CAT EMOTIONS AND GENERAL INTELLIGENCE. 413 



The only other feature in the emotional life of cats 

 which calls for special notice is that which leads to their 

 universal and proverbial treatment of helpless prey. The 

 feelings that prompt a cat to torture a captured mouse 

 can only, I think, be assigned to the category to which by 

 common consent they are ascribed delight in torturing 

 for torture's sake. Speaking of man, John S. Mill some- 

 where observes that there is in some human beings a 

 special faculty or instinct of cruelty, which is not merely 

 a passive indifference to the sight of physical sufferings, 

 but an active pleasure in witnessing or causing it. Now, 

 so far as I have been able to discover, the only animals in 

 which there is any evidence of a class of feelings in any 

 way similar to these if, indeed, in the case even of such 

 animals the feelings which prompt actions of gratuitous 

 cruelty really are similar to those which prompt it in man 

 are cats and monkeys. With regard to monkeys I shall 

 adduce evidence on this point in the chapter which treats 

 of these animals. With regard to cats it is needless to 

 dwell further upon facts so universally known. 



General Intelligence. 



Coming now to the higher faculties, it is to be 

 noted as a general feature of interest that all cats, how- 

 ever domesticated they may be, when circumstances 

 require it, and often even quite spontaneously, throw 

 off with the utmost ease the whole mental clothing 

 of their artificial experience, and return in naked sim- 

 plicity to the natural habits of their ancestors. This 

 readiness of cats to become feral is a strong expression 

 of the shallow psychological influence which prolonged 

 domestication has here exerted, in comparison with that 

 which it has produced in the case of the dog. A pet 

 terrier lost in the haunts of his ancestors is almost as 

 pitiable an object as a babe in the wood ; a pet cat under 

 similar circumstances soon finds itself quite at home. The 

 reason of this difference is, of course, that the psychology 

 of the cat, never having lent itself to the practical uses of, 

 and intelligent dependency on, man, has never, : s in the 



