Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 224, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 September 1914 — Cat Swims and Shuns Rats; Hobnobs With Canary [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Cat Swims and Shuns Rats; Hobnobs With Canary

CHICAGO. —Mike Is a black and brown tortolße-colored alley cat with tinusual ways. Among - the modern and civilized things that Mike does is to take a swim In the bathtub each morning, act as a playfellow to the canary

bird, and race with the swiftness of a Nancy Hanks after its owner to work up an appetite for breakfast In the year’s brief span of life neither a rat nor a mouse has crossed Mike's path. The alley cat has been so hopelessly lost In civilization that a rat could pass by unrecognized, without arousing the feline Instinct for destructiveness^ Mrs. Pauline E. Willlson of 128 East Grand avenue found Mike, nine days old, in an alley with many broth-

ers and sisters. She brought Mike up on a bottle, she said. "When a kitten I threw Mike Into the bathtub for a swim,” said Mrs. Willlson. "Now I cannot leave a basin of water around, for Mike just loves to stand In a basin of water. In warm days the cat swims in the bathtub three times a day. At the bathing beach I tie a string around his neck to keep Mike from going too far out from the shore. Sitting under a hose 1b the cat’s delight. «, "Mike never has had any antipathy for Teddy, the canary, either. One of the cat's pastimes is to doze with one eye open while the canary hops about on a pillow or sings on the back of a chair. Sometimes the bird brushes Mike's seven-inch whiskers, but there Is no disturbance between the two at all.” The cat sits up like a dog and enjoys being treated roughly. Although Mike weighs 1? pounds, nothing can be more agile than the erstwhile alley cat , Alderman Hugo Krause of the Anti-Cruelty society approved of Mike’s sanitary way of bathing and Bald the beaches should be open to animals as well as human beings.