lave Bill.

Many a village Bose, fit only to course a mud-turtle in a victualling
cellar, sported his heavy quarters in the woods, without the knowledge
of his master, and ineffectually smelled at old fox burrows and
woodchucks' holes; led perchance by some slight cur which nimbly
threaded the wood, and might still inspire a natural terror in its
denizens; now far behind his guide, barking like a canine bull toward
some small squirrel which had treed itself for scrutiny, then, cantering
off, bending the bushes with his weight, imagining that he is on the
track of some stray member of the jerbilla family. Once I was surprised
to see a cat walking along the stony shore of the pond, for they rarely
wander so far from home. The surprise was mutual. Nevertheless the most
domestic cat, which has lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at
home in the woods, and, by her sly and stealthy behavior, proves herself
more native there than the regular inhabitants. Once, when berrying, I
met with a cat with young kittens in the woods, quite wild, and they
all, like their mother, had their backs up and were fiercely spitting at
me. A few years before I lived in the woods there was what was called a
"winged cat" in one of the farmhouses in Lincoln nearest the pond, Mr.
Gilian Baker's. When I called to see her in June, 1842, she was gone
a-hunting in the woods, as was her wont (I am not sure whether it was a
male or female, and so use the more common pronoun), but her mistress
told me that she came into the neighborhood a little more than a year
before, in April, and was finally taken into their house; that she was
of a dark brownish gray color, with a white spot on her throat, and
white feet, and had a large bushy tail like a fox; that in the winter
the fur grew thick and flatted out along her sides, forming strips ten
or twelve inches long by two and a half wide, and under her chin like a
muff, the upper side loose, the under matted like felt, and in the
spring these appendages dropped off. They gave me a pair of her "wings,"
which I keep still. There is no appearance of a membrane about them.
Some thought it was part flying-squirrel or some other wild animal,
which is not impossible, for, according to naturalists, prolific hybrids
have been produced by the union of the marten and domestic cat. This
would have been the right kind of cat for me to keep, if I had kept any;
for why should not a poet's cat be winged as well as his horse?