CHAPTER V.
[See [Note E], Addenda.]
SAGACITY OF CATS.
Few people now-a-days think of denying, that man’s noble friend the dog possesses a large amount, of what can only be termed reason. I myself believe, that almost every animal does; but in these pages I shall only claim the gift for our mutual friend, the domestic cat. Reason, I consider, is quite different from mere instinct. Instinct is born in an animal; reason is that instinct matured by experience.
I hardly think that you can find a more sagacious animal than the cat. I doubt, indeed, if the dog is; for pussy’s peculiar mode of existence, the many enemies she has to encounter, and the struggle she often has to obtain sustenance sufficient to keep life in her poor little body, bring all her faculties into better play, and tend to the development of her reasoning powers.
Before you can fully fathom, what a wonderfully clever and wise creature even the commonest cat is, you must study her life in every phase, both out of doors and at the fireside. No relation of mere sporadic acts of sagacity, such as unfastening a door to get out, breaking a window to get in, or pulling a bell-rope to call the servant, can do justice to pussy’s wisdom. Everything she does has a reason for it, and all her plans are properly schemed and thought out beforehand, for she never fails to look before she leaps. Why, my reader, with all due respect to your intellectual powers, if you were to be changed into a cat for four and twenty hours, and had a cat’s routine of pleasure and duty to perform, with all your wisdom you would be as dead as a dried haddock before sun-down. Let us try to imagine one day in a cat’s life.
Pussy wakes in the morning as fresh as a daisy, for she has slept the sleep of the just and temperate. She finds she has been shut into the parlour; but, though it is broad day-light, the family won’t be stirring yet for another hour. A long weary hour for puss, although she has the patience of Job.
“Now,” she thinks, “if a mouse would only pop out from under the fender; sometimes one does.” But watching won’t bring it; so she jumps upon the window-sill, and gets behind the blind to gaze out at the bright morning, and watch the sparrows, and think of all she will do to-day. “At any rate,” she muses, “I shan’t be shut in here another night. So silly of me to go to sleep before the fire! And, happy thought, I’ll go and see—yes, I must go and see—him to-night; he’ll be at the old thorn tree, I know, dear, dear, Tom.”
The hour has worn away, and at last Mary comes to “do out the room.” “N.B. Stand by to bolt through between her ugly legs. Done—successful.” Now upstairs to mew hungrily at her mistress’s door—that ensures a cuddle; and so pussy sings while her mistress dresses. Down to breakfast at last. Soles. Oh! she doats on soles. But why does her mistress get up and leave her alone for a minute with the cream and the soles, and she so hungry too. What a chance to dip one paw in the cream-jug, or help herself to only just the tail of that inviting sole! But no, she won’t; and she doesn’t, though the temptation was very great. Then mistress returns, and pussy is rewarded for her honesty with a delicious breakfast, and duly purrs her grace after meat.