A USEFUL INVENTION

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIV, Issue 203, 8 September 1879, Page 4

A USEFUL INVENTION

In all great metropolitan cities the cat question is assuming great proportions. Obedient to the primeval law to increase and multiply, cats have increased and multiplied, paid dividends, and compound interest on the original investment— never a one going into bankruptcy. For a cat to have greats great-great-great grand kittens, and still be uxorious and war-like, is no strange thing it we believe the naturalists; and the tendency of the average to multiplication in ordinary only ceases when the last of its nine lives has flickered and gone out before an unusally well-aimed brick or inordinately spry bull.dog. The effect of cats upon manufactures has been very marked. Since New York was invaded by an epidemic of cata in 1855, it ia computed that 213, 000,000 boot-jacks have been sold, while the yearly consumption of soap-dishes

and bed-slats amounted to 1,105,000 annually. Before the epidemic began and cats were uot so sporadic, boot-jack maker after boot-jack maker went into baukruptcy, and slats and croekery-inen did less business than dealers in fiddlestrings. Last April letters patent were issued to one J. Tomlinson Hathaway, of Elizabeth, N.J., for the " Automatic Inflexible Self-Sitting Exterminator"— a machine which was adapted to fill a want long felt in every family, and at the same time ruin the business ot the china-ware and boot-jack dealers. It was a combination of steel springs, barbed hooks, syringes, higb-pressnre air receivers and clockwork, constructed in the form of a diminutive cat, and corered with the skin of one of those mathematical but obnoxious animals. Underneath the suppositions belly was a clamp, so arrauged that the Inflexible could be screwed on top of a fence and look as naturally as a living cat. When properly wound up, it was fit to ran for twenty-four hours. Every five minutes during the silent watches a portion of the compressed air was let out in a growl of challenge, which could not fail to rouEe the ire and attention of any cat within ear shot. At the same time a small Ruumkorf coil within sent a current of electricty through small Gassiot tubes in the eyes, making them gleam with the greenish aud bellicose fire. This, together with the small size of the couchant inflexible, was generally sufficient to draw the wandering felines of the neighbourhood to the scene. Now, when one of them approached sufficiently near to touch a amail steel wire which projected from the inflexible, the defiant yowl was repeated, and two small sprays of diluted vitriol were spit out at the cat — calculated to rouse the deepest indignation the turbulent breast of a cat is capable of. At the same time the counterfeit tail would swell upgand wave to and fro, aggressively. The result was a closing in of the excited cat upon the Inflexible, touching a hair trigger and releasing the machinery. The barbed claws now clutched the victim, the vitriol squirted, there was a wriggle, a yell and three yaups, and all was over. Then there was a faint click, the Inflexible's claws relaxed, the victim dropped to the ground, and all was ready for another cat. The invention is a perfect success. Although only a month has elapsed since its introduction, the boot-jack market ia completely broken, while crockery and bed-slat speculators are selling short. Edison has examined the instrument, and pronounces it a thorough success. We undersfcaud that an agency for the Inflexible is soon to be established in this city.