The same gentleman tells me that in Coburg, Canada West, he knew a widow lady who had a Cat two feet in height, and beautifully marked. It was supposed to be a cross-breed between a wild and a domestic Cat. His youngest brother has often ridden on it when eight years old. It was very docile. It had been fed highly when young, and never showed the least desire to hunt mice or birds, or to leave the house.
With regard to the origin of the name “Cat-o’-nine tails,” referred to in a former chapter, a writer in _Notes and Queries_ says:--
“As there appears to be some uncertainty about the number of cords or tails attached to this whip, it may be a question whether, like its namesake, the animal, it did not originally commence by having only _one_ tail, and in course of time or fashion increase to _nine_, the number of lives proverbially allotted to our domestic friend Pussy.
“According to the Talmudists (_Maccoth_ iii. 10), the Jews, in carrying out their sentences of scourges, employed for that purpose a whip which had three lashes (Jahn’s Arch. Biblica, page 247), and it is stated in the _Merlinus Liberatus_, or _John Partridge’s Almanack for 1692_, that in “May, 1685, Dr. Oates was whipt,” and “had 2,256 lashes with a whip of six thongs knotted, which amounts to 13,536 stripes.” Sir John Vanbrugh, moreover, in the prologue to his play of the _False Friend_ (written A.D. 1702), alludes to this scourge in these words:--
“You dread reformers of an injurious age, You awful cat-o’-nine tails of the stage.”
“In _James’s Military Dictionary_, the cat, etc., is described as “a whip with nine knotted cords, with which the public soldiers and sailors are punished. Sometimes it has only _five_ cords.” The following passage occurs in Mr. Sala’s _Waterloo to the Peninsula_:--“A Dutch king, they say, introduced the cat-o’-nine tails in the British army: ere the Nassauer’s coming the scourge had _three_ thongs.”
There is a little story of feline affection for which I should have found a place in an earlier chapter. A lady had a Cat which she called “the Methodist Parson.” It used for years regularly to go away every Sunday morning, and return to its home on the next (the Monday) morning. It was never known to miss for a series of years, going away on the Sunday morning, except upon one occasion, when it stopped at home on the Sunday, and went away on the Monday morning. After this it never returned. In the same lady’s house upon a certain occasion, for some reason or other, the water was turned off. It was in the evening, and she had the tap of the water-butt turned on, with a tub under it, thinking they would get water when they wanted it. The family went to bed, forgetting that the water-tap was left turned on. In the course of the night the Cat came to the lady’s bedroom door, making a great noise, mewing. Her husband got up several times, and drove it away, but it returned again, and would go to the corner of the stairs, and then turn round, as if to see whether he was following it. At last he followed it down-stairs, and found the whole of the lower premises inundated, the water having been turned on from the main.