Gottfried Mind, a celebrated Swiss painter, was called the _Cat
Raphael_, from the excellence with which he painted that animal. This
peculiar talent was discovered and awakened by chance. At the time when
Frendenberger painted his picture of the Peasant cleaving wood before
his Cottage, with his wife sitting by and feeding her child with pap out
of a pot, round which a cat is prowling, Mind cast a broad stare on the
sketch of this last figure, and said, in his rugged, laconic way, “That
is no cat!” Frendenberger asked, with a smile, whether he thought he
could do it better? Mind offered to try; went into a corner, and drew
the cat, which Frendenberger liked so much that he made his new pupil
finish it out, and the master copied the scholar’s work--for it is
Mind’s cat that is engraved in Frendenberger’s plate. Prints of Mind’s
cats are now very common.