But the next time she was not fortunate. She had got into the habit of visiting friends in another street, at a perilous distance; and one evening, while on her way thither, she was hurt by some brutal person. She came back to us stupid and sick; and her kittens were born dead. I thought that she would die also; but she recovered much more quickly than anybody could have imagined possible,—though she still remains, for obvious reasons, troubled in spirit by the loss of the kittens.
*
The memory of animals, in regard to certain forms of relative experience, is strangely weak and dim. But the organic memory of the animal,—the memory of experience accumulated through countless billions of lives,—is superhumanly vivid, and very seldom at fault.... Think of the astonishing skill with which a cat can restore the respiration of her drowned kitten! Think of her untaught ability to face a dangerous enemy seen for the first time,—a venomous serpent, for example! Think of her wide acquaintance with small creatures and their ways,—her medical knowledge of herbs,—her capacities of strategy, whether for hunting or fighting! What she knows is really considerable; and she knows it all perfectly, or almost perfectly. But it is the knowledge of other existences. Her memory, as to the pains of the present life, is mercifully brief.
*
Tama could not clearly remember that her kittens were dead. She knew that she ought to have had kittens; and she looked everywhere and called everywhere for them, long after they had been buried in the garden. She complained a great deal to her friends; and she made me open all the cupboards and closets,—over and over again,—to prove to her that the kittens were not in the house. At last she was able to convince herself that it was useless to look for them any more. But she plays with them in dreams, and coos to them, and catches for them small shadowy things,—perhaps even brings to them, through some dim window of memory, a sandal of ghostly straw....
[In the Dead of the Night]
