matched cats in friends' houses, cats in shops, cats on farms, cats in the street, cats on walls, cats in memory, with that gentle, blue-grey purring creature which for me was the cat, the Cat, never to be replaced.

And besides, for some years my life did not include extras, unnecessaries, ornaments. Cats had no place in an existence spent always moving from place to place, room to room. A cat needs a place as much as it needs a person to make its own.

And so it was not until twenty-five years later my life had room for a cat.

2. Mother Pays More Attention to

Pet Dog Than to Her Young Boy

Dear Ann I.anders: I hope you will publish your answer to this letter because there is a family out there that needs help-fast!

My friend (I'll call her Krista) married a nice guy in 1978. He's a sales rep on the read most of the time. Krista and Cal had a son five years ago. A nice family unit. About a month after Junior was born, Cal gave Krista a purebred beagle. She went crazy about the dog and treated him better than the baby.

When Junior was old enough to crawl, he began to pull the dog's tail and hit him when he thought nobody was looking.

Two months ago, Junior began urinating in unexpected and inappropriate places. First, into his mother's shoe, then in her purse, next her jewel box. After he was punished for ruining the jewel box, he found some scissors and cut his mother's string of pearls.

At first Krista attributed the urinating to Junior's laziness. I told her if it were laziness, he would just wet his pants and not seek special places.

Last Christmas Day, it snowed heavily. I called Krista to chat. She sounded breathless. I asked her what she had been doing. "I've been playing outside in the snow with the dog," was her reply. I asked where Junior was. She replied, "Upstairs, watching television, I guess." What do you see here, Ann'? Sign me-A Worried Friend.

3. Dogs Have a Sense of Humour

The question of whether dogs have a sense of humour is often fiercely argued. My own opinion is that some have and some haven't. Dachshunds have, but not'St Bernards or Great Danes. Apparently a dog has to be small to be fond of joke. You never find a Great Dane trying to be a comedian.

But it is fatal to let any dog know that he is funny, for he immediately loses his head and starts overdoing it. As an` example of this I would point to Rudolph, a dachshund I once owned, whose slogan was "Anything for a I.augh". Dachshunds are always the worst offenders in this respect because of their peculiar shape. It is only natural that when a dog finds that his mere appearance makes the viewing public laugh, he should imagine that Nature intended him to be a comedian.

I had a cottage at t.he time outside an English village,not far from a farm.where they kept ducks, and one day the farmer called on me to say his ducks were disappearing and suspicion had fallen on my Rudolph. Why? I asked, and he said because mine was the only dog in the neighbourhood except his own Towser, and Towser had been so carefully trained that he would not touch a duck if you brought it to him with orange sauce over it.

I was very annoyed. I said he only had to gaze intp Rudolph's truthful brown eyes to see how baseless were his suspicions. Had he not, I asked, heard of foxes? How much more likely that a fox was the Bad Guy in the story. He was beginning to look doubtful and seemed about to make an apology, when Rudolph, who had been listening with the greatest interest and at a certain point had left the room, came trotting in with a duck in his mouth.

Yes, dachshunds overplay their sense of humour, and I suppose other dogs have their faults, but they seem unimportant compared with their virtues.

　

4. Man and Animal

In ancient Egypt, people believed that the cat was a god. When a cat died its owners showed their sadness by the strange habit of shavi

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