Early Warning
An Italian businessman and his family in 18th century Messina owed their lives to their pet cats.
1783
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
An Italian businessman and his family in 18th century Messina owed their lives to their pet cats.
1783
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
Victorian cartoonist Charles Ross recounts a remarkable tale from 1783, about a Sicilian businessman who quite literally owed his life and the life of his whole family to their pet cats.
JUST before the earthquake at Messina,* a merchant of that town noticed that his Cats were scratching at the door of his room, in a state of great excitement. He opened the door for them, and they flew down-stairs and began to scratch more violently still at the street-door.
Filled with wonder, the master let them out and followed them through the town out of the gates, and into the fields beyond, but, even then, they seemed half mad with fright, and scratched and tore at the grass. Very shortly the first shock of the earthquake was felt, and many houses (the merchant’s among them) came thundering in ruins to the ground.
Messina has suffered several earthquakes, of which the quake of December 28th, 1908, which killed about 100,000 people, was the most destructive. Ross, however, must be thinking of the Calabrian earthquakes of 1783, a series of tremors over February and March that killed over 30,000 people and destroyed much of the ancient city, exceeding 5.9 in magnitude.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Where was the merchant when his cats first alerted him?
Upstairs in his house in Messina, Italy.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
A man heard a noise. He opened his bedroom door. His pet cats were there.
See if you can include one or more of these words in your answer.
IAttention. IIScratch. IIISee.