2-982-099 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"A Cheap Entertainment" by J. Clark, in the Royal Academy Exhibition, 1876. Engraving of a painting. 'Is there anything in the world more graceful and comical and more full of quaint surprises and unalloyed fun than the tricks and gambols of a kitten...We believe that many a mind or heart-sick invalid would be cured by simply administering to his sight a couple of infantine tabbies...A reel set in motion by a string and thereby simulating some animate prey to the baby mind of a kitten is well calculated to excite all the feline propensities of the little mouser; and the graceful antics with which these propensities are expressed may well afford intense delight to little bipeds, themselves at the kitten age. Many old folk, too, are as easily amused by kitten frolics; but in this case the old people have the pure enjoyment, reserved for age, of sharing by love and retrospection in the pleasures of their offspring'. From "Illustrated London News", 1876.