Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 April 1885 — Cat-Skinning as a Trade. [ARTICLE]

Cat-Skinning as a Trade.

Last year over 1,500,000 cats were killed for their skins, which have become valuable as fur lining. The industry of cat-skin collecting as an industry is of very recent growth. If within so short a space of time the casual destruction, for their hides, of a few stray cats has assumed the respectable dimensions of a solid traffic, estimated in round numbers at hundreds of thousands of skins, what will it be a decade hence ? About the superiority of cat skills, in one way or another, over those of rat, rabbit, or squirrel, there is no question. The cost of production, too, can not be called excessive, seeing that each skin is stolen, and the whole original outlay is one stout stick for dispatching puss and a sack to carry her home ki, while the total working expenses are the wear and tear of shoe leather in tramping the streets for prey, and a very casual $2 penalty for such as are detected in the act. How, under such a combination of favoring circumstances, can the industry do anything but thrive?— Liverpool Courier.