42 Chapters on Animals. 



animals might say to us, " What you admire so much as 

 a proof of ladylike civilisation in the cat, is rather an 

 evidence that she has retained her savage habits. When 

 she so carefully avoids the glasses on the dinner-table 

 she is not thinking of her behaviour as a dependent on 

 civilised man, but acting in obedience to hereditary habits 

 of caution in the stealthy chase, which is the natural 

 accomplishment of her species. She will stir no branch 

 of a shrub lest her fated bird escape her, and her feet 

 are noiseless that the mouse may not know of her com- 

 ing." This, no doubt, would be a probable account of 

 the origin of that fineness of touch and movement which 

 belongs to cats, but the fact of that fineness remains. In 

 all the domestic animals, and in man himself, there are 

 instincts and qualities still more or less distinctly traceable 

 to a savage state, and these qualities are often the very 

 basis of civilisation itself. That which in the wild cat is 

 but the stealthy cunning of the hunter, is refined in the 

 tame one into a habitual gentleness, often very agreeable 

 to ladies, who dislike the boisterous demonstrations of the 

 dog and his incorrigible carelessness. 



This quality of extreme caution, which makes the cat 

 avoid obstacles that a dog would dash through without a 

 thought, makes her at the same time somewhat reserved 

 and suspicious in all the relations of her life. If a cat has 

 been allowed to run half wild this suspicion can never be 

 overcome. There was a numerous population of cats in 

 this half-wild state for some years in the garrets of my 

 house. Some of these were exceedingly fine, handsome 

 animals, and I very much wished to get them into the 

 rooms we inhabited, and so domesticate them ; but all my 

 blandishments were useless. The nearest approach to 

 success was in the case of a superb white-and-black ani- 



