The Chinese give them silver collars around their necks and make them very tame. As they are uncommon, they are expensive; not only because of their beauty, but because they most cruelly wage war upon rats." This seems a big leap (and an erroneous one) from Boym's black-and-yellow squirrel-like creature to Martini's white lop-eared cat, however du Halde had omitted to mention in his compilation that the lop-eared cats were milk-white! While Boym's sumxu was valued as an avid mouser, Martini's lop-eared white cats were not interested in mice and were kept as lap- cats, another piece of information du Halde omitted in his compilation. Boym's illustration of the sumxu ignores its ears, while Martini described them as the defining feature of the white cats. Boym didn't liken the sumxu to cats and it is Kircher who made that comparison. The sumxu (probably the Yellow Throated Marten) was a creature of south China while the lop- eared cats were from Peking Province in the north
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