Cat Stories
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Cat Stories’
Dr Johnson’s cat left James Boswell cold, but the great man himself would do anything to avoid hurting the little fellow’s feelings.
Dr Samuel Johnson has a reputation today as a master of put-downs and unkind cracks, but his private prayers and various passages from James Boswell’s biography show another, much gentler side. Here, we meet Hodge, the distinguished lexicographer’s cat in the 1760s.
On his travels through China and Tibet, Roman Catholic missionary Évariste Huc came across a novel way of telling the time.
Évariste Régis Huc was a Roman Catholic missionary who wrote of his travels through China, Tartary and Tibet at a time when such travels were rare for Europeans. The following anecdote tells how his party was momentarily stumped by a Chinese boy’s ability to tell the time by examining a cat.
A faithful feline bides his time until two criminals are brought to justice.
It is usual to suppose that cats are not loyal like dogs, or especially concerned with what does not directly affect them. But Victorian cartoonist Charles Ross tells us about a French cat whose sense of justice was truly single-minded.
A cat belonging to a Carthusian monastery in Paris gets a free lunch, but who is exploiting whom?
In his little book about cats, Victorian cartoonist Charles Ross describes the criminal career of a cat attached to a Carthusian monastery in Paris. His story confirms that cats are adept at all kind of thievery and opportunism, but also reminds us that they are not the only ones.
With the aid of a slice of beef, a Perth puss takes feline scheming to a new level.
Charles Henry Ross and his wife Isabelle Émilie de Tessier, alias Marie Duval, were the co-creators of Ally Sloper, ‘hero’ of one of the earliest strip cartoons, and the first recurrent character. Charles also had a fund of anecdotes proving that cats are just as clever as “their much-vaunted rival, the dog”.