1. Cat and Man - In the long span of man's residence on earth, perhaps no creature has intrigued and perplexed him so much as the cat.

He is attracted by her neat good looks, put off by her independence, amused by her antics, made uneasy by her composure, flattered when she rubs against his leg, irked when she yawns in his face and ignores his commands.

2. History - Astonishingly little is known about the history of the cat. While her path has paralleled man's for thousands of years, he has noted few mile­stones in their journey together. For this it seems reasonable to blame the cat. Man has always been a fairly close observer of the world around him and an incurable diarist. If the ancestral cat does not appear in cave drawings or on clay tablets, it is very possibly because then, as now, she walked alone and seldom came when called. Out of sight, out of mind.

3. Breeds - In 1953 the American Can Company, which produces containers for commercial pet foods and was therefore interested, discovered in a survey that there were 26,700,000 domestic cats in the United States.

By "domestic" cats is meant cats who, however casual their member­ship, belong to human families. Most of them — 13.2 million — were found to be farm cats. Seven million were city cats, and 6.5 million lived somewhere in between.

4. Choosing a Cat - There are many ways of acquiring a cat, and most of them happen to most people long before they ever think of going out and getting a cat in the proper manner.

The cat is a prolific creature, no question about it, and people who have cats to begin with soon have extra cats. Few things in life are free, but kittens are one of them. A cat-owner may even insist on paying you a fee to take a kitten off his hands!

5. Daily Routine - Cats are not the least bit uncertain about their ability to take care of themselves. This, however, does not discourage the people with whom they live. By close observation of cat's habits and preferences they learn to do for cat many of the things cat ordinarily would do for herself. This is known as cat care.

6. Sickness & Health - Given decent food and shelter, most cats stay healthy most of the time. Like any creature, however, they will have their share of minor ailments, and occasionally they are hit by a major disorder. The former you may be able to do something about. The latter is definitely best left to a vet­erinarian.

Most devastating—but easiest to prevent—is infectious enteritis, or feline distemper, a virus disease which has for years been the great killer of cats.

7. Children & Cats - Although families that have children do not necessarily have cats, most families that have cats also have children. This nugget of fact was dis­covered by the survey mentioned earlier and was offered without further comment.

This leaves up in the air a number of questions about the relation­ship of kids and cats, which is easy enough to observe, yet difficult to interpret.

8. Growing Up - The life expectancy of a cat is; about 12 years. Fifteen, however, is not unusual and an occasional stubborn old puss will hang on till 21 or 22. The popular notion is that one cat year is the equivalent of seven man years, but like so many human pronouncements about cats it is (1) interesting and (2) inaccurate. According to this scale the cat would be capable of bearing young at the equivalent of 3Vz years and of resisting time's ravages to the age of 154, neither of which have been accomplished by any humans lately, if ever.

9. Adult Years - In suburbia, the cat's daily life is variable and unplanned. She lives in the present and there seems to be some scientific doubt about her ability to think in an organized way, to anticipate the future, or remem­ber much of the past. No cat ever does something on, say, Tuesday that looks as though she'd planned it on Monday.

There are, first of all, two basic kinds of cat days: those in which she sleeps or lazes around during daylight and gallivants at night, and those in which she sleeps at night and cruises by day.

THE END