New times give the keeper new excuses. Taxed with a cat's
disappearance, he blames the motor-car; some day he will blame the
flying-ship; where a railway is at hand he always has a ready excuse.
We would be the last to suggest that when the mortal remains of a cat
are found on a road frequented by motor-cars the presumption is always
justified that the cat was slain by a keeper who endeavoured to put
the blame on an innocent driver. We are confident that many cats in
game-preserved places live to die from old age. Ten years is a ripe age
for a cat, but some die from accidents more natural than execution or
murder. Like the birds, when they know their hours to be numbered, cats
creep away to some quiet hiding-place to await death--perhaps beneath
the floor of an old barn, or among the rafters of a familiar roof,
where they hunted rats and mice in youthful days.
Now and again, in old buildings, death-chambers are discovered where
the skeletons of cats have been hidden among cobwebs and dust, perhaps
for hundreds of years.
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