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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



By per- 

 Pub- 



ships with men and animals, exercise of self-denial, willingness 

 to do favors or to help, understanding of language, ability to make 

 their wants intelligibly known, humor, foresight, knowledge of 

 right and wrong, the use of means to ends, capacity to adapt 

 means to circumstances, the time-sense, and many other forms of 

 intelligence. Lindsay, in his Mind in the Lower Animals, shows 

 also that they, with other brutes, are liable to mental diseases 

 not unlike those to which the human mind is subject. 



Thoophile Gautier, remarking on the difficulty of conquering 

 the friendship of a cat, says that " she is a philosophical animal, 



orderly, quiet, 

 tenacious in her 

 habits, a lover of 

 order and propri- 

 ety, and one who 

 does not bestow 

 her affections 

 blindly. She will 

 gladly be your 

 friend if you are 

 worthy of it, but 

 not your slave. 

 In her tenderness 

 she regards her 

 own free will, and will not do for you what she judges to be unrea- 

 sonable ; but once she has given herself to you, what absolute con- 

 fidence, what fidelity of affection ! " Wood says that there is per- 

 haps no animal so full of trust as a cat that is kindly treated, as 

 there is none which, when subjected to harshness, is so nervously 

 suspicious. Cats keenly recognize these distinctions in character, 

 even among members of the same family, and govern themselves 

 accordingly. Pertinent to this point is the newspaper squib of the 

 maid who told her master that she knew Tom had returned from 

 school, though she had not seen him, because the cat was hiding 

 under the stove. 



1 Tad," of Burnham, Maine, used to meet his master, a night 

 watchman, every morning at the store-door, and accompany him 

 home. After the master died, " Tad *' continued to go for him 

 and wait ; then, not finding him, would return home and wander 

 about the house as if in search of him. " Hannah/' of North 

 Monroe, Maine, began to take care of the baby as soon as it came ; 

 increased its attentions when the child could walk ; would go after 

 him and call him back when he started to wander out of bounds, 

 and then go to the house and mew for help till some one came to 

 take the truant in charge. "Thomas," of Sandy Point, Maine, 

 was accustomed to be fed with crumbs from the table by a single 



Fig. 8.— Mrs. Vyvtan's Rotal Cat of Siam. Prize-winner 

 mission, from Harrison Weir's Onr Cats and all about Tbem. 

 lished by Houyhton, Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York. 



