THE CAT 



79 



IV. Sympathies and Antipathies 



Why does the cat feel such hatred to 

 the whole mouse tribe ? No one knows ; 

 but there must be some extraordinary 

 and terrible cause for such eternal ani- 

 mosity. In past ages rats and mice must 

 undoubtedly have done some great injury 

 to the feline race. Perhaps, in earlier 

 times, the rat may have been able to 

 attack his enemy with success ; if not, 

 in the great struggle for existence going 

 on perpetually in the animal kingdom 

 ever since the creation, those rodents, 

 always conquered by the cat, would 

 surely have disappeared. A cat watch- 

 ing a mouse and knowing its hiding 

 place crouches where its victim cannot 

 see it, and never moves a hair till the 

 favorable moment comes ; then with one 

 bound to right or left, or sometimes 

 backward, all is over for the little beast. 

 Even if a cat is asleep, no mouse can 

 with safety pass either before or behind 

 it, which says much for its sense of hearing. 

 Lenz, the naturalist, says that a cat will catch 



Six in thk Eve.mng 



Ten at Night 



and swallow twenty mice a day, — seventy- 

 three hundred a year. 



If pussy has a mouse in view, no power 

 on earth can turn her trom her murderous 

 projects. One evening, as a family was 

 sitting in a small parlor, their cat, a fat 

 and well-fed beast, made one spring from 

 his place before the fire and disappeared 

 beneath a piece of heavy furniture, which 

 (being afterwards exactly measured) was 

 only two and a half inches from the 

 floor. The body of the cat, lying flat, 

 measured from seven to eight inches. 

 The family in consternation rushed to 

 deli\'er its pet from so strange a situation. 

 Even his intimate friend, the greyhound, 

 stretched a paw under the sideboard to 

 reach him, when lo and behold! he re- 

 appeared, calm and conscious of victory, 

 with a mouse in his mouth. Other ani- 

 mals possess this power of shrinking 

 their bodies ; mice themselves can get 

 through the narrowest slit, but it is cer- 

 tainly no slight thing for a body of seven 

 or eight inches in height to rush through 



