THE PLAY OF ANIMALS. 131 



ObserTation of this motion produces in the young 

 animal first perfect motionlessness, attended by that 

 strenuous attention that we call " lying in wait/' whose 

 analogue is found in the feigning of death by an animal 

 when pursued. Actual deception is often involved in 

 this lying in wait, for the cat appears to be looking in 

 an entirely different direction while she creeps up 

 noiselessly with snakelike movements. Then comes the 

 spring on the object, which is clutched with the teeth 

 from above and the claws at the sides. If the object 

 is quite near, or if it hangs like a suspended string, 

 grabbing at it with the claws is substituted for this pro- 

 cess. 



AVe may safely assume that the cat does not recog- 

 nise mock prey as such at this early stage, but we can 

 not be sure, on the contrary, that she thinks it is real 

 prey. 



The sight of the moving object is sufficient to ac- 

 count for the whole series of instinctive acts, without 

 calling into use any higher psychological accompani- 

 ments. I am therefore not far from right if I use the 

 play with its own or the mother's tail as an illustration 

 here for the sake of simplicity. So far as it is not ex- 

 perimenting, it belongs in the category of chase plays. 

 I have slightly abridged Brehm's beautiful description: 

 " The playfulness of cats is noticeable in their first in- 

 fancy, and the mother does everything in her power 

 to encourage it. She becomes a child with her chil- 

 dren from love of them, just as a human mother for- 

 gets her cares in play with her darlings. The cat sits 

 surrounded by her little ones and slowly moves her 



orsrane, vol. vii. 1894, p. 326. Cf. Schneider, Vierteljahr. fiir Wiss. 

 Philos., ii, 1878. 



