25 



is to all intents and purposes a wild animal. In most cases it 

 stays in the home of man, mainly because of the warmth of his 

 fire, the food that it eats and its affection for the location where 

 it was reared. If, by accident or design, anything occurs to 

 interrupt its association with man, it readily returns to the wild. 

 Shaler says: — 



As a consequence of the affection which cats have for particular places, 

 they often return to the wilderness when by chance the homes in which they 

 have been reared are abandoned. Thus in New England, in those sections 

 of the district where many farmsteads have of late years been deserted, the 

 cats have remained about their ancient haunts and have become entirely wild. 

 In this State they are bred in such numbers that their presence is now a 

 serious menace to the birds and other weaker creatures of the country. 

 The behavior of these f erahzed animals differs somewhat from that of creatiu-es 

 which have never been tamed. They have not the same immediate fear of 

 man, but the least effort to approach them leads to their hasty flight. 



Cats abandon Owners. 



There are many other ways in which cats revert to a wild 

 state. Cats are not all alike in disposition; occasionally one will 

 leave its home and its master, walk out into the night and dis- 

 appear, perhaps to return after months, perhaps never. Many 

 leave good homes in the spring and take to the woods and fields, 

 returning only w^hen the approach of winter drives them to a 

 nest in the haymow or to the master's fireside, but the most 

 prolific cause of the return of cats to the feral state is not the 

 fault of the animal, but that of man, — abandonment by their 

 owners. 



Owners abandon Cats. 



Thousands of families go into the country or to the seaside 

 in summer, taking cats or kittens with them, and leave their 

 pets on their return to the city, not knowing, perhaps, that such 

 cruelty is forbidden by law. Miss Winslow asserts that at Old 

 Orchard Beach, Me., at the close of one summer, forty deserted 

 cats were seen, and that sometimes as many as one hundred have 

 been abandoned in a similar way at Nantasket Beach, near 

 Boston. A report from Mr. Orrin C. Bourne, chief deputy fish 

 and game commissioner of Massachusetts, asserts that one man 

 killed thirteen cats that were deserted at Brant Rock at the end 

 of the summer of 1914. Mr. Walter A. Larkin of Andover says 

 that cats are left at summer camps in the woods when people 

 leave them in the fall. He saw seven in one wooded tract in one 

 day. Mr. Wm. H. Jones of Nantucket says that one hunter 

 killed twenty-seven abandoned cats there last fall (1914). Many 



