Excerpt from The Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 37: May to October, 1890 Among the ancient Egyptians, cats were highly revered; sacri fices even being offered them and temples built for them, Md after death many were preserved as mummies. Travelers state that the modern Persians, too, greatly esteem the domestic at. But from very early times, in most countries where the -cat has been kept as a domestic animal, she seems to have been an object of suspicion. Cats have been the reputed familiars of witches: have at other times been supposed to incarnate witches, or own the father of witches, the devil himself. It is, then, natural enough that cats should figure rather prominently in the list of animals credited with exceptional powers for good and evil. Remnants of many ancient beliefs concerning snch powers are still found - some among us, and more, it may be, in older coun tries. A trustworthy old woman whose early life was spent non Cork, Ireland, tells me that it is well known that in old times cat! Could sometimes speak, and that she herself remembers one in stance in her girlhood of a cat speaking with a human voice. H was on an oiland afi' the coast of Oireland, said she, in her quest mixture of the brogue and Yankee dialect. A bit 0' land 311mm rounded with water. There was a woman was cardin' weehnnd after she carded it she put it into her sieve.' and then her 0! About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.