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| A delicate animal vulnerable to innumerable ailments |
The number of cats in London, and their depredations on wild birds in our parks having been variously estimated, I applied for information to the manageress of the London Institution for Lost and Starving Cats who has obliged me with the following communication - Editor, The Zoologist (1899).
" I have much pleasure in replying to your letter, and in giving you the information you require.
"According to Mr. Hudson's book, Birds of London, the number of cats in our great metropolis cannot be less than three-quarters of a million, and the stray and starving ones certainly not under 80,000 to 100,000.
"The number of cats we have taken in during the three years from the 22nd January, 1896, to 22nd January, 1899, is exactly 13,994.
"The first year we received 2,450, the second year 4,010, and this third year 7,527, making a total of 13,994 cats.
"We could increase the number tenfold but for want of means, and, in consequence, want of hands and premises.
"Depots ought to be established in every part of London, with one headquarter to take the cats collected daily at these various stations.
"Also a tax ought to be levied on cats, so as to decrease the shocking number of stray and starving cats which now infest our streets, and thereby lessen the abominable cruelties to which they are exposed.
"We are only in our infancy as yet, but I hope, with energy and push, we shall in a few years' time establish an institution on similar lines to the Battersea Dogs' Home, with the exception that we search for cats in every available corner, and call for them at people's request free, but with the prayer for a little help.
"I should think the probable number of cats in London could be easily estimated.
"There are few houses which do not shelter at least one cat, and every tenement has, with few exceptions, one.
"Cats have on an average three litters a year of at least three kittens at a time, and the cats breed at six months old.
"A cat's age ought to extend to about ten years, but this is only when they have good homes and are taken in at night.
"Cats exposed to all the hardships of weather hardly live beyond five years, and stray cats very few months after they are deserted.
"We have received cats in one or two instances twenty-two years of age, and several over eighteen.
"These of course were great pets, with every care lavished on them.
"A cat is a delicate animal with innumerable ailments.
"It easily becomes ill.
"It is a cowardly animal - if I may so express myself - and allows itself to die by not struggling against its malady, though at the end it dies hard.
"When a cat gets a cold, or pleurisy, or distemper, it loses, through its nose being bunged up, all taste and sense of smell.
"The moment it cannot smell its food it will not touch it, and dies of starvation even with a dish of food alongside it.
"Therefore a cat, when ill, must at once be forcibly fed, or it will let itself die.
"Every one of these 13,994 cats has passed through my hands, therefore I ought to know something about them."
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