DOMESTIC CATS 435 



Thus, as contrasted with most of the wild species of the genus when tamed from 

 their youngest days, the domestic cat is conspicuously of less uncertain temper toward 

 its master the uncertainty of temper displayed by nearly all the wild members of 

 the feline tribe when tamed being, of course, an expression of the interference of 

 individual with hereditary experience. And, as contrasted with all the wild species 

 of the genus when tamed, the domestic cat is conspicuous in alone manifesting any 

 exalted development of affection towards the human kind ; for in many individual 

 cases such affection, under favoring circumstances, reaches a level fully comparable 

 to that which it attains in the dog. ' ' 



The writer then proceeds to observe that the most obvious trait in the "emo- 

 tional' ' character of the cat is its strongly-rooted attachment to places as distin- 

 guished from persons, and it is considered that this is probably inherited from an 

 instinctive attachment to their lairs, characteristic of its wild ancestors. The 

 second feature in this aspect of the cat's nature is its partiality for torturing its 

 helpless prey a trait which Dr. Romanes ascribes to the delight of torturing for 

 torture's sake. 



As regards their higher faculties, the same author observes that "it is to be 

 noted as a general feature of interest that all cats, however 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 simplicity 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 its an- 

 cestors 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, as in the case of the dog, been 

 under the culminative influence of human agency in becoming further and further 

 bent away from its original and naturally imposed position of self-reliance, so that, 

 when a severance takes place between a cat and its human protectors, the animal, 

 inheriting unimpaired the transmitted intelligence of wild progenitors, knows very 

 well how to take care of itself. ' ' 



The terrible pests that domestic cats which indulge either in nocturnal poaching 

 expeditions, or which have taken to a completely wild life in the woods, become, is 

 known to all who have anything to do with rabbit warrens or game preserves. In 

 the island of St. Helena, Darwin tells up that a few cats which had been originally 

 turned loose, in order t to destroy the rats and mice, increased in numbers so as to 

 become a perfect plague. And the same observer mentions that in some parts of 

 South America the domestic cats which had run wild had become modified into 

 larger creatures of exceeding fierceness, inhabiting rocky hills. 



