Cats of Rome, I shall never know
whether any of the thirteen has rendered up one of their hundred and
seventeen lives.
However, if I allowed myself to go on about the cats of Rome, either
ancient or modern, there would be no end. For instance, in a statuary's
shop in the Via Sistina there is a large yellow cat, which I one day saw
dressing the hair of the statuary's boy. It performed this office with a
very motherly anxiety, seated on the top of a high rotary table where
ordinarily the statuary worked at his carving, and pausing from time to
time, as it licked the boy's thick, black locks, to get the effect of
its labors. On other days or at other hours it slept under the
table-top, unvexed by the hammering that went on over its head. Even in
Rome, where cats are so abundant, it was a notable cat.
If you visit the Roman Forum in the morning you are only too apt to be
hurried home by remembrance of the lunch-hour. That, at any rate, was my
case, but I was not so hungry that I would not pause on my way hotelward
at what used to be the Temple of Vesta in my earlier time, but which, is
now superseded by the more authentic temple in the Forum.
