Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 72, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 March 1913 — Refuses to Continue as Undertaker for Felines [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Refuses to Continue as Undertaker for Felines

CHICAGO.— “Hereafter police officers will not bury dead cats, unless found upon public highways.” Edward Sieber, chief of police at Wilmette, a suburb of Chicago, nailed this sign on the wall of the police station the other day. Then he sank wearily into a chair. “That'll hold them for a while. I _ guess,” he said with a sigh. “I have ■been the official undertaker for the Blast pet cat, and hereafter Wilmette ' people will have to bury their ewn pets." Nine lives apparently Is not enough for the felines of Wilmette, as during the last two weeks twenty-five or thirty furry pets have succumbed. Chief of Police Sieber told of the woes of being an undertaker to cats. "During the last couple of weeks,” he said, "I have been called upon at •11 hours of the day and night to bury dead cats. “Atiftrst I would leave the work of the office and comply with the request of some woman who informed me

with a lachrymose vdice that her pot cat had died. But when they started calling me from my slumbers, and asking me to come and ‘bury, poor Tom’ right away, I hung up this sign.” rains are partly responsible for the increase in the cat death I%te, according to the chief. The rains have filled empty salmon cans with water, and the cats, though accustomed to “dry” Wilmette, must drink. The water is often poison, death ensuing within a few hours As far as could be learned, no pedl freed felines have succumbed, the “mortality” being confined to cats of common degree.