Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 April 1884 — The Fable of the Cats. [ARTICLE]

The Fable of the Cats.

There was formerly an old woman, extremely gaunt and meager, that livedj in a little cottage as dark and gloomy as a fool’s heart. She had a cat that never saw any other than the likeness of bread—never beheld the face of aj stranger—and was forced to be con-i tented With only smelling the mice in, their holes, or to see the prints of theirfeet in the dust; or if, by any extraordinary chance, she happened to catch a mouse, she was like a beggar that discovers a treasure—her visage and her eyeg were inflamed with joy—and that booty served her for a whole week to-' gether. Nevertheless, because the cotn tage was still the mansion of famine, she still bewailed her wants. One day she was walking upon her house-top,! ready to perish with hunger, when she espied froqi thence another cat upon a neighboring wall, stalking along like a lion, as if counting her steps, and so fat that she could hardly go. The old woman’s cat, astonished to see a creature of her own species so plump and large, called to her with a loud voice, saying, “You look as if you came from one of the Khan of Kathai’s feasts. Tell me, I conjure you, how you got into such good condition?” “At a king’s table,” replied the other. I go to the house every day about dinner-time, and there I lay my paws upon some nice morsel or other, which serves me till the next day.” After some further discourse, the fat cat takes pity upon the lean one, and engages to conduct her to the King’s house on some future day. Meanwhile the depredations of the cats had been so remarkably outrageous the evening before the old woman’s cat went thither that orders were given to the servants to kill all the cats that could be found. In an evil hour, therefore, was it that our puss went thither and seized a piece of meat from a dish when she thought herself unobserved; for, while quietly solacing herself with such unwonted fare under the dresser, the meat was missed, she was discovered in her hiding place, and one of the men threw a knife at her, which wounded her severely in the breast. However, as a cat has nine lives, she made a shift to escape notwithstanding her wound; but in hbr flight, observing the blood streaming from .her breast, she said: “Well, let me but escape this time, and if ever I again quit my old haunts and my own mice for all the rarities of the king’s kitchen, may I lose all my nine lives at once!”— From the Persian. Of course it was a Hibernian auctioneer who said of a set of mourning jewelry which he was trying to dispose of that it was “just the sort of article he would purchase for his wife if she were a widow.”