CAT KIND. 391 



The cat goes with young fifty-six days, and 

 selciom brings forth above five or six at a time. 

 The female usually hides the place of her retreat 

 from the male, who is often found to devour her 

 kittens. She feeds them for some weeks with her 

 milk, and whatever small animal she can take by 

 surprise, accustoming them betimes to rapine. 

 Before they are a year old, they are fit to en- 

 gender ; the female seeks the male with cries ; 

 nor is their copulation performed without great 

 pain, from the narrowness of the passage in the 

 female. They live to about the age of ten years ; 

 and, during that period, they are extremely viva- 

 cious, suffering to be worried a long time before 

 they die. 



The young kittens are very playful and amus- 

 ing ; but their sport soon turns into malice, and 

 they, from the beginning, show a disposition to 

 Cruelty : they often look wistfully towards the 

 cage, sit sentinels at the mouth of a mouse-hole, 

 and in a short time become more expert hunters 

 than if they had received the instruction of art. 

 Indeed, their disposition is so incapable of con- 

 straint, that all instruction would be but thrown 

 away. It is true, that we are told of the Greek 

 monks of the Isle of Cyprus teaching cats to hunt 

 the serpents with which the island is infested ; 

 but this may be natural to the animal itself, and 

 they might have fallen upon such a pursuit with- 

 out any instruction. Whatever animal is much 

 weaker than themselves, is to them an indiscrimi- 

 nate object of destruction. Birds, young rabbits, 

 hares, rats and mice, bats, moles, toads, and 



