THE CAT AS MESMERIZER 



that a captured wryneck will sometimes " sham 

 death," and it occurs to me as just possible that here 

 may be, not simulation, but mesmerism. 



Has it been proved that serpents regularly and 

 deliberately practise, for a livelihood, fascination ? 

 I think not ; though certainly birds and other 

 creatures, in protest or terror, suffer themselves to 

 come so near the reptile that they pay the penalty 

 with their lives. Lately I have heard a good deal 

 about this fascination. One field naturalist of long 

 experience told me the other day he had no doubt that 

 cats often fascinated birds. He does not think they 

 can mesmerize a grown house sparrow the sparrow 

 knows too much but he has seen a robin drawn off 

 a tree by a cat's glaring eye ; nearer and nearer 

 came the doomed bird, twittering all the while, till 

 the cat sprang upon and devoured it. Another saw 

 a robin mesmerized by a cat squatting on a wall, 

 gazing intently at the bird, and moving its lower 

 jaw rapidly he could just hear it uttering a slight 

 noise sounding like " tehee, tehee, tehee " ! At the 

 moment the cat was ready to strike he called out. 

 The spell was broken. The bird was a-wing, the 

 cat skulked off. Interruption by man seems in- 

 stantly to break the spell. It is the same when man 

 interrupts wild animals in combat. The duellists, 

 however far their quarrel has gone, separate, and fly 

 before the common enemy. Birds thus interrupted 

 will often fly off with a cry quite different from 

 that which they were uttering an instant before a 

 cry of startle or shock. A lady tells me she has 



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