26th May.—They both play with their paws and their muzzles, but frequently, as if by chance, only without very marked intention, and with very uncertain movements.
I seem already to distinguish in them two different characters. If one can go by appearances, Mitis will be gentle, patient, rather indolent and lazy, prudent and good-natured; Riquet, on the contrary, lively, petulant, irritable, playful, and audacious. Noise and contact seem to excite him more than his brother. But both of them are very affectionate towards their mother, or perhaps I should say very appreciative of the pleasure of being with her, of seeing, hearing, and touching her, and not only of sucking from her.
I hold Mitis up to the edge of the box; he evinces a desire to get back to his mother, but does not know how to manage it. His muscles have not yet acquired the habit of responding to this particular psycho-motive stimulus; he crawls up to where my hand ends, advances first one paw, then another, and finds only empty space; he then stretches out his neck, and two or three times running makes an attempt with his paws at the movements which are the precursors of the act of jumping. He would like to jump down, but cannot do so; instinctive intention is here in advance of the adaptiveness or the strength of the muscular apparatus fitted to execute it. He retreats frightened and discouraged, and whines for help.
Riquet placed in the same position, goes through almost the same movements, but he is able to do more; he has managed to seize hold (chance perhaps assisting him) of the edge of the box, he sticks to it, leans over without letting go, and would have got down, or rather tumbled down, into the box, if I had let him.
27th May. Every day they get to know me better. Now, after I have taken them in my hands, or stroked their head, neck, or lips, they go back to their box quite excited; they walk about in it faster than before, snap at each other and strike out their paws with much more spirit. Play has now become a matter of experience with them, and grows day by day a little more complicated; they seem to be aware of their growth in strength and skill, and to derive pleasure from it. To-day, for the first time, Riquet scratched the piece of stuff on the bottom of the box, and he did it with playful gestures and an expression of delight; first he stretched out one paw, then the other, with his claws turned out, and, being pleased with the noise produced by drawing back his claws, he renewed the operation twice, but no more. It will be necessary to go through the same experience two or three times more, in order to fix the idea of this game in his little head.
They have already tried several times running (either by accident or with a vague idea of ascending) to hold on to, or climb up, the sides of the box; if they were not slippery, or were covered with a cloth, I think they would have strength enough to lift themselves up to the edge.
They lift their head and paws as high as they can, in order to see better. All the inside of the box seems to be sufficiently well known to them, but all the same they are constantly making experiments in it, either by touch, sight, hearing, scent, and even taste; for they frequently lick the board, and try to suck the cloth at the bottom. They would no doubt gladly extend the area of their experiences, but I shall leave them habitually in the box until they are able to get out of it by themselves; they can get quite enough exercise in it, and they have enough air and light, and I think the prolongation of this calm, happy, retired existence makes them more gentle. The mother prefers their being in the box, and I am of the same opinion, though not perhaps for the same reasons. They would become too independent if allowed to follow their caprices, and exposed to the dangers of adventure, instead of being accustomed to the restraint of the hand which they love and which humanises[4] them. I want them to become so thoroughly accustomed to my hand, that, when they receive their freedom, they will still recognise it from a distance, and come to it at my will. My hand is a very precious instrument of preservation and education for them.
28th May. When, standing close to the box, I take Mitis in my hands, he looks at the box, bends his head, stretches out his paws, and shows a considerable desire to get down, but without making any effort towards this end. I hold him a little lower down, at a few centimètres from his mother, and he no longer hesitates but lets himself glide down to her, his movements, however, only turning out a success thanks to my assistance. Can it be that he had (what Tiedemann does not even allow his fourteen-months-old child to have possessed) a vague perception of distance, of empty and inhabited space, anterior to personal experience? “He had not yet any idea of the falling of bodies from a height, or of the difference between empty and inhabited space. On the 14th October he still wanted to precipitate himself from heights, and several times he let his biscuit fall to the ground when intending to dip it in his cup.”
The kittens endeavour to climb along the sides of the box, but their idea of height (perhaps an instinctive idea) is not sufficiently determined; they seem quite astounded at not reaching the goal with the first stroke. At the same time I may be mistaken in my observations; perhaps they went up these four or five centimètres mechanically, because in walking along horizontally they found under their paws the surface of the partition which may have seemed a natural continuation of their road. Perhaps they have no wish to get up to the edge of the box.
28th May.—The grey spots on Riquet’s back are now almost as large as the black ones.