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avenues to cat’s meat; not only is there a moral and politicoeconomical
haggardness in them, traceable to these reflections; but
they evince a physical deterioration. Their linen is not clean,
and is wretchedly got up; their black turns rusty, like old
mourning; they wear very indifferent fur; and take to the shabbiest
cotton velvet, instead of silk velvet. I am on terms of
recognition with several small streets of cats, about the Obelisk
in Saint George’s Fields, and also in the vicinity of Clerkenwellgreen,
and also in the back settlements of Drury-lane. In
appearance, they are very like the women among whom they live.
They seem to turn out of their unwholesome beds into the street,
without any preparation. They leave their young families to
stagger about the gutters, unassisted, while they frouzily quarrel
and swear and scratch and spit, at street corners. In particular,
I remark that when they are about to increase their families (an
event of frequent recurrence) the resemblance is strongly expressed
in a certain dusty dowdiness, down-at-heel self-neglect, and
general giving up of things. I cannot honestly report that I have
ever seen a feline matron of this class washing her face when in an
interesting condition.
Not to prolong these notes of uncommercial travel among the lower
animals of shy neighbourhoods, by dwelling at length upon the
exasperated moodiness of the tom-cats, and their resemblance in
many respects to a man and a brother, I will come to a close with a
word on the fowls of the same localities.
That anything born of an egg and invested with wings, should have
got to the pass that it hops contentedly down a ladder into a
cellar, and calls THAT going home, is a circumstance so amazing as
to leave one nothing more in this connexion to wonder at.
Otherwise I might wonder at the completeness with which these fowls
have become separated from all the birds of the air – have taken to
grovelling in bricks and mortar and mud – have forgotten all about
live trees, and make roosting-places of shop-boards, barrows,
oyster-tubs, bulk-heads, and door-scrapers. I wonder at nothing
concerning them, and take them as they are. I accept as products
of Nature and things of course, a reduced Bantam family of my
acquaintance in the Hackney-road, who are incessantly at the
pawnbroker’s. I cannot say that they enjoy themselves, for they
are of a melancholy temperament; but what enjoyment they are
capable of, they derive from crowding together in the pawnbroker’s
side-entry. Here, they are always to be found in a feeble flutter,
as if they were newly come down in the world, and were afraid of
being identified. I know a low fellow, originally of a good family
from Dorking, who takes his whole establishment of wives, in single
file, in at the door of the jug Department of a disorderly tavern
near the Haymarket, manoeuvres them among the company’s legs,
emerges with them at the Bottle Entrance, and so passes his life:
seldom, in the season, going to bed before two in the morning.
Over Waterloo-bridge, there is a shabby old speckled couple (they
belong to the wooden French-bedstead, washing-stand, and towelhorse-
making trade), who are always trying to get in at the door of
a chapel. Whether the old lady, under a delusion reminding one of
Mrs. Southcott, has an idea of entrusting an egg to that particular
denomination, or merely understands that she has no business in the
building and is consequently frantic to enter it, I cannot
determine; but she is constantly endeavouring to undermine the
principal door: while her partner, who is infirm upon his legs,
walks up and down, encouraging her and defying the Universe. But,
the family I have been best acquainted with, since the removal from
this trying sphere of a Chinese circle at Brentford, reside in the
densest part of Bethnal-green. Their abstraction from the objects
among which they live, or rather their conviction that those
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objects have all come into existence in express subservience to
fowls, has so enchanted me, that I have made them the subject of