ORIGIN AND ANTIQUITY OF THE DOMESTIC CAT.

Gentle Reader,—I throw myself on your leniency. The other day my publisher beckoned me into his private office, behind the shop—a sanctum chiefly remarkable for the solemn air of dusty gloom, and the aristocratic cobwebbiness, which prevails in it; and says that gentleman to me,—

“You must give us a chapter on the origin and antiquity of the D. C.”

“But,” I implored, “I’m not writing about the ancestorial cat, plague take her! It is the history of the present puss, with glimpses of the coming cat, that I wish to give.”

“Never mind,” said he, “say something; people expect it.”

“It will be so dry,” I continued.“Then make it all the shorter.”

Heigho! it is very like shoving a man forward by the shoulder, and asking him to make a speech, when he feels that he can’t say Bo! to a goose; or putting a fiddle into one’s hand, and asking him for a selection from his favourite opera, when he isn’t in the humour to play; when, in fact, the fiddle feels like a pair of bellows, and the bow as heavy as the kitchen poker. Origin and antiquity indeed! I dreamt about origin and antiquity all night, and had origin and antiquity on the brain for a week after. However, needs must when the devil—hem! I mean one’s publisher—drives.

Determined, therefore, to write a most learned essay on the origin and antiquity of the D. C., I ordered a cab one morning, and—

“Where for?” says Cabby, and—

“British Museum,” says I.

Arrived at the reading room—N.B. I had taken a ream of foolscap with me, a box of Gillott’s extra fine, and my brandy-flask filled (for this once only) with ink—“I want,” said I, to a man who came at my beck, “all the books you may have in this little place, which may bear reference directly or indirectly to the subject of cats. Cats, sir,” I repeated more emphatically, because I thought he smiled. “Bring Herodotus, the father of cat-history, and Lady Cust, the mother of ditto; bring Jardine, and RÜppel, and Pennant, and Bell; also Temminck, Lonnini, and Hietro dello Valli; bring Daubenton the Egyptian, and Sulliman the Persian, Professor Owen, the erudite Darwin, and the learned Faust, and—Mephistopheles too, if procurable; and, look here, just throw in a few Russian, Hungarian, and Turkish authorities, and don’t forget to bring lexicons to match.” The man groaned, and went for a barrow. Half an hour afterwards I was seated at my desk, and if ever book-man had cause for joy, I was that individual. The illustrious authorities were piled so high above me, that an accident would have resulted in burial alive; they were behind me, before me, I sat upon them, and I had them for footstools. But still I was not happy. I leant my head on the ream of foolscap, and tried to compose myself before I composed anything else. Presently I was roused from my reverie, by hearing some one close alongside of me make the remark, “Hem! hem!” clearing his throat as if to speak. On looking up, I beheld on the desk before me the queerest little old man ever I saw in my life. Taking him all and all, he couldn’t have been anything like a yard long. His legs, not longer nor thicker than sheep shears, were encased in silken hose and knee-breeches; his shrivelled body bedecked in tight-fitting velveteens, with long hair tied in a cue and worn as a tail, while his face looked for all the world like a piece of ancient parchment, which had got accidentally wet, and been dried before the fire. And he sat with one leg crossed over his knee, on a folio nearly as big as himself, and took snuff.

“Ahem!” he remarked again, “take your pen, sir, and write.”

I hastened to obey, merely asking parenthetically, “On cats?”

“On cats,” was the reply.

“Far away in sunny Greece,” continued the little man, “484 years before the birth of Christ, and on a beautiful morning, when all nature looked fresh and gay, a fair and lovely girl might have been seen hastening—”

“Ah!” said I, “this will be interesting; heave round, ancient cockalorum.”

“Hastening, sir, for the midwife. If the day was bright and fine, still more enchanting was the scenery, for it was the suburbs of the city of Halicarnassus, now called Budron, in the province of Caria. And that morning, exactly at ten o’clock, was born into the world a sweet little babe, afterwards the great and illustrious Herodotus.

“He wrote—indeed I may say sang, for his whole history is one noble poem—of the ancient Medes and Assyrians, and of the long line of Persia’s kings; he sang the wars of Cyrus, and told the sad tale of the kingdom of Lydia, and he sung the wars of gallant Darius and the Scythians, and told of conquering Cambyses, and Egypt of the olden time; and last, but not least, sir, he wrote on Cats and Cat-life.

“Ay, sir, in Egypt in the good old times, pussy had her rights, had appreciation, had justice. If a boy had killed a cat with a stone, or a man murdered her with a dog, Lynch law would have been had on the very spot. Pussy was gently tended, cared for, and loved even to veneration, while alive, and after death, her little body had the honours of embalmment; her virtues were written on monumental tablets, and her memory cherished by the bereaved owners until the day of their death. In Turkey too, and especially in Persia, cats have been household pets as far back as man can remember. In many places hospitals were built for them, something after the style and fashion of your modern cat-homes; and in so great esteem was she held, that bloody riots and war itself were not unfrequently the result of injury done, or insult offered to pussy. In the quaint but beautiful love-songs of ancient Persia, so full of splendid imagery, do we not often find the poet comparing the bright eyes of his mistress to those of gentle pussy, or her winning ways to those of the domestic cat?”“The origin of the D. C. did you say, sir?”

“There is the tiger of Bengal, which you have seen at a distance—preferring no nearer acquaintance. There is the tiger-cat, or spotted leopard of Central Africa, which—I will do you the justice to say—you have shot; and there is the kolo-kolo of Guiana—”

“Isn’t,” insinuated I, “one kolo enough for a cat?”

“It is, sir,” said the little man severely; “a cat of two colours, and a very vicious beast he is besides. There is the small serval of Africa, and the ocelot, all too well known to need a description. But from none of all these springs the domestic cat. Neither does it descend from the wild cat, still common enough in Skye and Sutherland, in the mountains of Ireland, and spread here and there throughout Europe. It must be regarded as quite a distinct species. Domestic pussy will, at odd times, escape to the hills, and, becoming a nomad, breed with the wild-cat; but the kittens will be found far different, both in markings and shape. No, sir,” and here the little old man got very much excited, and took snuff so vehemently that the tears coursed down his wizened cheeks. “No, I fully believe with the to-be-immortal Darwin, that mankind is descended in a direct line from the oyster—”

“And how deliciously,” said I, “our forefathers eat with buttered roll and stout.”

“The oyster, sir,” he repeated, not heeding the interruption; “and I do unhesitatingly believe, that cats sprang in an equally direct line from the mussel.”

The little man then got into such an apparent ravel, among hard names and great unspellable authorities, that my head again drooped on the desk before me, and the next thing I remember, is the man—not the little old man; he had somehow or other mysteriously disappeared—touching me gently on the shoulder, and giving me to understand that it was time to be moving.

I did move. And I left the reading-room as wise—if not wiser—than when I entered it, on the origin and antiquity of the domestic cat.