The unjust prejudice concerning Pussy extant in the United States and England is not common in other lands. In fact, nowhere outside of the two great countries named is the prejudice tolerated. In Arabia, the Cat is worshiped and treated with tenderest care and the consideration which is her due for duties well performed and properly appreciated. Arabians, who have always expressed a great fondness for the feline, in their legends trace back the origin of the Cat to the time of building the great ark by Noah, and they have a fiction that Pussy was sneezed out of the nostrils of the king of beasts, the lion.

Whatever may be the origin of the Cat, one fact is undeniable, which is that she is not indigenous to America. Some naturalists declare that Pussy was brought over to America in a ship, and others have arrived at the conclusion that it was the wild-cat that took passage to our shores on a sailing vessel, and our kind little household pet has evoluted from the wild beast of the denser forests. The tutelary deity of the Cat is Diana, or Pacht, and, according to Plutarch, Pussy was not only sacred to the moon, but an emblem of it, and a figure of a Cat, fixed upon a sistrum, denoted the moon, just as a frog on a ring denoted a man in embryo. Hence Cats were treated with peculiar consideration in Egypt during the reign of the Pharaohs. Throughout Egypt, upon the death of the family pet, the entire household went into mourning, and the Cat's funeral was invariably celebrated with great pomp and impressive ceremonies. The bereaved owners of the deceased feline testified their sorrow and respect for the memory of the lost pet by shaving off their eyebrows. The body was always embalmed, and after the funeral placed in the temple of Babistis, where it was visited at stated intervals by members of the household and mourned over as one of the family.

In the days of Moses and the prophets it was a very serious thing to kill a cat. Diodorus relates a story of a Roman soldier, a man of bravery, who accidentally killed a Cat and was tried, convicted and condemned to die. This sentence was executed as religiously as if the Cat had been a human being. It was, in those days, a common thing to mete out severe punishment for injuries done to the feline, and it is to be regretted that some of the stern laws of the Egyptians, relating to outrages perpetrated upon the innocent animals, have not descended to this land and generation, for the better protection of the person of an innocent animal that harms no one and is of inestimable value to mankind.

The Arabs continue to venerate the Cat. Just out of Cairo stands a mosque, where, in modern times, Sultan El Daher provides all the Cats of Cairo and its vicinity in need of sustenance with a plentiful daily repast. From flat roof and from terrace, from the dusty streets and the multitudes of filthy alleys of the city, and from their thousands of hiding places, the hungry felines come, at the hour of prayer, to get their never-forgotten allowance of food, furnished by their ever-faithful friend of the Orient. It has been declared to be an outgrowth of superstition, but there is justice in the remark, "'tis true, 'tis pity, and pity 'tis, 'tis true," that the superstition exists only in the nobler breast of Sultan El Daher, who feeds his pets, the poor, needy and neglected waifs of other households, then, with a happy heart filled with the glow of a deed of charity well performed, he turns his face to the setting sun and prays for the blessing so richly earned.

Napoleon Bonaparte is said to have hated a Cat with as great a fervor as was expressed by him for his Austrian and Russian foes. In him we have a strong contrast to the great Sultan, although the ridiculous superstition of the great soldier of France has gone into a proverb. Even Shylock, with all his sins and hardness of heart, had a good word for Pussy, and expressed his disgust of a cowardly man by saying, "Some men there are that are mad if they behold a cat—a harmless, necessary cat."

France's greatest Cardinal, Richelieu, was of an opposite temperament to Napoleon, for he dearly loved the Cat. Mahomet possessed a strong passion for the feline, which has seldom been equaled. It is recorded of the immortal prophet that upon one occasion, when a particular favorite was lying asleep upon his sleeve, he cut off the sleeve and left Pussy in a peaceful slumber rather than disturb her rest. Horace Walpole had a favorite Pussy, and when she died he mourned her loss so much that the ever-living author of "Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard" wrote an ode on the death of Salina, the lovely Tabby of his friend. Many world-renowned people of all ages have been noted for possessing large families of Cats, a fact due, in some cases, to a superstition, but generally from an intense love for the innocent, beautiful and useful animal. The author of "The Doctor," Robert Southey, when he lived at Greta, near Keswick, possessed a large number of plump and healthy Cats, which the kitchen-maids nursed and the Keswick apothecary dosed.

In fact, from time immemorial Pussy has been a companion of the learned. Petrarch had his pet embalmed and Andrea Doria, one of the rulers of Venice, not only had his dead Cat's portrait taken, but also preserved her skeleton among his choicest mementos. The Cat of Cardinal Wolsey sat by his side when he gave audience or received princes. Rousseau loved Cats, and it is said of Sir Isaac Newton that he cut a large hole in his barn for his old cat and a smaller one, beside it, for the young kittens. Edgar Allen Poe wrote a thrilling tale of a black Cat, and even the ambitious, bloodthirsty Lady Macbeth alludes kindly to the household pet. Dr. Johnson had a Cat upon which he doted, and being seemingly desirous of perpetuating her fame, he taught her to eat oysters, a feat never recorded of any other Cat in history. Henry James, the novelist, wrote with his Cat upon his shoulder. The effusively polite, sensitively dilettante, conscienceless and steel-hearted Chesterfield had one redeeming trait, which was his love for Pussy, if such a cold-blooded man could be possessed of the faculty of loving. When he died, he left a pension to his Cats and their posterity after them. Paul de Kock, the French novelist, had a family of thirty Cats, and De Musset wrote apostrophes to Cats, in verse.

Chateaubriand was passionately fond of Cats, and when he was sent as an ambassador to the Pope, the latter could think of no more suitable present for the devoted son of the Church than his predecessor's favorite Cat, which present greatly pleased Chateaubriand and cost the great prelate nothing. There is no more familiar figure in the memory of an Englishman than Whittington, once Lord Mayor of London, with his Cat.

The Greek monks of the Island of Cyprus used to train the Cats to hunt and kill the serpents with which they were plagued. In Sicily the Cat is sacred to Saint Martha, and whoever, either by design or accident, kills one, it is believed, undergoes seven years of punishment. In Hungary they believe that a Cat must necessarily be a good mouser, and she is highly prized there for her inestimable qualities.