[6]A feverish cold.
[6]A feverish cold.
[6]A feverish cold.
One result of perusing such interesting papers on “the Intellectuality of Domestic Animals” as that which lately appeared in theDublin University Magazine, should be the publication of similar facts; another, the promotion of that kindness towards the inferior creation which is still, alas! so sparingly manifested. I therefore propose stuffing a cranny of theIrish Penny Journalwith a few particulars relating, firstly, to the maternal and filial piety of the cat; secondly, to the humanity (or, psychologically speaking, brutality) of the same animal. Of the facts illustrative of the former virtues I was an eye-witness—those illustrative of the latter I had from a member of the family in which they occurred.
In my early home two cats, a mother and a son, formed part of the establishment. The former, a dark-grey matron, rejoiced in the euphonious name ofSmut—the colour of the latter may be inferred from his appellation,Fox. Smut was, to be brief, the most lady-like cat I ever saw; Fox was a huge Dan Donnelly of a brute, a very hero of the slates, and the terror of all the cats in the neighbourhood,save one; he walloped them right and left; and many a smirking sylph of the gutters, wont to pick her steps daintily to avoid all possible contact with the wet, was seen to scamper away screaming when Fox appeared in view, for truth obliges me to record that he spared neither age nor sex. Nor was he formidable to the brute creation alone—humanity often suffered under his visitations. There was no keener forager among the larders and pantries of the neighbourhood. A poor dancing-master who had a way of leaving his window open was most frequently victimized; for as the said window wasconvenientto the low roof of a back house, our hero used to quietly walk in and purvey to his liking. In the recess of a chimney, and several feet above the roof of our house, was a kind of small platform, where Master Fox was usually pleased to regale himself on his ill-gotten gains. One day I saw him with a calf’s or lamb’s pluck in his mouth, twice as long as himself, darting aloft towards his refectory. The weight of the booty several times dragged him back; but he persevered till he gained his point: it was a sight ludicrous beyond all imagining.
But as it was not every day Master Fox could mulct the circumambient dancing-master in a beef-steak or a calf’s pluck, he often returned home hungry; and I am now come to the point of proving the “intellectuality” of Madam Smut, as evidenced in her maternal piety. Within the kitchen-door lay a mat, in a hole in which she daily hid a portion of her lights. She was generally dozing before the fire when her son came in for the night, and whenever I happened to follow him and watch her movements, she invariably looked up to see whether he had scented the provender: and when satisfied on that point, coiled herself up to sleep again. But her maternal tenderness never interfered with her matronly dignity. Woe betide Fox, if, in proceeding to take his place at the fire, he attempted to pass between her and it. She would instantly spring up and deal him a dab, which prevented for that time a repetition of the indecorum. I have seen him steal most cautiously along the forbidden path in the presumption that she was asleep, but I do not remember to have ever seen him effect a passage. I have said that he leathered all the cats about him save one—that one was his mother. Determined pugilist and fire-eater as he was, he never returned the dab she gave him.
The fact of which I was only an ear-witness may be briefly related. A lady of this city observing one day a wretched kitten which had been ruthlessly flung into the street before her residence, had it taken into the house and carefully tended. Some time after, when it had grown into a thorough-bred mouser, a strange cat with a broken leg hobbled into the yard, where it was discovered by the foundling, which immediately took charge of it, and regularly allotted to the sufferer a portion of its own daily food till it was sufficiently recovered to shift for itself.
As a warm friend of the inferior creation, I was much pleased to find their cause pleaded towards the close of the article, which gave rise to the present sketch, and a just encomium passed on the author of “the Rights of Animals.” And much was I gratified to find that the same cause appears to maintain an abiding interest in the bosom of the first of living poets. “C. O.” alludes as follows to a conversation he had with Mr Wordsworth on the subject:—“I remember an observation made to me by one of the most gifted of the human race—one of the stars of this generation—the poet of nature and of feeling—the good and the great Mr Wordsworth. Having the honour of a conversation with him after he had made a tour through Ireland, I in the course of it asked what was the thing that most struck his observation here as making us differ from the English; and he without hesitation said it was the ill-treatment of our horses: that his soul was often, too often, sick within him at the way in which he saw these creatures of God abused.” One evening, which I had the happiness of spending at Rydal Mount, the very same subject was broached by Mr W. Defend my countrymen I could not, but I parried the attack by showing that other segments of the united kingdom had little right to boast over them in this particular. This I proved by adverting to the notorious cat-skinning of London—a horror unknown in Ireland, bad as we are—and to certain atrocious cruelties which had just been perpetrated on some horses in Sutherland (though I must confess that I know too little of Scotland to pronounce whether its national character is tarnished by cruelty to animals or not). And much was I surprised when the son of the poet threw discredit on the character of one of the first of London newspapers, from which I had cited a recent case in proof of my assertion. It was in 1833 I visited Rydal Mount. Should this paper reach the eye of Mr W. jun., he may find my statement corroborated, and the perpetration of the barbarous trade demonstrated, by referring to the case of Elizabeth Rogerson, an old offender, who in 1839 was condemned to the ridiculously lenient penalty of two months’ imprisonment for the crime, without hard labour. A diametrically opposite opinion respecting the treatment of horses in Ireland was once expressed to me by another English gentleman of some celebrity in the religious world. He passed an encomium on the kindness to animals observable in this country, from the habit he had noticed among the drivers of jaunting-cars, during his short stay in Dublin, of feeding their horses from their hands with a wisp of hay at leisure moments—a pitch of humanity just equivalent to that of greasing the wheels of their vehicles.
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Printed and published every Saturday by GUNN and CAMERON, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin; and sold by all Booksellers.