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CHAPTER XI
CONCERNING CAT HOSPITALS AND REFUGES
At comparatively frequent intervals we read of some woman, historic or
modern, who has left an annuity (as the Duchess of Richmond, "La Belle
Stewart") for the care of her pet cats; now and then a man provides for
them in his will, as Lord Chesterfield, for instance, who left a
permanent pension for his cats and their descendants. But I find only
one who has endowed a home for them and given it sufficient means to
support the strays and waifs who reach its shelter.
Early in the eighties, Captain Nathan Appleton, of Boston (a brother of
the poet Longfellow's wife, and of Thomas Appleton, the celebrated wit),
returned from a stay in London with a new idea, that of founding some
sort of a refuge, or hospital, for sick or stray cats and dogs. He had
visited Battersea, and been deeply impressed with the need of a shelter
for small and friendless domestic animals.
At Battersea there is an institution similar to the one the Society for
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in New York have at East 120th Street,
where stray animals may be sent and kept for a few days awaiting the
possible appearance of a claimant or owner; at the end of which time the
animals are placed in the "lethal chamber," where they die instantly and
painlessly by asphyxiation. In Boston, the Society of Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals have no such refuge or pound, but in place of it keep
one or two men whose business it is to go wherever sent and "mercifully
put to death" the superfluous, maimed, or sick animals that shall be
given them.
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