"ElizaLeeFollen-TrueStoriesAboutDogsAndCats" - читать интересную книгу автора (Follen Eliza Lee)

the least resistance, allowed herself to be shut into the basket by
a cloth tied over it. As soon as she saw the different members of
the family in the new house, she manifested her contentment.

In six months the family moved again. The cat again submitted
herself, and showed her preference to her friends over their house.

A cat has been known to nurse and bring up a rat with her own
kittens. I once took a little rabbit who was starving to death from
the neglect of its own mother, and placed it before the same cat who
preferred the people to the house. She had just come from nursing
her kittens, and when she saw the little trembling rabbit before
her, her first thought was, evidently to make a good meal of it. I
took up the little thing and caressed it, and then put it down
again. She now approached it in a motherly way, and looked at it;
its ears seemed evidently to puzzle her. After a while, she tried to
take it up as she did her kittens, but saw she could not safely;
then she went to her nest and mewed, and then came to me and rubbed
herself against me; and then went to the rabbit and licked it
tenderly; I now ventured to put the rabbit in with her kittens, and
she nursed, and took the best care of it.

A friend of mine who killed a squirrel not knowing that she had
young ones, took all the little squirrels, brought them into the
house, and put them before his pet cat who had lost all her kittens
but one. Pussy looked at them for a while; probably her cattish
nature thought a little of eating them; but her better nature soon
prevailed, for she took them, one after another, and carried them
all to her nest, and proved a faithful nursing mother to them, and
ere long there was no part of the house in which the old cat and her
roguish adopted children were not to be found.

What will not cats submit to from a loving child? I have seen a
child lie down with a cat for its pillow, and the cat merely move
herself a little, so as to bear the weight as easily as possible.

A cat can be taught to stand and walk on her hind legs, which seems
at first very disagreeable to her.

I remember, when I was a child, seeing a Maltese cat come in every
morning and wait till my father had finished his breakfast, then, at
a certain signal, rise up on her hind legs, and beg for her
breakfast, and take just what was given her with the utmost
propriety, asking for nothing more.

I will tell you a well-authenticated anecdote which I read the other
day. A cat had been brought up in close friendship with a bird. Now
birds, you know, are the favorite food of cats. One day she was seen
suddenly to seize and hold in her claws her feathered companion who
happened to be out of the cage.