A knowledge of how painlessly to destroy a cat's life is very important to the owner of a cat who is not in reach of a veterinary surgeon - the proper person to undertake this duty under ordinary circumstances.

The most humane method is to place the animal in a small air-tight box, into which has been placed previously two to four drachms of chloroform on a sponge or piece of lint or cotton-wool, which produces at first anaesthesia or painless sleep, and afterwards death from failure of the respiration and heart. It does not cause a suffocative feeling or sensation like coal-gas, or spasm, as does prussic acid. Care must be taken not to take the cat out of the box too soon, or else life, not quite extinct, may return.