Concerning Cats 



People who do not care for cats sometimes quote 

 the fact that they prey upon smaller animals as dis- 

 qualifying them for our regard. But alas ! do not 

 these same people eat the pretty, sportive lamb and 

 the pigeon, and wear the wings of beautiful birds shot 

 to minister to their vanity ? And is it any worse for 

 a cat to eat a reed-bird or a young partridge than for 

 a man to do the same thing ? 



For the cat's apparent pleasure in torturing their 

 prey, however, I have no apologies to offer. Mr. 

 Romanes says in his " Animal Intelligence " : " The 

 feelings that prompt a cat to torture a captured mouse 

 can only be assigned to the category to which by 

 common consent they are ascribed, — delight in tortur- 

 ing for torture's sake. Speaking of man, John Stuart 

 Mill somewhere observes that there is in some human 

 beings a special faculty or instinct of cruelty, which is 

 not merely a passive indifference to the sight of phys- 

 ical suffering, but an active pleasure in witnessing 

 or causing it. The only animals in which there is any 

 evidence of feelings in any way similar to these — if 

 indeed, in the case even of such animals the feelings 

 which prompt actions of gratuitous cruelty really are 

 similar to those which prompt it in man — are cats 

 and monkeys." 



My aunt, in Greeniield, Mass., had a cat who was 

 in the habit of catching his own breakfast every sum- 

 mer morning before the family was up. Invariably, a 

 little before my aunt's rising hour, Dick used to bring 



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