Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 June 1886 — A Cat’s Nine Lives. [ARTICLE]

A Cat’s Nine Lives.

Of the cat it is commonly said, says a writer in Popular Science Monthly , that it has nine lives. By this saying nothing very definite is meant beyond the opinion that under various kinds of death the cat lives much longer than other animals that have to be killed by violent means. When any question is asked of the police or of other persons who have to take the lives of lower animals, they tell you, without exception, according to my experience, that the cat is the most difficult to destroy of all domestic animals, and that it endures accidental blows and falls with an impunity that is quite a distinguishing characteristic.

The general impression conveyed in these views is strictly correct up to a certain and well-marked degree. By the lethal death the value of the life of the cat is found to be at least three times the worth of the dog. In all the cases I have seen in which the exactest comparisons were made the cat outlived the dog. A cat and dog of the same ages being placed in a lethal chamber, the cat may, with perfect certainty, be predicted to outlive the dog. The lethal chamber being large enough to hold both the cat and the dog, the vapor inhaled by the animals being the same, with every other condition identical, the result, as an experimental truth, may be accepted without cavil. The differences, always well marked, are sometimes much longer than would be credible in the absence of evidence. I have onoe seen a cat falling asleep in a lethal chamber in the same period as a dog, remain breathing, literally, nine times longer, for the dog died in five minutes, and the cat not only continued to breathe in profoundest sleep for forty-five minutes, but would have been recoverable by simple removal from the vapor into fresh air, if it had been removed while yet one act of breathing continued. This, however, was exceptional, because the cat in the same lethal atmosphere as the dog does not, as a rule, live more than thrice as long —i. e., if the dog ceases to breathe in four minutes, the cat will cease in from ten to twelve minutes after falling asleep.