" She herself
sets a good example in this respect, and when her courts remove from one
royal residence to another, her cats are taken with her.
There is a movement in Paris, too, to provide for sick and homeless cats
as well as dogs. Two English ladies have founded a hospital near
Asnieres, where ailing pets can be tended in illness, or boarded for
about ten cents a day; and very well cared for their pensioners are.
There is also a charity ward where pauper patients are received and
tended carefully, and afterward sold or given away to reliable people.
Oddly, this sort of charity was begun by Mademoiselle Claude Bernard,
the daughter of the great scientist who, it is said, tortured more
living creatures to death than any other. Vivisection became a passion
with him, but Mademoiselle Bernard is atoning for her father's cruelty
by a singular devotion to animals, and none are turned from her gates.
This is the way they do it in Cairo even now, according to Monsieur
Prisse d'Avennes, the distinguished Egyptologist:--
"The Sultan, El Daher Beybars, who reigned in Egypt and Syria toward 658
of the Hegira (1260 A.D.) and is compared by William of Tripoli to Nero
in wickedness, and to Caesar in bravery, had a peculiar affection for
cats. At his death, he left a garden, 'Gheyt-el-Quoltah' (the cats'
orchard), situated near his mosque outside Cairo, for the support of
homeless cats. Subsequently the field was sold and resold several times
by the administrator and purchasers.
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