Certain it is that Cats are disappearing; that is to say the common friendly Tabbies and Tommies of the town we used to see doing their morning marketing in the ash cans, or with whom we were wont to pass the time of day in the neighboring door-yards.

In the last week I have seen only two street cats and only one to speak to, and that one was a stray orphan kitten who had been adopted by a kind-hearted bookbinder; the other when I would have accosted her gave me one strange look and vanished.

I glanced hurriedly down at my shoes as my hands flew instinctively to my necktie and hat, but the foot-gear were mates (of long standing) and the hat and tie were each in its proper place; nothing was there about my attire to shock the sensibilities of the most fastidious feline!

What did it mean? No cat had ever treated me with such discourtesy before. Then it was that I bethought me of how few of the feline brotherhood or sisterhood I had seen abroad of late.

Have they been carried off by an epidemic? Do cats catch influenza? or catalepsy? Has the scrap-market been affected by the high cost of living? Has the percentage of nutriment in the garbage can diminished to the vanishing point? Have the mice struck for shorter hours?

As I pondered thus at the corner of a lowly street, there tripped past my line of vision a fur coat whose opulence and sheen made its background of untidy brick and stone seem doubly dull and dingy. The motive power of this unlikely pelt was (as far as could be seen) lisle thread and oxford ties but I made no further note of the girl; my mind was fixed on the coat—it was the third of its kind I had observed in as many minutes in that mean street.

A shiver ran through me; I had seen a ghost, a procession of ghosts. It was as if a ouija board had suddenly screamed miaou!

And they say cats come back.