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Business Is Renting Cats.

San Francisco Furnishes Ratters For Stores And Warehouses.

     There is an odd little man named Echnier who lives in an odd little house in the heart of the busiest portion of San Francisco, who earns his bread oddly enough. His business is the raising of cats, which he puts into warehouses, stores and other places infested with rats and mice, and his income is devived from payment for the services of his pets.

     “Raising cats is my business,” he said, We get along all right, don’t we, kitty? Kitty settled down on his knee and purred her answer.

     “I see enough of them to like them,” he went on, “for I feed between 150 and 200 every morning. This,” pointing to a huge basket, “I take full of meat and that can in the corner is filled with milk. I got first to the warehouses on the docks, and then come further up town to the business houses. No, I do not often sell a cat. I raise them, train them for awhile and then place them in some warehouse or store where the services of a cat are necessary. Then for so much a month I take care of them: Would you like to see where they play? If you will come this way I’ll show you.

     He opened a door and took me into a queer little court. Three sides of the inclosure are banked by buildings as old as the house where the cats live. The fourth side is a big brick structure, modern style. An attempt at a garden had been made, but even the lonely green geranium looks sorry and forlorn.

     And the cats! If there were many in the house there were many more out here. Asleep in a box of excelsior is a beauty. He is marked exactly like a tiger. As you pass through, narrow, yellow eyes glance at you. If you bend to stroke him there is a sudden whirl, and the next you see of the tiger he is on the roof of a shed, gazing at you in rather an unpleasant manner.

     “Doesn’t like to be disturbed,” says Mr. Echnier, Down a pair of rickety stairs into the poor little garden and you hear a mad seampering of little feet, and now the rooms are full of disturbed kittens. They have just been fed and like to sleep a bit.

     After awhile we go back into the house and Mr. Echnier tells me how he lost his wife a few years ago, and since then he has lived alone in the second floor of the shanty. “My only son is employed in the Smithsonian institution in Washington,” he says.

     “Yes it’s a bit lonely here, but my cats are company, you know.”-San Francisco Call.

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