eorge H. Doran Co., for _A Friendly Rat_, from _The Book of a
Naturalist_ (copyright 1919 by the George H. Doran Co.).

The Four Seas Co., and Peggy Bacon for _The Queen's Cat_, from _The
True Philosopher_ (copyright 1919 by the Four Seas Co.).

Houghton Mifflin Co., for _Calvin_, from _My Summer in a Garden_
(copyright 1870 by Fields, Osgood and Co.; copyright 1898 by Charles
Dudley Warner; copyright 1912 by Susan Lee Warner).

PREFACE

In the essay and especially in poetry the cat has become a favourite
subject, but in fiction it must be admitted that he lags considerably
behind the dog. The reasons for this apparently arbitrary preference on
the part of authors are perfectly easy to explain. The instinctive acts
of the dog, who is a company-loving brute, are very human; his
psychology on occasion is almost human. He often behaves as a man would
behave. It is therefore a comparatively simple matter to insert a dog
into a story about men, for he can often carry it along after the
fashion of a human character.

But, as Andrew Lang has so well observed, literature can never take a
thing simply for what it is worth. "The plain-dealing dog must be
distinctly bored by the ever-growing obligation to live up to the
anecdotes of him.... These anecdotes are not told for his sake; they are
told to save the self-respect of people who want an idol, and who are
distorting him into a figure of pure convention for their domestic
altars. He is now expected to discriminate between relations and mere
friends of the house; to wag his tail at _God Save the Queen_; to count
up to five in chips of fire-wood, and to seven in mutton bones; to howl
for all deaths in the family above the degree of second cousin; to post
letters, and refuse them when they have been insufficiently stamped; and
last, and most intolerable, to show a tender solicitude when tabby is
out of sorts." The dog, indeed, for the most part, has become as
sentimental and conventional a figure in current fiction as the ghost
who haunts the ouija board or the idealistic soldier returned from the
wars to reconstruct his own country.

Now the cat, independent, liberty-loving, graceful, strong, resourceful,
dignified, and self-respecting, has a psychology essentially feline,
which has few points of contact with human psychology. The cat does not
rescue babies from drowning or say his prayers in real life;
consequently any attempt to make him do so in fiction would be