One result of perusing such interesting papers on “the Intellectuality of
Domestic Animals” as that which lately appeared in the _Dublin University
Magazine_, should be the publication of similar facts; another, the
promotion of that kindness towards the inferior creation which is still,
alas! so sparingly manifested. I therefore propose stuffing a cranny
of the _Irish Penny Journal_ with a few particulars relating, firstly,
to the maternal and filial piety of the cat; secondly, to the humanity
(or, psychologically speaking, brutality) of the same animal. Of the
facts illustrative of the former virtues I was an eye-witness--those
illustrative of the latter I had from a member of the family in which
they occurred.
In my early home two cats, a mother and a son, formed part of the
establishment. The former, a dark-grey matron, rejoiced in the euphonious
name of SMUT--the colour of the latter may be inferred from his
appellation, FOX. Smut was, to be brief, the most lady-like cat I ever
saw; Fox was a huge Dan Donnelly of a brute, a very hero of the slates,
and the terror of all the cats in the neighbourhood, _save one_; he
walloped them right and left; and many a smirking sylph of the gutters,
wont to pick her steps daintily to avoid all possible contact with the
wet, was seen to scamper away screaming when Fox appeared in view, for
truth obliges me to record that he spared neither age nor sex. Nor was he
formidable to the brute creation alone--humanity often suffered under his
visitations. There was no keener forager among the larders and pantries
of the neighbourhood. A poor dancing-master who had a way of leaving his
window open was most frequently victimized; for as the said window was
_convenient_ to the low roof of a back house, our hero used to quietly
walk in and purvey to his liking. In the recess of a chimney, and several
feet above the roof of our house, was a kind of small platform, where
Master Fox was usually pleased to regale himself on his ill-gotten gains.
One day I saw him with a calf’s or lamb’s pluck in his mouth, twice as
long as himself, darting aloft towards his refectory. The weight of the
booty several times dragged him back; but he persevered till he gained
his point: it was a sight ludicrous beyond all imagining.
But as it was not every day Master Fox could mulct the circumambient
dancing-master in a beef-steak or a calf’s pluck, he often returned home
hungry; and I am now come to the point of proving the “intellectuality”
of Madam Smut, as evidenced in her maternal piety. Within the
kitchen-door lay a mat, in a hole in which she daily hid a portion of her
lights. She was generally dozing before the fire when her son came in for
the night, and whenever I happened to follow him and watch her movements,
she invariably looked up to see whether he had scented the provender:
and when satisfied on that point, coiled herself up to sleep again. But
her maternal tenderness never interfered with her matronly dignity. Woe
betide Fox, if, in proceeding to take his place at the fire, he attempted
to pass between her and it. She would instantly spring up and deal him
a dab, which prevented for that time a repetition of the indecorum. I
have seen him steal most cautiously along the forbidden path in the
presumption that she was asleep, but I do not remember to have ever seen
him effect a passage. I have said that he leathered all the cats about
him save one--that one was his mother. Determined pugilist and fire-eater
as he was, he never returned the dab she gave him.
The fact of which I was only an ear-witness may be briefly related. A
lady of this city observing one day a wretched kitten which had been
ruthlessly flung into the street before her residence, had it taken into
the house and carefully tended. Some time after, when it had grown into
a thorough-bred mouser, a strange cat with a broken leg hobbled into the
yard, where it was discovered by the foundling, which immediately took
charge of it, and regularly allotted to the sufferer a portion of its own
daily food till it was sufficiently recovered to shift for itself.
As a warm friend of the inferior creation, I was much pleased to find
their cause pleaded towards the close of the article, which gave rise
to the present sketch, and a just encomium passed on the author of “the
Rights of Animals.” And much was I gratified to find that the same cause
appears to maintain an abiding interest in the bosom of the first of
living poets. “C. O.” alludes as follows to a conversation he had with
Mr Wordsworth on the subject:--“I remember an observation made to me
by one of the most gifted of the human race--one of the stars of this
generation--the poet of nature and of feeling--the good and the great Mr
Wordsworth. Having the honour of a conversation with him after he had
made a tour through Ireland, I in the course of it asked what was the
thing that most struck his observation here as making us differ from the
English; and he without hesitation said it was the ill-treatment of our
horses: that his soul was often, too often, sick within him at the way
in which he saw these creatures of God abused.” One evening, which I
had the happiness of spending at Rydal Mount, the very same subject was
broached by Mr W. Defend my countrymen I could not, but I parried the
attack by showing that other segments of the united kingdom had little
right to boast over them in this particular. This I proved by adverting
to the notorious cat-skinning of London--a horror unknown in Ireland,
bad as we are--and to certain atrocious cruelties which had just been
perpetrated on some horses in Sutherland (though I must confess that I
know too little of Scotland to pronounce whether its national character
is tarnished by cruelty to animals or not). And much was I surprised when
the son of the poet threw discredit on the character of one of the first
of London newspapers, from which I had cited a recent case in proof of
my assertion. It was in 1833 I visited Rydal Mount. Should this paper
reach the eye of Mr W. jun., he may find my statement corroborated, and
the perpetration of the barbarous trade demonstrated, by referring to the
case of Elizabeth Rogerson, an old offender, who in 1839 was condemned
to the ridiculously lenient penalty of two months’ imprisonment for the
crime, without hard labour. A diametrically opposite opinion respecting
the treatment of horses in Ireland was once expressed to me by another
English gentleman of some celebrity in the religious world. He passed an
encomium on the kindness to animals observable in this country, from the
habit he had noticed among the drivers of jaunting-cars, during his short
stay in Dublin, of feeding their horses from their hands with a wisp of
hay at leisure moments--a pitch of humanity just equivalent to that of
greasing the wheels of their vehicles.
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