The Book of Cats (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1868 edition. Excerpt: ...conjurors, and fairies, and all that lymphatical chimera, I find to be marshalled in one of these five ranks: --Children, fools, women, cowards, sick or black melancholic discomposed wits." Many hundreds of poor old women, and many a Cat, were sacrificed to the zealous Master Hopkins, for Cats and Kittens were frequently said to be imps, who had taken that form. However, he was not the only scoundrel who made witch-finding a trade. In Syke's Local Recorder, mention is made of a Scotchman, who pretended great powers of discovering witchcraft, and was engaged by the townsmen of Newcastle to practise there; and one man and fifteen women were hanged by him. But he ultimately shared, as Hopkins did, the cruel fate he had awarded to so many others. " When the witch-finder had done in Newcastle, and received his wages, he went into Northumberland to try women there, and got three pounds a-piece; but Henry Doyle, Esq., laid hold on him, and required bond of him to answer at the Sessions. He escaped into Scotland, where he was made prisoner, indicted, arraigned, and condemned for such-like villany exercised in Scotland, and confessed at the gallows that he had been the death of above two hundred and twenty women in England and Scotland." N Here is an account of the death of a famous witch's famous Cat: --' Ye rats, in triumph elevate your ears Exult, ye mice for Fate's abhorred shears Of Dick's nine lives have slit the Cat-guts nine; Henceforth he mews 'midst choirs of Cats divine " So sings Mr. Huddesford, in a " Monody on the death of Dick, an Academical Cat," with this motto: --" Mi-Cat inter omnes." Hor. Carm., Lib. i., Ode 12. He brings his Cat, Dick, from the Flood, and consequently through Rutterkin, a Cat who was " cater-cousin to the...