a bit more buffon on the cat

thanks karenswhimsy.com

 Yesterday I showed you a couple of cats from one edition of the Comte de Buffon's grand Natural History, and they tickled me so that I thought I'd look up some of his observations on the feline.  He had many (he had many on everything).  This is what I like this morning:

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M. Pasumot of the  academy at Dijon, has communicated to me a  letter on this subject; he says, "Although the cat sleeps seldom, it is very sound, and might sometimes be considered as a kind of lethargy.  1 have had at least ten instances; a favourite cat used to lay upon the feet of my bed; one
night I pushed him away, but found him so immoveable that I conceived him to be dead. I pulled and tossed him about for some time before he shewed any kind of life, when at last he began to awake, but it was even then very slowly. This sound sleep, and difficulty of awaking cats, I have often observed; and I am acquainted with a gentleman who has also been witness of their sleeping in this sound manner, and which he says is always at the time of great heat, or previous to stormy weather."
M. de Lestrie, a merchant of Chalons, in Champagne, has remarked to me, that the breath of cats frequently exhales an odour resembling musk; particularly when they purr and are tranquil, or when suddenly alarmed and make a hissing noise, from which he inclines to conclude that there are some vessels in the breast of a cat filled with an aromatic quality; but nothing of this nature is to be discovered by anatomy.
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Cats full of cat-perfume!  I could squeeze them all over me like cologne!

Buffon, G. Louis Leclerc. (17971807). Buffon's Natural history: containing a theory of the earth, a general history of man, of the brute creation, and of vegetables, minerals, &c. &c. London: Printed for the Proprietor, and sold by H. D. Symonds. 16.