CAT— EMOTIONS AND GENERAL INTELLIGENCE. 413 
The only other feature in the emotional life of cats 
which calls for special notice is that which leads to their 
universal and proverbial treatment of helpless prey. The 
feelings that prompt a cat to torture a captured mouse 
can only, I think, be assigned to the category to which by 
common consent they are ascribed — delight in torturing 
for torture’s sake. Speaking of man, John S. Mill some- 
where 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 physical sufferings, 
but an active pleasure in witnessing or causing it. Now, 
so far as I have been able to discover, the only animals in 
which there is any evidence of a class 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. With regard to monkeys I shall 
adduce evidence on this point in the chapter which treats 
of these animals. With regard to cats it is needless to 
dwell further upon facts so universally known. 
General Intelligence . 
Coming now to the higher faculties, it is to be 
noted as a general feature of interest that all cats, how- 
ever domesticated they may be, when circumstances 
require it, and often even quite spontaneously, throw 
off with the utmost ease the whole mental clothing 
of their artificial experience, and return in naked sim- 
plicity to the natural habits of their ancestors. This 
readiness of cats to become feral is a strong expression 
of the shallow psychological influence which prolonged 
domestication has here exerted, in comparison with that 
which it has produced in the case of the dog. A pet 
terrier lost in the haunts of his ancestors is almost as 
pitiable an object as a babe in the wood ; a pet cat under 
similar circumstances soon finds itself quite at home. The 
reason of this difference is, of course, that the psychology 
of the cat, never having lent itself to the practical uses of, 
and intelligent dependency on, man, has never, as in the 
