Part 11

From "Petland," by Rev. J.C. Wood, I take the following story, which is illustrative of the generosity and self-sacrifice of the feline animal. It is a relation about "Pret," the grandson of the original of that name, of whom the reverend gentleman had something to say in a previous chapter:

"He was fond of entertaining his friends in the yard, and was in the habit of bringing dinner to the club for the benefit of his acquaintances, and then wanting a second dinner on his own account, in the evening. He even went so far as to be disgusted with the meals furnished to a neighboring cat, thinking that cat's-meat was not fit for feline consumption. Acting upon this supposition, he was seen to take away the cat's-meat as soon as it was brought by the itinerant purveyor, to carry it into the cellar, bury it under a heap of coals, and to take his own dinner upstairs for his friends."

The imitative power of Pussy has never been illustrated with more force than in the story which I take from the work by Prof. George J. Romanes, and which occurred, as he states, under his personal observation.

"For myself, I may say that my own coachman once had a Cat which, certainly without tuition, learned to open a door that led into the stables from a yard, into which looked some of the windows of my house. Standing at these windows when the Cat did not see me, I have many times witnessed her modus operandi. Walking up to the door, with a most matter-of-course kind of air, she used to spring at the half-hoop handle, just below the thumb-latch. Holding on to the bottom of this half-hoop with one forepaw, she then raised the other to the thumb-piece, and while depressing the latter, finally, with her hind legs, scratched and pushed the doorpost so as to open the door. Precisely similar cases have been described by my correspondents as having been witnessed by them."

It may be interesting to the reader to know that Prof. Darwin, in his great treatise upon animals, declares that Cats with blue eyes are invariably deaf. My experience has not proven this assertion, and, if it is as true as other assertions, in "The Origin of Species," for instance, the evolution of man from the ape, I think the reader has just cause for doubt.

Sir Richard Phillips says in "Million of Facts," American edition, page 48: "The Angora Cat has one eye blue and the other yellow." Also, on page 49: "Perfectly white Cats are deaf."

Regarding this last assertion, I will say I once owned a "perfectly white Cat," which was a Tom, weighing twenty-five pounds, who was not deaf, and I cannot comprehend any just reason why a white Cat should be deaf, or what the color of the fur has to do with the ear or her hearing.

The statement has been made in the works of several writers upon animals and their habits that dogs and Cats would never fraternize. I have not a doubt that the experience of most of my readers will serve to demonstrate the contrary, as my own experience undoubtedly does.

Illustrative of the superior intelligence of the Cat, Prof. Romanes gives the following stories:

"Mrs. Hubbard tells me of a Cat she possessed that was in the habit of poaching young rabbits, to 'eat privately in the seclusion of a disused pig-sty.' One day this Cat caught a small black rabbit, and, instead of eating it, as she always did the brown ones, brought it into the house, unhurt, and laid it at the feet of her mistress. 'She clearly recognized the black rabbit as an unusual specimen and apparently thought it right to show it to her mistress.' Such was not the only instance this Cat showed of zoological discrimination, for on another occasion, having caught another unusual animal, viz., a stoat, she also brought this, alive, into the house, for the purpose of exhibiting it."

Mr. T.B. Groves tells, in "Nature," of a Cat which, on first seeing his own reflection in the mirror, tried to fight it. Meeting with resistance from the glass, the Cat next ran behind the mirror. Not finding the object of his search, he again came to the front, and while keeping his eyes deliberately fixed upon the image, felt round the edge of the glass with one paw, whilst with his head twisted around to the front he assured himself of the persistence of the reflection. He never afterwards condescended to notice the mirror.

A wonderful faculty of the Cat is her quick perception of the uses of mechanical appliances. In corroboration of this assertion, I introduce the following stories:

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.

Second--That it possesses a higher order of intelligence than any other of the quadrumina, and, consequently, more brain-power equal to that of man, in the ratio of its size.

Third--That with the same advantages or association with man and equal advantages of time and opportunity, the Cat will prove herself possessed of all the attributes which have been so much admired in the dog, besides the many admirable personalities accorded to her, and disprove the faults which have been ascribed to the feline by a prejudiced people.

If the reader will admit my arguments to be good enough to prove my theses, it will go a long way toward the admission of my theories concerning the language of the Cat, which my investigations have proven to me to be not only a possibility, but a fact beyond dispute. I have been thus particular in the foregoing chapters, in order to lay a foundation for what follows concerning the interpretation of a sign and word language, given to the Cat as language was given to man by his Maker. The possibility of the cultivation of such a language is an important point in my argument, and I give, in support thereof, no less, as there cannot be any greater, authority in the English language than Prof. A.H. Sayce, the eminent philologist, who, in his "Introduction to the Science of Language," remarks: "We must be careful to remember that language includes every kind of instrumentality whereby we communicate our thoughts and feelings to others, and that the deaf mute who can communicate only with the fingers and lips is as truly gifted with the power of speech as the man who can articulate his words. The latter has a more perfect instrument at his command, but that is all. Indeed, it is quite possible to conceive of a community in which all communications were carried on by means of the hands alone. To this day the savage tribes make large use of gestures, and we are told that the Grevos, of Africa, admirably imitate the persons and tenses of the verbs by this means only."

In the word part of the language of the Cat there are, probably, not more than six hundred fundamental words, all others being derivatives. Consonants are daintily used, while a wide berth is given to explosives and the liquid letters "l" and "r" enter into the great majority of sounds. The sounds of the labials are not frequently heard, but the vowels, a, e, i, o and u, go far toward making up the entire complement of words in the language of the Cat.

I say that there are not, probably, more than six hundred primitive words, because I have not, after years of search, discovered more than that number, and am of the opinion that the spoken words will not number more. The difficulty of fixing the number of spoken words may be realized from the fact that the signs are so universally used, to the neglect of the sounds, that the opportunity afforded to catch the sound and interpret the meaning is rare. In short, while the words do exist, they are never used excepting when actual necessity requires their use. Signs are not only more comprehensive than sounds, but the meaning is conveyed more quickly and with greater ease emphasized. Sounds are used chiefly to attract attention where signs would fail. Therefore, signs are used to the exclusion of sounds, whenever they will answer the purpose.

The Chinese language is more nearly like the Cat language than any of the existing languages, and so closely resembles it in very many respects as to almost persuade me that the language of the Cat was derived from it. It is a wonderful thing, and well worth our attention, that no people are more fond of the feline than the Chinese, who utilize the little animal to a greater extent than people in any other part of the world. It is not a fact generally known, but it is a fact that reveals itself to all foreigners who visit the Celestial Empire, all of whom assure us of its truth, that the Chinese use the Cat to tell the time of day. This they are enabled to do by a close observation of the contraction and elongation of the pupil of the eye. It is said to be an unerring sign and always answers the purpose of correctly indicating the hour and part of an hour where a clock is not at hand, or may be too costly an article of household furnishing for the poorer classes among the moon-eyed creatures of the Orient.

In the Chinese language there are few words, and, like the Chinese, the sounds uttered in the Cat language are musical tones, mellifluous and pleasing to the senses. Like the Chinese, too, the words have various meanings, according to the inflections of the voice. The resemblance in the use and disuse of certain letters, is significant, and never more so than in the constant infusion of the vowels. Take, for instance, the word "mieouw," so frequently heard, uttered by the feline, and meaning, literally, "here," and we find in it a word of five letters, three absolute and one "possible" vowels.