FELINE INSTINCT.
I.
Mitis and Riquet are two tom-cats saved from a litter of five; their mother is an Angora, slate-coloured, with the neck, breast, and tips of the paws white. Mitis has a large head and limbs, and a coat which promises to be Angora and the same colour as his mother’s, a white muzzle, and white underneath his eyes, while his lips and the tip of his nose are bright pink. Riquet’s body and tail are black, with grey marks; his head, which is smaller than his brother’s, is grey, with zebra-like bands of black crossing longitudinally and laterally; two white streaks branch out from the upper end of the nose, and on the forehead two curved lines, starting from the corners of his eyes, surround a disc of black and grey.
No sooner has their mother licked them over than they set off whining and seeking for her teats. I made some observations of their movements on the first and second days; but as I am afraid of not recording them with sufficient accuracy from memory, I will begin with the third day, when I took to writing down my observations.
12th May.—They are perpetually moving about, even when sucking and sleeping. Sleep overtakes them in the act of sucking, and then, according to what position they were in at the moment, they either remain ensconced in their mother’s silky breast, or fall over with open mouths into some graceful attitude. The little gluttons, Riquet especially, who seems to be delicately organised, are often troubled with hiccoughs, reminding one of young children who have sucked too copiously. It is curious to watch them when searching for a teat, turning their heads abruptly from right to left, and left to right, pushing now with their foreheads, now with their muzzles; tumbling and jumping one over the other, sliding between their mother’s legs, trying to suck no matter what part of her body; and finally, when they have settled down to their meal, resembling leeches, whose whole activity is concentrated on the work of suction, and who, as soon as they have thoroughly gorged themselves, let go their hold and fall back into inertia.
Whenever their sensibility is unpleasantly excited, as, for instance, if their mother leans on them too heavily, or leaves them alone, or performs their toilet too roughly, they give vent to monotonous—I had almost said monosyllabic—plaints; sounds which can scarcely be called mias, still less miaows; they are best described as trembling mi-i-is. They also emit these plaintive sounds when they have been searching long for a teat without finding one, or if they annoy each other during the laborious search; or if I take them up too quickly, or turn them over in the palm of my hand to examine them. If I set them up in my hand in a standing position, they will remain motionless for a few seconds, as if enjoying the warmth of my hand; but very soon again they begin clamouring with loud whines for their home in the mother’s warm, soft stomach, which is at once their shelter and their dining-room, the familiar, and perhaps the loved, theatre of their nascent activity.
13th May.—This morning Mitis appeared to be ill. He was languid, did not whine when I took him up, and made no attempt at sucking; he had an attack of hiccoughs, accompanied by shiverings all over his body, which made me anxious. It only lasted an hour, however: there may have been some temporary cause of indisposition; or perhaps excessive sucking, or a very great need of sleep, had reduced him to a semi-inert mass.
Riquet’s head is prettier than it was yesterday; the white spot has increased in size, the grey marks have spread and grown lighter, and the head and neck are rather larger; but Mitis has still by far the finest carriage.