Skeletons and Cobwebs
New times give the keeper new excuses. Taxed with a cat's disappearance, he blames the motor-car; some day he will blame the flying-ship; where a railway is at hand he always has a ready
excuse. We would be the last to suggest
that when the mortal remains of a cat are found on a road frequented by motor-cars the presumption is always justified that the cat was slain by a keeper who endeavoured to put the blame on an innocent driver. We are confident that many cats in game-preserved places live to die from old age. Ten years is a ripe age for a cat, but some die from accidents more natural than execution or murder. Like the birds, when they know their hours to be numbered, cats creep away to some quiet hiding-place to await death—perhaps beneath the floor of an old barn, or among the rafters of a familiar roof, where they hunted rats and mice in youthful days.
Now and again, in old buildings, death-chambers are discovered where the skeletons of cats have been hidden among cobwebs and dust, perhaps for hundreds of years.
The Persecuted Magpie
Magpies will soon be exterminated in many parts of the country unless they receive special protection. Like sparrow-hawks, the tribe suffers collectively for the sins of the individual. The ordinary magpie is no more harmful to the interests of game than the ordinary rook. His beauty, certainly, is far more striking. But he has been given a bad name; and magpies are destroyed on every possible occasion. The keeper finds the magpie only too easy to destroy, in spite of the bird's wonderful keenness of eye and his wary ways.