The domestic cat; bird ... The domestic cat; bird killer, mouser and destroyer of wild life; means of utilizing and controlling it domesticcatbirdk00forbrich Year: 1916 31 the^ reign of Justinian, has left two epigrams in which he scores a cat for tearing off the head of a tame partridge.^ A poet of Bagdad bewails the fate of his cat killed with an arrow while robbing a dovecote, and Miss Repplier in one of her charming volumes reproduces his wail from the Arabic of Ibn Alalaf Alnaharwany;2 but the most celebrated ancient poem bewailing the cat's destructive proclivities is the ' Anathema Ma
The domestic cat; bird ... The domestic cat; bird killer, mouser and destroyer of wild life; means of utilizing and controlling it domesticcatbirdk00forbrich Year: 1916 31 the^ reign of Justinian, has left two epigrams in which he scores a cat for tearing off the head of a tame partridge.^ A poet of Bagdad bewails the fate of his cat killed with an arrow while robbing a dovecote, and Miss Repplier in one of her charming volumes reproduces his wail from the Arabic of Ibn Alalaf Alnaharwany;2 but the most celebrated ancient poem bewailing the cat's destructive proclivities is the ' Anathema Marantha' by John Skelton, in the 'Boke of Phylyp Sparowe,' in which he calls down upon the whole race of cats the vengeance of the gods, mankind and the monsters of all creation in punish- ment for the killing of a pet spar- row. The poem begins: — That vengeance I aske and crye By way of exclamacyon On all the whole nacyon Of cattes wild and tame God send them sorrowe and shame That cat eopecyally That slew so cruelly ,- * ^ n • u- j ^ r ^ • ,t< », I _^ „ .. ^ Cat stalking birds at a fountain. (From My lytell pretty sparrowe ^^ ^^,i^^t ^^^^^^ i^ ^^^ Neapolitan That I brought up at Carowe. Museum.) He devotes this cruel 'catte' to the tender mercies of the lions, leopards, 'dragones,' the formidable 'mantycors of the montaynes,' and hopes that 'the greedy gripes might tare out all thy trypes,' and so on and on and on. The little bird's mistress also joins in the denunciation. She wails: — Those vylanoua false cattes Were made for myse and rattes And not for byrdes smalle. The Cat a Birdcatcher in Modern Times. In every land, in every tongue, the cat has been noted as a slayer of birds. Maister Salmon, who published 'The Com- pleat English Physician' in 1693, describes the cat as the mortal enemy of the rat, mouse 'and every sort of bird which it seizes as its prey.' The French and Germans, particularly, have de- plored the destruction of birds by cats. M. Xavier
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