Richard Jefferies’ book, “The Gamekeeper at Home” published in 1878 is a fascinating, often lyrical book. Jefferies gives numerous insights into nineteenth century country life, the delights of the natural world, the seasons, hardships, social strata and the rewards and difficulties of maintaining an estate for the benefit of the owner in the great house.
The quotes below concern one of the many problems faced by gamekeepers - feral cats. The first paragraph describes how the gamekeeper’s wife makes use of the skins.
She explains that this rug comes within her special sphere. It is a carriage-rug of cat-skin; the skins carefully selected to match exactly, and cured and prepared in the same way as other more famous furs. They have only just been sewn together, and the rug is now spread on the sofa to dry. She has made rugs, she will tell you, entirely of black cat skins, and very handsome they looked; but not equal to this, which is wholly of the tabby.
All the cats to which these skins belonged were shot or caught in the traps set for vermin by her husband and his assistants. The majority were wild—that is, had taken up their residence in the woods, reverting to their natural state, and causing great havoc among the game.
The instance in point is taken from an outlying district far from a town, where the nuisance is comparatively small; but in the preserves say from ten to twenty miles round London the cats thus killed must be counted by thousands. Families change their homes, the cat is driven away by the new comer and takes to the field. In one little copse not more than two acres in extent, and about twelve miles from Hyde Park Corner, fifteen cats were shot in six weeks, and nearly all in one spot—their favourite haunt. When two or three wild or homeless animals take up their abode in a wood, they speedily attract half a dozen hitherto tame ones; and, if they were not destroyed, it would be impossible to keep either game or rabbits.
Richard Jefferies - The Gamekeeper at Home (1878)
