CATS ON THE FENCE.

Some idiot has invented a “cat teaser” to put on fences to keep cats from sitting there and singing.  It consists of a three-cornered piece of tin, nailed on the top of the fence.  We hope none of our friends will invest in the patent, for statistics show that while cats very often sit on fences to meditate, yet when they get it all mediated and get ready to sing a duet, they get down off the fence and get under a currant bush.  We challenge any cat scientist to disprove the assertion.

HOW SHARPER THAN A HOUND’S TOOTH.

Years ago we swore on a stack of red chips that we would never own another dog.  Six promising pups that had been presented to us, blooded setters and pointers, had gone the way of all dog flesh, with the distemper and dog buttons, and by falling in the cistern, and we had been bereaved via dog misfortunes as often as John R. Bennett, of Janesville, has been bereaved on the nomination for attorney general.  We could not look a pup in the face but it would get sick, and so we concluded never again to own a dog.

The vow has been religiously kept since.  Men have promised us thousands of pups, but we have never taken them.  One conductor has promised us at least seventy-five pups, but he has always failed to get us to take one.  Dog lovers have set up nights to devise a way to induce us to accept a dog.  We held out firmly till last week.  One day we met Pierce, the Watertown Junction hotel man, and he told us that he had a greyhound pup that was the finest bread dog—­we think he said bread dog, though it might have been sausage dog he said—­anyway he told us it was blooded, and that when it grew up to be a man—­that is, figuratively speaking—­when it grew up to be a dog full size, it would be the handsomest canine in the Northwest.

We kicked on it, entirely, at first, but when he told us hundreds of men who had seen the pup had offered him thousands of dollars for it, but that he had rather give it to a friend than sell it to a stranger, we weakened, and told him to send it in.

Well—­(excuse us while we go into a corner and mutter a silent remark)—­it came in on the train Monday, and was taken to the barn.  It is the confoundedest looking dog that a white man ever set eyes on.  It is about the color of putty, and about seven feet long, though it is only six months old.  The tail is longer than a whip lash, and when you speak sassy to that dog, the tail will begin to curl around under him, amongst his legs, double around over his neck and back over where the tail originally was hitched to the dog, and then there is tail enough left for four ordinary dogs.

If that tail was cut up into ordinary tails, such as common dogs wear, there would be enough for all the dogs in the Seventh Ward, with enough left for a white wire clothes line.  When he lays down his tail curls up like a coil of telephone wire, and if you take hold of it and wring you can hear the dog at the central office.  If that dog is as long in proportion, when he gets his growth, and his tail grows as much as his body, the dog will reach from here to the Soldier’s home.