M. Champfleury, in his delightful book, "Les Chats," gives a good deal of information regarding the cats of ancient Egypt, and mentions the existence of funerary statues of women which bear the inscription Techau, the cat, in token of the patronage of the goddess Bast. Frenchmen occasionally call their wives ma chatte without attaching any hieratic association to that term of endearment.

According to ancient documents in the Louvre, we are enabled to surmise the name by which the cat was known in Egypt. It was Mau-Mai, Maau, or Maon. A tablet in the Berlin Museum, bearing the representation of a cat, dates from 1600 B. C., and another, two hundred years older, has an inscription in which the word "Mau" appears.

Amongst old Egyptian images in bronze and earthenware, we may often find the cat crouching with the symbolic eye, emblem of the sun, engraved upon its collar. In the British Museum there is a curious example of a toy in the shape of a wooden cat with inlaid glass eyes and a movable lower jaw well lined with teeth.

There is a tradition that Cambyses devised a scheme for the capture of the town of Peluse, which, if true, is one example among many of the devotion of the Egyptians to cats. It was in the fourteenth year of his reign that this king of Persia tried to effect an entry into Egypt, and he is said to have hit upon a clever strategy. Knowing that the garrison of the town was entirely comprised of Egyptians, he put at the head of his army soldiers each carrying in their arms a cat. The Egyptians, alarmed lest they might injure the sacred animals when destroving their enemies, consented rather to be vanquished. But for their scruples they might perhaps have repulsed the invaders, for the Persian soldiers could not well have done their share of the fighting while clasping in their arms restless and terrified cats!

It is strange that the cat was almost neglected by the Greeks and Romans. It is true that Grecian art working on such grand sweeping lines might fail to follow the insignificant yet graceful curves of the cat.. Therefore no Greek monument is adorned with a figure of the idol of Egypt, and Homer never gives a passing mention of the cat. Among the Greeks the cat was sacred to the goddess Diana. Mythologists pretend that Diana created the cat in order to throw ridicule upon the lion, an animal supposed to have been called into existence by Apollo with the intention of frightening his sister. This he followed up by producing a mouse, which Hecate's cat immediately ate up. A cat was often emblazoned on the shields and flags of Roman soldiers. That the cat was known at an early period in Italy we have proof in the curious mosaic in the Museum at Naples, which depicts one pouncing upon a bird. The date of this has been fixed at about one hundred years prior to the Christian era. In the Bordeaux Museum there is a tomb of the Gello-Roman period with a representation of a girl holding a cat in her arms and with a cock at her feet.

In those days the playthings and domestic animals belonging to children were buried with them.

From some of the oldest Indian fables we learn that the cat was domesticated in that country at a very early period. Her first appearance into China would seem to have been about 400 a. d. There is a curious ancient Chinese saying to the effect that "A lame cat is better than a swift horse when rats infest a palace."

Amongst the curious freaks in the natural world are mineral lusus. These are stones, agates, or marbles, which, by the action of the soil, air, or water during thousands of years, have assumed various forms, which we may interpret to represent human heads, trees, animals, and so forth. This illustration of a mineral lusus is taken on a reduced scale from a book by Aldrovandus, an Italian naturalist of the seventeenth century. The figure of the cat occurs, he says, in a slab of marble. It was also reproduced by Athanasius Kircher, the Jesuit, who copied many of Aldrovandus's engravings.

I think the most casual observer would pronounce this illustration to be the representation of a cat; and if, as we are led to believe, this and other figures are really the result of natural causes, we can only marvel at the wonderful correctness of outline and form in which through countless ages the substances comprising the specimen have arranged themselves.

We have no record that the cat became domesticated in Great Britain and France before the ninth century, when it would seem that she was by no means common, and considered of great value; for in the time of one of the old Princes of Wales, who died in 948, the price of a kitten before it could see was fixed at a penny, after it had captured a mouse, twopence; and if it gave further proofs of its usefulness it was rated at four-pence. This same prince, Howel the Good, issued an order that anyone who stole or killed a cat that guarded the prince's granary was to forfeit a milch ewe, its fleece, and lamb, or as much wheat as when poured on the cat suspended by its tail (the head touching the floor) would form a heap high enough to cover the top of the tail.

A Mineral Lusus.

A Mineral Lusus. (From An Old Engraving )

This is not only curious, as being an evidence of the simplicity of ancient customs, but it goes far to prove that cats were not aborigines of these islands. The large price set on them - if we consider the high value of specie at that time - and the great care taken of the improvement and breed of an animal that multiplies so quickly, are almost certain proofs of their being little known at that period. No doubt wild cats abounded in our islands, and this creature is described by Pennant as being three or four times as large as the house cat. The teeth and claws are, to use his expression, "tremendous," and the animal is altogether more robust. The tail of the wild cat is thick and as large at the extremity as it is in the centre and at the base; that of the house cat tapers to the tip. This ferocious creature, well named the British tiger, was formerly common enough in the wooded and mountainous districts of England, Scotland, and Wales, but owing to the attention paid to the preservation of game it has gradually become almost if not entirely exterminated. In olden times, when wild cats were hunted and captured, the principal use they were put to was to trim with their fur the garments of the ladies in the various nunneries scattered over the land.