Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 December 1908 — Cat Guards a Baby. [ARTICLE]

Cat Guards a Baby.

A baby that lives in a squalid tenement in the North End has a cat for a bodyguard to keep the rats from attacking it. The cat is tied to a bedpost.

“A few days ago,” said E. T. Brigham, of + he Helping Hand institute, “I visited a smhll shop on’ Fifth street, one of those ‘dumps’ where ‘da banan’ is sold in front, and where a living room is maintained in the rear. On the floor in the living room lay a baby sleeping. Picketed to a bedpost by a long, stout cord, was a cat. I askeu the woman who tied it there. “Sura,’ she said, ‘I tie-a da cat. Keep off-a da rat.’ “As we stood there -w r ’ould hear the rats squealing and rustling about in the flooring. Occaslonaly one stuck its head up through a hole. The cat would prick up its ears and the slow movement of the tip of its tail told that it was Watching. Then I saw th« wisdom of picketing It so near. “The woman told me that if the cat were not there the rats would be so bold they would swarm over the baby and Dlte it”—Kamas City Star.