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*The aboriginal British attitude toward animals was also demonstrated last week at Hereford, where a Church of England clergyman, the Rev. L. J. B. Snell, invited the children of his parish to bring their animals to church on the eve of the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, famed for his love of animals. Ducks, chickens, cats and guinea pigs by the score turned up at Hereford's Holy Trinity Church. One youngster brought a tiddler (British for sunfish) in a jar. There was a lamb (owner's name: Mary) with its fleece (according to the Associated Press) only slightly soiled, and a pet mouse called Angela. Twenty horses, glossily groomed, but too big for the pews, waited outside.
"Animals and birds are a part of God's Creation," said Vicar Snell. With daring definiteness, he added: "There are animals and birds in Heaven as well as human beings and angels." But animals, like men, he said, would have to be good to attain eternal life. On the way out, a mastiff lunged at a basket of kittens. As it turned out, he only wanted to lick them, not bite them.
*Now a sleek black torn roaming the Herne Hill Nursing School under the name Panda.
† Unnoticed by the Times two years ago was the death of an even more famous cat and mother: Sally, a sleek, green-eyed Persian owned by pawky Sunday Express Columnist Nat Gubbins. The proud mother of 126 kittens produced at the rate of 2½ kittens a throw, Sally always treated Gubbins' ribald remarks about her fertility with cold disdain. During the war she conducted a long and frosty correspondence in her master's columns with a Russian cat who advocated scientific speedups in kitten production. At the ripe age of 14, Sally died giving birth to one final litter in her good old hit-or-miss way.