domestic advice about cats in your pantry, 1725

10. Lastly, you must be careful in cleaning and
sweeping your Fruitery often, taking away Cob-
webs, and setting small Traps for Rats and Mice;
and it will also be proper to leave some secret
Passage for Cats to get in, for otherwise you will
frequently be mortify'd to see your fairest Fruits
injur'd and spoil'd by those ruinous domestick
little Animals.**

**The author meant the rats and mice are ruinous domestick little Animals, but it took me a beat to figure that out; I thought he was talking about the cats.  

This helpful hint is from . . .

Chomel, N. (1725). Dictionaire oeconomique: or, The family dictionary. Containing the most experienced methods of improving estates and of preserving health, with many approved remedies for most distempers of the body of man, cattle and other creatures ... The most advantageous ways of breeding, feeding and ordering all sorts of domestick animals ... The different kinds of nets, snares and engines for taking all sort of fish, birds, and other game. Great variety of rules, directions, and new discoveries, relating to gardening [and] husbandry ... The whole illustrated throughout with very great variety of figures ... Done into English from the 2d edition, lately printed at Paris ... London: Printed for D. Midwinter.
(Pages not numbered, though they run in the hundreds, but found alphabetically under FRU)