Cat Fishing

Sorae years ago, says a writer I had a cat whose hshing proclivities and fondness for the water was, to say the least of it, extraordinary. Her eccentricities, so far as I knew them, dated from the first moment I saw her. A friend and myself were fishing in a fortyacre lake, in a largo park, on a bitter November day, with the wind a dead nor' easter. íust as we were thinking of desisting, about 4 o'clock intheafternoon, my friend called my attention to - L -1f . ___ L. !il ,. iB'lt il. -i # ,- i-wl m a wmt ! Th r a IlïlIl-glUWU JWlLCIl WiHii owiííi luiniui; bitterly on the bank some 30 yards froru us. We called it once or twico, and, to our surprise, it took to the water without the slightest hesitation and swam to the boat. After drying it as well as we eould, we wrapped it up in an oíd rug, and gave it some of the bait from the punt's well, which it devoured greedily. I took it homo after lts very Arthurian advent, but it never became a domestic animal. Tabby's chicf delight, on the contrary, was to wander in and out the sedges of the stream, by which my house stands, catohing rats, moor hens, or sedge warblers, and in summer to poach in the shallows for small fish. I have frequently found her doing this, and my bait can was never safe unless actually fastened, for even if the lid were down, somehow my lady Tabby would get it up and be at the contents in a trice. I kept her some four years, and at last was forced to shoot her, for shc took to game poaehing inrightgood oarnest, and ended by living in a rab)it's burrow, from which, after trying o coax without success, she was inconinently drawn and shot. I hare often hought sho was a forest-born cat, of larents getting their swstenance in the ïoverts, and living there as cats will often do, after the iirst departure from virtue in the direction of game poachin-