Clarence, a cat, has broken up a home in Cincinnati, according to the records. Not a cat home-that wouldn’t amount to a great deal-but a real, sure-enough home where people lived.
    In a cross-petition in a divorce case filed recently in Cincinnatti, the husband alleged that all of his troubles of the household could properly be laid at the door of Clarence. He wasn’t exactly jealous of the cat, he said, but it was a fact that his wife loved Clarence more than she loved him. He could have stood that all right, for he believed in permitting women to have their way in affairs of love, but when Clarence got the choice morsels of food and he had to pick bones-which duty properly belongs to a cat-he could stand it no longer. Besides, he does not relish cat hair in his butter, and Clarence had a habit of wallowing about on the table and thus getting rid of his surplus coat, which was prone to take up its abode in the butter.
    Furthermore, the husband alleges, the wife required him to sleep with the cat when the weather was cold, and he never could get used to such company in bed. Cats are inconsiderate things, he said, and Clarence was none too particular about manicuring his nails, with the result that the husband frequently suffered from scratches. Instead of sympathizing with him in his misery, the wife’s sympathy was always bestowed upon Clarence.
    When finally, he could stand it no longer, and kicked Clarence out of the house, his wife had him arrested for “abusing the family,” which fact he claimed was record evidence that she considered Clarence a member of the family, a fact he was not willing to admit, although he agreed that Clarence had been treated as a member of the family, or, rather, as the star boarder.
    At last report, Clarence was humbly walking the back fences, the wife was making speeches to suffragettes, and the disconsolate husband was wondering what there is about cats that so endear them to certain women folks. Meanwhile, the courts are working with the petition and crosspetition, and the chances are that the small boy is nailing a sign on the door of the home to the affect that the cat did it.
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