Couch, in his "Illustrations of Instinct," page 196, gives a case within his own knowledge, of a Cat which, in order to get some milk which was kept in a locked cupboard, used to unlock the door by seating herself on an adjoining table and "repeatedly patting on the bow of the key with her paw, when, with a slight push on the door, she was able to open it. The lock was old and the key turned in it on a very slight impulse."
As a still further instance of the Cat's high appreciation of mechanical appliances, I give an extract from a paper by Mr. Otto, which will have been read at the Linnean Society, before this paper is published.
"At Peara, the residence of Parker Bowan, Esq., a full-grown Cat was one day accidentally locked up in a room, without any other outlet than a small window moved on hinges, and kept shut up by means of a swivel. Not long afterwards the window was found open and the Cat gone. This having happened several times, it was, at last, found that the Cat jumped upon the window sill, placed her forepaws as high as she could reach against the side, deliberately reached with one over to the swivel, moved it from its horizontal to a perpendicular position, and then, leaning with her whole weight against the window, escaped."
Illustrative of the camaraderie of the Cat with human beings, and of the fact that she can, and frequently does, overcome her natural antipathy to water, Prof. Romanes tells the following interesting tale:
"A fisherman, of Portsmouth, England, called 'Robinson Crusoe,' made famous by Mr. Buckland, had a cat called 'Puddles,' which overcame the horror of water, characteristic of his race, and employed his piscatorial talent in the service of his master, who said of him: 'He was the wonderfulest water Cat as ever came out of Portsmouth Harbor, was Puddles, and he used to go out a-fishin' with me every night. On cold nights he would sit on my lap while I was a-fishin', and poke his head out every now and then, or else I would wrap him up in a sail, and make him lay quiet. He'd lay down on me while I was asleep, and if anybody come, he'd swear a good un, and have the face off on 'em if they went to touch me, and he'd never touch a fish, not even a little teeny pout, if you didn't give it to 'im. I was obliged to take him out a-fishin' or else he'd stand an' yowl and marr till I went back and ketched him by the poll and shied him into the boat, and then he was quite happy. When it was fine he used to stick up at the bow of the boat and sit a-watchin' the dogs," meaning dog-fish. "The dogs used to come along by the thousands at a time, and when they was thick all about, he would dive in and fetch 'em out, jammed in his mouth as fast as may be, just as if they was a parcel of rats, and he didn't tremble with the cold half as much as a Newfoundland dog who was used to it. He looked terrible wild about the head when he came out of the water with a dog-fish. I larnt him the water myself. One day, when he was a kitten, I took him down to the sea to wash and brush the fleas out of him, and in a week he could swim after a feather or a cork."
[XX.]
VOWELS AND LIQUIDS PREDOMINATE.
In the foregoing chapters, I have quoted largely from the best anatomists, physiologists, naturalists, pathologists, philologists and linguists, in support of my theses, the most important of which are:
First—That the Cat is of a more delicate organism than the dog and, therefore, more susceptible of refinement and everything that goes toward making it a superior animal.