Dr. Julius T. Roundbottom: Scientist & Philosopher

Upgrade your Flash!

Latest Capture

The Deadly Mr. Whiskers

Mrs. Dowd, my landlady here in the City, has a most unfortunate affliction. She is, I am sad to say, a lover of cats. As you may well know, cats are the natural enemies of naturalists. Mr. Whiskers, pictured above savaging his faery toy made from sticks and twine, is both her pet and the boarding house’s pest control. She purchased the creature after the black hob incident, despite my protestations that I would be certain never to allow an experiment to run amok within the house again.

I pointed out, as one does, that Childe & Smith demonstrated in their landmark survey of literature, An Examination Into the Feline Plague, that the domesticated feline has been responsible for the extinction of hundreds of native species across the Four Worlds. The pattern they describe is unmistakable. Wherever man goes, he brings cats. Wherever cats go, species cease to exist. She was unswayed.

Dwelling as we do near City Park, the Boarding House experiences a higher than normal level of invasive pests (not introduced by myself). There is the occasional black hob, sometimes a confused moth pixie attracted by the glow of the gaslights, and the usual infestations of brownies—the foul, disease-ridden faerie species that chews through anything even remotely organic. I have lost at least three shoes and two boots to the predations of the house brownies. They were becoming a serious nuisance until Mrs. Dowd purchased Mr. Whiskers—I will admit that the creature does its job in a satisfactory manner. But still…

Read More