The Cat: Its Natural History Domestic Varieties Management and Treatment

Rule, Philip M.Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.4

Word count: 147K words
Chapters: 15

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Cat: Its Natural History; Domestic Varieties; Management and Treatment by RuleAuthor: Rule, Philip M.,Language: English, Class: SF: Agriculture: Animal culture, Release Date: Oct 11, 2013

Editor's review

This is an early English monograph on cat keeping, covering natural history, domestic breeds, and day-to-day management and treatment of illness; it belongs to the practical literature of agriculture and animal culture. Its value lies not in being up to date but in preserving an original picture of premodern veterinary knowledge and attitudes toward cat keeping: readers can see how people then understood feline habits, how they selected and bred cats, how they arranged catteries and feeding, and much of this empirical description is both instructive and distinctly of its time. The survey of domestic breeds can serve as corroborating material for the history of breed development. As a public-domain e-book, it is easy to obtain and moderate in length, suited to slow reading from a research or personal-interest perspective. It is best read with a critical eye: for specific practices concerning treatment and feeding, modern veterinary knowledge should prevail, and the book should be treated as a historical document rather than a manual. It is better suited as a source book and leisurely reading than as a quick-reference guide.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in the history of cats and early ideas about keeping them
Scholars and students working on animal culture or the history of science and technology
Readers of English who enjoy old-style English natural histories in the original
Cat lovers who want to understand the origins of domestic breeds

Not a good fit for

Pet owners seeking modern veterinary treatment plans
Practical readers who prefer contemporary scientific guides to cat care
Readers who have difficulty reading English and need a Chinese translation

Reading tips

Start with the table of contents and read in three blocks—natural history, breeds, and management—rather than straight through.
For chapters on illness and feeding, compare with modern veterinary sources as you read and note the differences.
Treat the breed descriptions as historical extracts and jot down entries that can be compared with modern breed standards.
As a public-domain e-book, it can be searched by keyword for thematic skimming.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Can the cat-keeping methods in this book still be followed directly today?

They should not be adopted as they stand. The book was written long ago, and its practices for treating illness, feeding ratios, and cattery management are limited by their time; some ideas have since been corrected by modern veterinary medicine. Read it as historical material, and rely on contemporary veterinary advice for specific care and medical questions.

What use are the breed descriptions to cat keepers today?

They offer early clues to how breeds were understood, helping readers see how certain types of domestic cat were described and classified in the past. Those interested in breed development can compare them with modern breed standards to see how breeding ideas have changed over a century, though they should not be used as a basis for buying or identifying cats.

Is the original English difficult to read?

The book is written in an old-style natural-history prose, with long sentences and considerable terminology, but its structure is clear and organized by topic. Readers with general English reading ability can manage with a dictionary; those interested in only one topic can skip to the relevant chapters rather than read the whole book.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Rule, Philip M. Author

Philip M. Rule is an author about whom very little is publicly known; his nationality, dates of birth and death, and educational background cannot be confirmed. Within the collection, he is represented by a single work, The Cat: Its Natural History Domestic Varieties Management and Treatment. The title indicates a book that combines natural history with a practical guide to the domestic cat: it traces the animal's natural history, distinguishes the domestic varieties, and discusses everyday management and treatment. Works of this kind were typically addressed to general readers and cat keepers, with a descriptive and practical style that served both to popularize knowledge and to offer hands-on guidance. Although biographical details about Rule remain obscure, the book stands as an example of early writing on cats and offers a useful reference for understanding how cats were perceived and kept at the time.