Cat out of the Pock
View original Transcription from National Library
The CAT out of the
Pock!
A Full, True and Particular Account of a most wonderful and astonishing Catastrophe that took place a few evenings, in a gentleman's house, in
Fettes Row, ner Stockbridge, Edinburgh, when a Black Quadruped of the feline species absolutely swallowed a Paper,containing many popular
and learned Essays and dissertations on various Subjects, too numerous to insert in our small limits....but which must be very interesting to
all our readers.
('Extractedfrom the New North Brston.)
THE penchant of some of the lower animals for articles of human utility is a well-kikown fact in natural history. Rats have been known to line their Bests with guinea notes, and magpies to carpet their clay nests with cambric handkerchiefs, as well as plenish their habitations with silver and other articles, as is established by many facts on record, particularly, by that beautiful French story, on which is founded the much-admired melo-drama, often represented on our stage, called, ' The Maid and the Magpie.' A clergy-man, not many miles from Edinburgh, had a voracious cow that are a pair of blankets and a pair of boots during the time the family were taking their dinner ; but the following CAT-as- trophe is, we believe, the first instance of the feline race having manifested any thing like a litefiiry appetite.
.A gentleman in Fettes Row, near Stockbridge, Edinburgh, who reads the Stirling Advertiser, had that journal laid on his table at six o'clock the
other evening, and on returning home a few hours afterwards, he found it reduced to tatters, and a handsome black cat in the act of munching up the fragments that were left. Puss had commenced operations on the cover, which she had devoured entirely. Next she had fallen on the Dean of Faculty's interesting speech in the General Assembly, on the Stirling Church case, and eaten out the whole of the learned gentleman's preamble and peroration, to show she did not proceed to ex-tremities." A paragraph from the Court Journal, stating, that the King had experienced a decided relapse, and that the public might place implicit reliance on their information, was devoured, from which-we would-gladly augur- his Majesty's ultimate recovery. Several melancholy accidents had only a dismal blank to tell the tale. On the first page, two steam-boats, the ' fine coppered brig Gleniffer', and Warren's boots marked 30, Strand, were nearly all that had escaped ; but whether this was owing to the appearance of the water, to which cats have an instinctive dislike, or to the terror inspired by the portrait of the razor in the hand of the man shaving in the other, we cannot say. We deem, the whole a curious trait in the history of that animal, the CAT
Acknowledgement: 'The Trustees of the National Library of Scotland'
