MUIRHEAD`S MYSTERIES: A COLLECTION OF CAT CURIOSITIES

Muirhead`s Mysteries is back after a bit of an absence and today we take a brief look at cat curiosities. I touched on this in issue 16 of Animals & Men in an article titled ` A Collection of Cat Curiosities.` My apologies to anyone who has already published this information without my knowledge.

This first case really interests me.

All I have is the following bare note: Naturalists Notebook 1868 p.318. 'Flying cat. Shot by Alexander Gibson at Punch Mehab and exhibited at last meeting of Bombay Asiatic Society. Called by Bhells pauca billee. 18 inches long and as broad when extended.

Mr Gibson really believes it to be a cat and not a bat o flying fox as some contend.'

The Sun of October 15^th 1999 reported on Spike, Britain`s oldest moggie: 'A 29-year-old ginger and white tom-cat called Spike was yesterday crowned Britain`s oldest living moggie...She only discovered Spike was a record-breaker when she took him to a vet. She said: “ I`d no idea his age was that unusual but the vet was staggered so I called the record people.” Mo [his owner] added: "He must be lucky because he was bitten by a huge dog at 19. Vets didn`t think he`d live. “ Britain`s oldest ever cat died in Devon in 1957,aged 34.'

I have several pages of information from The Natural History of Northampton-shire with some account of the Antiquities,etc, etc.(1712 p.443), which includes the following information on wild cats (items of interest to me in my italics).

'Many Years ago we had wild cats in our Northamptonshire Woods; as appears by the Charter of King Richard I to the Abbot and Covent of Peterborough,giving them leave to hunt the Hare, the Fox,and the Wild Cat...And we now meet with them,tho` more rarely since the Woods have been thinned. These from their way of living,which is catching birds, on which chiefly they feed,are here called Birders. The wild Cat, that however of Whittlewood Forest, is generally larger Size, and has a Tail many Degrees bigger than the Tame. The wild Cats differ also in Colour from the common House-Cats…I mean in respect of the Colour, [of the Wild Cats] which for the main is a dusky Red or Yellow, and that in all of them; whereas in the Tame ones it is various and uncertain. The She Cats at Finshed, and the like Lone-Houses, do sometimes wander into the Neighbouring Woods and are gibb`d by the Wild ones there. `Tis a very difficult matter to the Wild Wood Cats, tho taken never so young into the House.

Thus concludes Muirhead`s Mysteries for this evening.