DUEL BETWEEN A YELLOW DOG AND A TOM CAT.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 174, 29 December 1874, Page 3

DUEL BETWEEN A YELLOW DOG AND A TOM CAT.

(Train St. Louis Globe.) A man up on Clark Avenue used to own a big yellow tom cat, and the man round the corner of Clark Avenue still owns a mediumsized yellow dog. The cat was an extraordinary 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 had been lifted and the ground torn up, but the big yellow cat had, like Spartacus, “ never lowered his arms.” Yesterday afternoon, about 2 o’clock, the owner of the big yellow tom cat, followed by that property, and the owner of the mediumsized yellow dog, accompanied by that chattel, met in a beer saloon on Clark Avenue. The twain owners eyed each other, and the feline and canine glared the one into the other’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 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 medium-sized 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 impression that a hot spring was breaking through. The building trembled and shook, 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 fro like wet nurses, and the whole scene was brilliant and exhilarating. Families in the neighborhood prepared 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 descended from their 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 breast with, and the other owner hired all the empty barrels, coffee bags, and pillow cases in the vicinity to cany off his big tom cat, of which, it is estimated, there were at least twelve baskets of fragments.