KIRKLAND HOUSE CAT

Your article last Monday, under the headline CATS CAUSE CONFLAGRATION IN COURTYARD, was interesting, and impressive as coverage of an early-morning fire. But since (as Mark Twain has pointed out) "one of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives," we feel it is important to clarify the two paragraphs which dealt with residents of Kirkland House and their Senior Tutor's cats.

Kirkland students have objected that the "actions" of one of the cats have resulted in a recent large litter--that she, like Warren Harding, just "couldn't say no." But these objections accomplish little more than seemingly to transmute a human virtue into a feline vice.

Sirens and crashing ashcans are more noisome than the nocturnal activities of a cat, and, come future midnights, Kirkland might control itself with Rabelais' injunction: "N'eveille point le chat qui dort." Peter D. L. Grossman