change. Its propensities are to meditation and contemplative
tranquillity, for which reason it has ever been held in reverence by
nations of a similar staid and composed disposition, and has been
the favourite companion and constant friend of grave philosophers
and thoughtful students. By the ancient Egyptians cats were held in
the highest esteem; and we learn from Diodorus Siculus, their 'lives
and safeties' were tendered more dearly than those of any other
animal, whether biped or quadruped. 'He who has voluntarily killed a
consecrated animal,' says this writer, 'is punished with death; but
if any one has even involuntarily killed a cat or an ibis, it is
impossible for him to escape death: the mob drags him to it,
treating him with every cruelty, and sometimes without waiting for
judgment to be passed. This treatment inspires such terror, that, if
any person happen to find one of these animals dead, he goes to a
distance from it, and by his cries and groans indicates that he has
found the animal dead. This superstition is so deeply rooted in the
minds of the Egyptians, and the respect they bear these animals is
so profound, that at the time when their king, Ptolemy, was not yet
declared the friend of the Roman people--when they were paying all
possible court to travellers from Italy, and their fears made them
avoid every ground of accusation and every pretext for making war
upon them--yet a Roman having killed a cat, the people rushed to his
house, and neither the entreaties of the grandees, whom the king
sent for the purpose, nor the terror of the Roman name, could
protect this man from punishment, although the act was involuntary.
I do not relate this anecdote,' adds the historian, 'on the
authority of another, for I was an eye-witness of it during my stay
in Egypt.'[5]

During their lives, the consecrated cats were fed upon fish, kept