A CAT'S TALE.
[To THE EDITOR OF MIR "SPECTATOR."] SIN,—We lately made friends with a starveling pariah eat of the gentler sex. Squint-eyed, white-coated, and yellow-tailed, as a domestic acquisition pussy left much to be desired. From haunting the stables and eking out a precarious existence in the garden of. the Consulate, she became a household pet, and adapted herself philosophically to her improved circumstances. With a keen sense of her obliga- tions as a paying guest she speedily rid the house of every rat, mouse, and bat which formerly frequented it. But having once established herself in the family circle she displayed marked intolerance of all visitors and strangers and, incited either by jealousy or the fear of eviction, lost no opportunity of inflicting on each and every one of them such grievous bodily harm as means and occasion placed at her disposal. Her scratches and bites bestowed thus indiscriminately are as much a source of vexation to strangers as they are embarrassing to me her patroness. At dinner one night pussy absented herself and could not be discovered. She was last seen on the roof of our house which, as is the custom in the Persian Gulf, is flat like a terrace, and stands about forty feet from the ground. It is fitted with numerous air shafts, which lead sheer down to the summer offices in the basement, and some of which are no longer in use and are boarded up at their lower end. On opening the office on the following morning our attention was drawn to the faint mewing of a cat from some hidden spot in the room, and the plaintive appeal was at length traced to a panel in front of one of the disused air shafts. On ripping it open pussy sprang out none the worse for her twelve hours' con- finement. She must have dropped forty feet in her hunt for lizards. It is satisfactory to feel that she has still, as far as we know, eight lives left.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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