How to petrify a cat

There is a well known petrifying stream of water at Knaresborough, Yorkshire, England, three miles from Harrowgate, the well known sanitarium. It is a cascade from the River Nidd, about 15 feet high and twice as broad, and forms an aqueous curtain to a cave know as Mother Shipton's Cave.

The dripping waters are used for the purposes of petrifying anything sent to be hung up in the drip of the water ledge, which flows over, as it were, the eaves of the cave. This ledge of limestone rock is augmented unceasingly by the action of the waters flowing over it.

This cascade has an endless variety of objects hung up by short lengths of wire to be petrified by the water trickling over them, as sponges, books, gloves, kerchiefs and veils, hunter's cap, fox, cat, dog, bird, boots, etc. A sponge is petrified in a few months, a book or cap in a year or two, cat or bird a little longer....

One cat shown in the museum had the head broken off at the neck showing the whole was limestone throughout, with not a trace of organic structure of the original cat...