Even Huxley was disposed to take a utilitarian view of cathood.  Even Cowper, who owed to the frolics of his kitten a few hours’ respite from melancholy, had no conception that his adult cat could do better service than slay rats.  “I have a kitten, my dear,” he wrote to Lady Hesketh, “the drollest of all creatures that ever wore a cat’s skin.  Her gambols are incredible, and not to be described.  She tumbles head over heels several times together.  She lays her cheek to the ground, and humps her back at you with an air of most supreme disdain.  From this posture she rises to dance on her hind feet, an exercise which she performs with all the grace imaginable; and she closes these various exhibitions with a loud smack of her lips, which, for want of greater propriety of expression, we call spitting.  But, though all cats spit, no cat ever produced such a sound as she does.  In point of size, she is likely to be a kitten always, being extremely small for her age; but time, that spoils all things, will, I suppose, make her also a cat.  You will see her, I hope, before that melancholy period shall arrive; for no wisdom that she may gain by experience and reflection hereafter will compensate for the loss of her present hilarity.  She is dressed in a tortoiseshell suit, and I know that you will delight in her.”

Had Cowper been permitted to live more with kittens, and less with evangelical clergymen, his hours of gayety might have outnumbered his hours of gloom.  Cats have been known to retain in extreme old age the “hilarity” which the sad poet prized.  Nature has thoughtfully provided them with one permanent plaything; and Mr. Frederick Locker vouches for a light-hearted old Tom who, at the close of a long and ill-spent life, actually squandered his last breath in the pursuit of his own elusive tail.  But there are few of us who would care to see the monumental calm of our fireside sphinx degenerate into senile sportiveness.  Better far the measured slowness of her pace, the superb immobility of her repose.  To watch an ordinary cat move imperceptibly and with a rhythmic waving of her tail through a doorway (while we are patiently holding open the door), is like looking at a procession.  With just such deliberate dignity, in just such solemn state, the priests of Ra filed between the endless rows of pillars into the sunlit temple court.

The cat is a freebooter.  She draws no nice distinctions between a mouse in the wainscot, and a canary swinging in its gilded cage.  Her traducers, indeed, have been wont to intimate that her preference is for the forbidden quarry; but this is one of many libellous accusations.  The cat, though she has little sympathy with our vapid sentiment, can be taught that a canary is a privileged nuisance, immune from molestation.  The bird’s shrill notes jar her sensitive nerves.  She abhors noise, and a canary’s pipe is the most piercing and persistent of noises, welcome to that large majority of mankind which prefers sound of any kind to silence.  Moreover, a cage presents just the degree of hindrance to tempt a cat’s agility.  That Puss habitually refrains from ridding the household of canaries is proof of her innate reasonableness, of her readiness to submit her finer judgment and more delicate instincts to the common caprices of humanity.