DUEL BETWEEN A YELLOW DOG AND A TOM CAT.

Evening Star, Issue 3598, 3 September 1874, Page 3

DUEL BETWEEN A YELLOW DOG AND A TOM CAT.

A man up on Clark Avenue used to own a big yellow tom cat, and a man round the corner of Clark Avenue still owns a medium-sized yellow dog. The cat was an extraordinarily large cat, and its organ of combativeness was the size of a common cat, head, teeth, claws and tail included. Again and again war.worn tom cats had attacked him, and the fur lifted and the ground torn up, but the big yellow cat had, like Spartacus, “ never lowered his arms.” Yesterday afternoon, about two o’clock, the owner of the big yellow tom cat, followed by that property, and the owner of the medium-sized yellow dog, accompanied by that chattel, met in a beer saloon on Clark Avenue. The twain owners eyed each other, and the feline and the canine glared the one into the others’s eyes. The man who owned the big yellow cat rubbed his hands and whistled softly, while he who claims title to the medium-sized yellow dog smiled upon the ceiling reflectively. The fur around the dog’s neck rose, and his tail stiffened like an icicle. The back of the cat became arched to a considerable extent, and the tail grew in proportions until it looked like a family of tails. Spectators mounted chairs and tables. The big yellow tom cat and the mediumsized yellow dog approached each other cautiously. The next moment there was trouble. The sawdust flew ten feet into the air, and the nails and splinters from out of the floor whizzed through the atmosphere. Teeth, fur, claws, hair, bits of flesh, eyes, and ears hurled about and kept the bystanders dodging. There was some noise, too. Five, ten minutes passed, and the affair only became more exciting. A man who entered after the difference walked out without a word, under the imppression that a hot spring was breaking through. The building trembled and shook, and the joists creaked, and the windows rattled. The dog tried to crawl into the cat in search of a vital spot, and the cat crawled into the dog to see how he was made. The smashing of bones sounded like a man chopping cordwood. The stoves, tables, and chairs rocked to and frD like wet nurses, and the whole scene was brilliant and exhilarating. Families in the neighborhood pi’epared to move out, and insurance premiums rose from 5 to 95 per cent, according to the proximity of the property to the theatre of conflict. The owners of the contestants superintended the contest with perplexed countenances, and all was unquiet and excitement. At length peace and rest fell like a soft mantle. The spectators decended from posts of observation, and brushed the fur off their clothes and faces, and wiped the hair out of their mouths and eyes. The owner of the dog bought a gallon and a-half of whiskey to rub his beast with, and the other owner hired all the empty barrels, coffee bags, and pillow cases in the vicinity to carry off his big tom cat, of which, it is estimated, there were at least twelve baskets of fragments.— ‘ St. Louis Globe.*