provocation whatever, turned wild, lived for a year or more in the woods
next our garden, hunting and fishing, although ceaselessly chased, and
called, and implored to revisit his afflicted family. He associated
sometimes with the neighbor's cat, but never, never more with humanity,
until finally we found his pathetic little frozen body one Christmas
near the barn. Do you remember Arnold's Scholar Gypsy? Our Scot was his
feline equivalent.... Have you counted in Prosper Merimee among the
confirmed lovers of cats? I remember a delightful little paragraph out
of one of his letters about _un vieux chat noir, parfaitement laid,
mais plein d'esprit et de discretion. Seulement il n'a eu que des gens
vulgaires et manque d'usage._"

Mrs. A.D.T. Whitney, who has written so many helpful stories for girls,
is another lover of cats. Cats do not lie curled up on cushions
everywhere in her books, as they do in Mrs. Spofford's. But in "Zerub
Throop's Experiment" there is an amusing cat story, which, she declares,
got so much mixed up with a ghost story that nobody ever knew which was
which. And the incident is true in every particular, except the finding
of a will or codicil, or something at the end, which is attached for
purposes of fiction.

A great deal has been written about the New York _Sun's_ famous
cats. At my request, Mr. Dana furnished the following description of the
interesting _Sun_ family. I can only vouch for its veracity by
quoting the famous phrase, "If you see it in the _Sun_, it is so."

"_Sun_ office cat (_Felis Domestica; var. Journalistica_).
This is a variation of the common domestic cat, of which but one family
is known to science. The habitat of the species is in Newspaper Row; its
lair is in the _Sun_ building, its habits are nocturnal, and it