CHAP. IV. Tom the Cat is born of poor but honest parents. His mother dies in child-bed, his brothers and sisters, to the number of nine are sent adrift, and drowned.

Mab, the mother of Tom, was left a widow by a former husband, who had left behind him no great means to support her, and therefore she wisely thought it the best expedient she could make use of to change her condition once more, and enter into the state of matrimony. We are left in the dark, as to the person who performed the ceremony, nor are we certain, whether the Feline gentleman who tied them together, was regularly qualified to do his office, but he discharged it to the great satisfaction of both parties; though some are malicious enough to insinuate, that he went snacks with the bridegroom that very night, who not having it in his power to provide a wedding-supper, is reported by the best historians, to have left his wife in very unuxorious manner to run after a Rat, which served him for supper. Now as it is a wise child that knows his own father, so we dare not insist upon Tom’s being the lawful issue of Mowser, or the spurious child of the parson; be that as it will, he was brought into this troublesome world on the 29th. day of September, a day memorable for the perplexity which the generality of tenants are in, to find or raise money to pay their rents. On account of this day on which he was born, several of his father’s friends were for having him called Michael, but more solid arguments, which we never heard, being offered, he was called Tom. His poor mother having born nine helpless children beside himself, and being exhausted in spirits, by the hard labour which she underwent, expired in the company of the midwife, and some other good neighbours, of the Feline species, who performed their last office, and buried her in an adjacent Dunghill. Mab’s Mistress was seeking her, and having called to no purpose, found ten very fine bantlings lying under the bed, nine of which she drowned, and saved one, who happened to be our illustrious Hero, she took the care of Tom on herself, intending he should spend his days with her in regard to his mother Mab, of whom she never could get any tidings ever after; she did not care to put him out to nurse, having heard so many sad stories of those nurses daily employed to supply the foundling Hospital, and therefore she determined, to nurse him herself. This is the truest account we could collect from the best authors, concerning his birth; as to his genealogy, we did examine into that, and to that end ransacked several circulating libraries for Welch records, which we traced backwards even to the Cat of Whittington, but found nothing that we dared advance as truth, for we scorn to impose upon our readers, with reports or facts, which we cannot vouch for. Nevertheless we make no question, but Tom’s parents, by father and mother’s side, could put in their claim to as high a descent, in Feline genealogy as Whittinton’s Cat, or the famous Cat of Montaigne, who laughed at her Master for being such a fool, as to spend his time in playing with her, and actually told him so, or Montaigne himself is a liar, who very gravely reports it for truth in some of his essays.