Broadside ballad entitled 'The Cat Out of the Pock!'

Transcription

The CAT out of the

Pock!                                 

A Full, True and Particular Account of a most
wonderful and astonishing Catastrophe that took
place a few evenings, in a gentleman's house, in
Fettes Row, ner Stockbridge, Edinburgh, when
a Black Quadruped of the feline species abso-
lutely swallowed a Paper,containing many popular
and learned Essays and dissertations on various
Subjects, too numerous to insert in our small
limits....but which must be very interesting to
all our readers.

('Extractedfrom the New North Brston.)

THE penchant of some of the lower animals
for articles of human utility is a well-kikown
fact in natural history. Rats have been known
to line their Bests with guinea notes, and mag-
pies to carpet their clay nests with cambric hand-
kerchiefs, as well as plenish their habitations with
silver and other articles, as is established by many
facts on record, particularly, by that beautiful
French story, on which is founded the much-ad-
mired melo-drama, often represented on our stage,
called, ' The Maid and the Magpie.' A clergy-
man, not many miles from Edinburgh, had a
voracious cow that are a pair of blankets and a
pair of boots during the time the family were
taking their dinner ; but the following CAT-as-
trophe is, we believe, the first instance of the fe-
line race having manifested any thing like a li-
tefiiry appetite.

.A gentleman in Fettes Row, near Stockbridge,
Edinburgh, who reads the Stirling Advertiser, had
that journal laid on his table at six o'clock the
other evening, and on returning home a few hours
afterwards, he found it reduced to tatters, and a
handsome black cat in the act of munching up the
fragments that were left. Puss had commenced

operations on the cover, which she had devoured
entirely. Next she had fallen on the Dean of Fa-
culty's interesting speech in the General Assem-
bly, on the Stirling Church case, and eaten out
the whole of the learned gentleman's preamble and
peroration, to show she did not proceed to ex-
tremities." A paragraph from the Court Journal,
stating, that the King had experienced a decided
relapse, and that the public might place implicit
reliance on their information, was devoured, from
which-we would-gladly augur- his Majesty's ul-
timate recovery. Several melancholy accidents had
only a dismal blank to tell the tale. On the first
page, two steam-boats, the ' fine coppered brig
Gleniffer', and Warren's boots marked 30, Strand,
were nearly   all   that had escaped ; but whether
this was owing to the appearance of the water, to
which cats have an instinctive dislike, or to the
    terror inspired by the portrait of the razor in the
hand of the man shaving in the other, we cannot
say.    We deem, the whole a curious trait in the
   history of that animal, the CAT !   

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