THE INTELLIGENCE OF CATS. 377 



erfcies of doors. Mr. A. Petrie's cat would climb up by some list 

 to the click-latch, push it up, and, hanging from the door, simi- 

 larly push it away from the posts. The cat of Mr. W. H. Michael, 

 of Queen Anne's Gate, St. James's Park, London, jumped four feet 

 to the crank-latch of a casement window, caught hold of the 

 crank with her fore feet, and pressed the window open with her 

 hind feet. A cat belonging to Parker Bowman learned to open a 

 window by turning a swivel and bearing upon the sash. 



Some equally curious incidents, showing powers of contrivance 

 and a degree of understanding of the relation of antecedent and 

 consequent, are connected with cats striking door-knockers and 

 ringing bells, or, if unable to do so themselves, asking to have 

 them done. Mr. Belshaw tells, in Nature, of his kitten jumping 

 upon the door and hanging by one leg while it put the other fore 

 paw through the knocker and rapped twice. A London cat is de- 

 scribed in Nature which by standing on her hind legs would 

 reach the knocker and rap once ; if this was not answered, she 

 gave what is called a ' postman's knock ' ; and if this was not re- 

 sponded to, " tried a scientific rat-tat that would not disgrace a 

 West End footman." It is added that she held the knocker in 

 her paws as we would hold it in our fingers, and did not simply 

 tip it up. Mr. J. J. Cole's cat, of Maryland, Sutton, Surrey, hav- 

 ing observed that a servant went to one of the windows after 

 hearing the flap of a letter-box attached to it moved by a post- 

 man, learned to have herself let in when shut out by also rattling 

 the flap. Some alarm was excited at Mr. Lonergan's house in 

 London by a mysterious knocking at a door which could not be 

 reached from the outside except by climbing over a wall. At 

 length, Mrs. Muffins, the cat, was detected as the author of the 

 sounds, and it was found some time afterward that she had 

 learned to produce them by pulling at the loose lower end of a 

 strip of board running down at the side of the door, and allowing 

 it to rebound. There is perhaps nothing very remarkable in an 

 animal, having observed that the striking of the knocker or the 

 pulling of the bell-knob was usually followed by the opening of 

 the door, learning to imitate the act. But some cats have gone 

 further than this, and have learned the connection between the 

 wire and the bell, and to avail themselves of it in order to be 

 let in. 



Other acts are related of cats that give us a much higher con- 

 ception of their mental powers, and even go a little way toward 

 lifting them into the order of beings capable of real abstract 

 reasoning. Kitty, of Belfast, Maine, having given a mouse to her 

 kittens to play with, watched the sport for a while as if to see 

 that the mouse did not escape, but at last bit it so as to disable it, 

 and then went away. Two kittens, neighbors of Kitty's, disa- 



