CATS.

Eve Lawless.

THERE are women in this world, and men, too, who, I think, were intended for cats instead of human beings. Notice their soft velvety paws as they beg some favor of you; and then offend them, I’ll be bound you’ll see the claws, and feel them, too.

That person, who creeps around your house with stealthy tread and catlike caution, take my word for it, means mischief, and if you don’t hear some rumors regarding yourself, then I am no prophet.

A cat will kill a bird, eat it, wash her paws, and look up in your face, as though she said, “I don’t see who could have eaten that canary.” Can’t you think of some individual who bears a resemblance to that cat?

Hasn’t some one been casting aspersions upon your character, and said foul things about you, and then licked her paws—I mean washed her hands—and put on a grave-yard look, saying, at the same time, “How can people talk so about their neighbors?”

I hate these cats. I want to have a person candid, upright and outspoken, not palaver before your face, and backbite you when you haven’t the ghost of a chance to defend yourself. It always makes me shiver to hear a catlike tread.

Hallo! Here comes another cat. This time it comes in the shape of an anonymous correspondent, who wishes Eve to write to him on Love! I beg your pardon; I don’t write to promiscuous people, and especially to those who are ashamed to write more than their initials. When a man is not willing to sign his name fair and square to a letter, it doesn’t strike me that he can be any too proud of it. This anonymous letter-writing is of too catlike a nature to suit me.

Have I any more cats handy? I think so. Imagine you have written a poem; some friend praises it, stroking your fur the right way, figuratively speaking. Let another friend tell you of its faults, rubbing the fur contrariwise, won’t you spit, and scratch, and mew something about somebody’s having no taste? Why are we plagued with so many catlike attitudes?