exception of the cats. A cat has too high a sense of his own dignity and worth to betray any such degrading interest in human beings. Therefore he stares calmly and placidly at nothing, giving an occasional lick to a paw, and receiving whatever endearments may be offered from outside with the lofty inattention of a cast ornament. He does this with an idea of enhancing his own value, and of inflaming the mind of the passer-by with an uncontrollable desire to become connected with so exclusive a cat; quite like the cook on show at a registry office, who lifts her nose and stares straight ahead, to impress the newly arrived lady with the belief that she isn't anxious for an engagement, and could scarcely, in any case, condescend so far as to have anything to do with her. At the same time, like the cook, the cat is the sharpest listener, and the most observant creature in all this shop, in his own sly way. Watch the casual air with which he turns his head as a stranger passes the shop—to look, of course, at something else altogether, upon which he finally allows his gaze to rest. Note, too, as he gazes on this immaterial something, how his ears lift and open to their widest. The stranger has come about a dog. The ears resume their usual aspect, and the gaze returns to the same far-away nothing as before. But this unhandsome ruffian has waited so long, and has been disappointed so often, that he shows signs of losing the placidity proper to his nature. Being an unusually good mouser, he has a certain contempt for such cats as have nothing to recommend them but their appearance; and the natural savagery of unrecognised genius is aggravated by the sight of white rats and mice across the shop, where he can't reach them and prove his capabilities. So he makes vicious snaps and dabs at boys who poke their fingers between the bars, and will probably swear horribly at the next lady customer who says she doesn't want that horrid-looking beast.
"A glare of puckered indignation."
This is not a place where any animal fond of a quiet life would come of its own accord. Here is a most respectable owl, whose ideas of the order of things are seriously outraged by its surroundings. A quiet wing-stretch at night is out of the question, because of the cage; and any attempt at going to sleep during the day in that whirl of yells, crows, barks, and light is—well, there! But he has been put high up in the darkest available corner by a considerate tradesman, and makes a shift for forty winks now and again. He is justly indignant at things in general, and meditates upon them in solemn sulkiness in the intervals of his little naps. As the proper centre of the universe, he contemplates the rebellion of its conditions against his comfort with gloomy anger until he falls asleep. Whenever he does this a customer is sure to arrive, and wish to look at something hard by his corner. The dealer extends a match to an adjacent gas-jet, and, with a pop, a great flame springs into being a foot from the owl's beak. Promptly one eye opens, and projects upon that gaslight a glare of puckered indignation. You observe, he never opens but one eye—the eye nearer his object of attention. "Why take unnecessary trouble?" reflects the sage; and,
