112 ON THE EDGE OF THE WILDERNESS 
and her brother and sisters practiced this yell, 
rather feebly at first, but with growing confidence 
and volume. AIl these things they learned first 
from watching their mother, and then from prac- 
tice, after their mother drove them with cuffs 
from the maternal food supply and made them 
hunt for themselves. 
It was considerably after the self-sustaining 
point had been reached that they saw their mother 
do a strange thing. It was early morning, not 
yet sun-up, and in the half light you couldn’t see 
far through the night mists which still enveloped 
the mountain at the altitude of the den. The 
kittens were all asleep, and so was the mother cat, 
having just come in weary and also hungry, after 
a long trip to the plain for food, a trip which was 
unrewarded by anything satisfying to a healthy 
appetite. The previous winter had been a hard 
one, with deep snow and extreme cold. As a 
result, the partridges and pheasants were few, the 
rabbits had been largely killed off by great horned 
owls and goshawks which descended from the 
north, and now the picking for wildcat was pretty 
poor. Indeed, the mother cat that night had 
