ibute
to cats, with the same degree of certainty, the power to presage good
fortune, simply because I have had no experience of it myself. Yet,
adopting the same lines of argument, I see no reason why cats should not
prognosticate good as well as evil.

"There may be phantoms representative of prosperity, in just the same
manner as there are those representative of death; they, too, may also
have some distinguishing scent (flowers have various odours, so why not
spirits?) and certain cats, i.e. white cats in particular, may be
attracted by it.

"This becomes all the more probable when one considers how very
impressionable the cat is--how very sensitive to kindness. There are
some strangers with whom the cat will at once make friends, and others
whom it will studiously avoid. Why? The explanation, I fancy, lies once
more in the occult--in the cat's psychic faculty of smell. Kind people
attract benevolently disposed phantoms, which bring with them an
agreeably scented atmosphere, that, in turn, attracts cats. The cat
comes to one person because it knows by the smell of the atmosphere
surrounding him, or her, that it has nothing to fear--that the person is
essentially gentle and benignant. On the contrary, cruel people attract
malevolent phantoms, distinguishable also to the cat by their smell, a
smell typical of cruelty--often of homicidal lunacy (I have particularly
noticed how cats have shrunk from people who have afterwards become
dangerously insane). Is this sense of smell, then, the keynote to the
halo of mystery that has for all times surrounded the cat--that has led
to its bitter persecution--that has made it the hero of fairy lore, the
pet of old maids? I believe it is--I believe that in this psychic
faculty of smell lies, in degree, the solution to the oft-asked
riddle--why is the cat uncanny? Having then satisfied oneself on this
point, namely, that cats are in the possession of rare psychic
properties, is it likely that the Unknown Powers which have so endowed
them, should withhold from them either souls or spirits? Is it not
contrary to reason, instinct, and observation to suppose that the many
thoroughly material and grossly minded people--people whose whole beings
are steeped in money worship--we see around us every day should have
spirits, and that pretty, refined and artistic-looking cats, whose
occult powers place them in the very closest connection with the
superphysical, should not? Monstrous--the bar