424 
ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 
houses the doors of which the cats desired to be opened. 1 
My informants tell me that they do not know how these 
cats, from any process of observation, can have surmised 
that pulling the wire in an exposed part of its length 
would have the effect of ringing the bell ; for they can 
never have observed anyone pulling the wires. I can only 
suggest that in these cases the animals must have ob- 
served that when the bells were rung the wires moved, and 
that the doors were afterwards opened ; then a process of 
inference must have led them to try whether jump- 
ing at the wires would produce the same effects. But 
even this, which is the simplest explanation possible, 
implies powers of observation scarcely less remarkable 
than the process of reasoning to which they gave rise. 
As further instances corroborating the fact that both 
these faculties are developed in cats to a wonderful degree, 
I may add the following. Couch (‘ Illustrations of 
Instinct,’ p. 196) gives a case within his own knowledge 
of a cat which, in order to get at milk kept in a locked 
cupboard, used to unlock the door by seating herself 
on an adjoining table, and 6 repeatedly patting on the bow 
of the key with her paw, when with a slight pull on the 
door 5 she was able to open it ; the lock was old, and the 
key turned in it 6 on a very slight impulse.’ 
As a still further instance of the high appreciation of 
mechanical appliances to which cats attain, I shall quote 
an extract from a paper by Mr. Otto, which will have been 
read at the Linnean Society before this work is pub- 
half a dozen times, gaining admittance on each occasion by springing 
at the knocker. 
Lastly, Dr. W. H.Kesteven writes to ‘Nature ’ (xx., p. 428) of a cat 
which used to knock at a knocker to gain admittance, in the way 
already described of so many other cats ; but as showing how much 
more readily cats acquire this practice than dogs, it is interesting to 
note that Dr. Kesteven adds that a dog which lived in the same house 
ascertained that the cat was able to gain admittance by knocking, and 
yet did not imitate the action, but ‘was m the habit of searching for 
her when he wanted to come in, and either waiting till she was ready 
to knock at the door, or inducing her to do it to please him.’ 
1 Consul E. L. Layard gives in Nature (xx., p. 839) a precisely similar 
case of a cat habitually and without tuition ringing a bell by pulling 
at an exposed wire. 
