important feline trait, the inability to be
duped twice by the same phenomenon. It is interesting to record that
Theodore Roosevelt liked this yarn so much that he named a White House
cat, Tom Quartz.

[1: Those who have attempted to form anthologies or collections of
stories similar to this know what difficulties have to be overcome.
The publishers of Mark Twain's works were at first unwilling to
grant me permission to use this story. I wish here to take occasion
to thank Mrs. Clara Clemens Gabrilowitsch and Mr. Albert Bigelow
Paine for their successful efforts in my behalf. I am sure that the
readers of this book will be equally grateful.]

Thomas A. Janvier's narrative reveals the cat in his luxurious capacity
as a treasured pet, and Mr. Alden's story is a good example of the kind
of tale in which a friendless human being depends upon an animal for
affection. There are, of course, many such, but in most cases dogs are
the heroes. _The Queen's Cat_ is a story about an ailurophobe, or a
cat-fearer, and his cure. Mr. Hudson's contribution is fact rather than
fiction. I have included it because it is delightful and because it is
the only good example available of that sort of story in which a cat
becomes friendly with a member of an enemy race, although in life the
thing is common. Mr. Warner's _Calvin_, too, certainly is not fiction,
but as it shares with Pierre Loti's _Vies de deux chattes_ the
distinction of being one of the two best cat biographies that have yet
been written I could not omit it.

There remains _The Afflictions of an English Cat_ which, it will be
perceived by even a careless reader, is certainly a good deal more than
a cat story. It is, indeed, a satire on British respectability, but we
Americans of today need not snicker at the English while reading it, for
the point is equally applicable to us. When I first run across this tale
while preparing material for my long cat book, _The Tiger in the House_,
I was immensely amused, and to my great astonishment I have not been
able to find an English translation of it. The story, the original title
of which is _Peines de coeur d'une chatte anglaise_, first appeared in
a volume of satires called _Scenes de la vie privee et publique des
animaux_, issued by Hetzel in Paris in 1846, and to which George Sand,
Alfred de Musset, and others contributed. The main purpose of the
collaboration was doubtless to furnish a text to the extraordin