Modern Cats

LET US examine the interior of the cat, and take an inventory of his moral and intellectual furniture.

Webster, in an early edition of his dictionary, goes out of his way to abuse the creature, and even makes himself little less than slanderous. “The domestic cat,” he says, “is a deceitful animal, and when enraged extremely spiteful. It is kept in houses, chiefly for the purpose of catching rats and mice.”

Would a dog have done worse? In all the sixty thousand words of the English language, which of course the great lexicographer knew by heart, could he not find a couple of dozen that would have been more applicable, or at least more charitable? If he had been born as weak as pussy, and had found it as hard to escape kicks and pick up a living, might he not have grown up a bit of a diplomatist? I should like to know, also, whether he was not himself subject to be “extremely spiteful when enraged.”

Then, too, “kept in houses chiefly for the purpose of catching rats and mice!” No account taken of the gamesome ways of kittens; of the pleasure derivable from the grateful purr, the gracious movements, the furry caresses; of the affection which man, woman, and child have lavished upon the most pettable of all pets. It is enough to make one reject Webster’s derivations and throw overboard his new orthographies.

As a member of the living household which man has pleased himself in collecting, the cat is useful but not slavish. The bargain which he struck with us was not submission, as was the case with the dog, but alliance. “House me,” he said, “smooth my back, give me a bed for my morning naps, and I’ll kill your rats and purr to you.” What right have we to demand slavishness? We are too ready to suppose that everything was made for man. Perhaps the feline intellect and sense of justice have reached the conclusion that cats were made for themselves. Have they not a right to be as egotistic as we ?

According to a late census there are three hundred and fifty thousand cats in England. Counting their board and stealing, here seems a waste; but counting the vermin they destroy, what a prodigious saving! A venerable and trustworthy grimalkin (attached to the editorial staff of the London Standard) assures me that he estimates one mouse and five rats to every acre in England, making a total of ninety-one million one hundred and sixteen thousand of these animals, which annually consume grain enough to feed nearly three million human beings. He adds that, if it were not for the incessant exertions of his kind, these rodents might root out the present population of the island, as the Saxons rooted out the Celtic Britons.

Add to this salvation the innocent and home-like pleasure furnished; the amusing pranks of say one hundred thousand kittens; the multitudinous purrings and rubbings and grave trickeries and expositions of instinct; the old ladies and invalids and lonesome ones whose lives are cheered; the children who are provided with a living doll. True, some birds suffer; but may there not be birds enough for all? On the whole, there must be a large balance due the cats.

In spite of slanders to the contrary, the animal is capable of affection for persons. I had one that used to walk up and down the room with me; another that ran about after me all over the house. A third, after a separation of five months, greeted me with extravagant demonstrations of joy, leaping into my lap, down again, up again, rolling over, tremulous from head to foot, and all the while purring to split his throat. A cat belonging to a lady who died some years since was one of the most pathetic of mourners, insisting with affectionate persistence upon sitting by the body, wailing as if his heart would break, and remaining for a long time inconsolable. Instances of this sort are by no means uncommon.

It is true that in general the cat is fonder of places than of people. He likes the old home because he knows it thoroughly; because he has investigated its every mouse-hole and studied the advantages of its every retreat from dogs and other enemies; because he, a weak animal, feels sure that he can there feed and protect himself. Moreover, his bump of locality is prodigious, as is shown by the ease with which he finds his way back to the familiar spot, though carried blindfold a long distance from it. A friend of mine transported a cat several times five miles from home, and dismissed it into the wide liberty of earth, only to find it at his house when he returned, or very shortly afterward. A Flemish peasant, says Champfleury, offered to bet that his cat would get home from a distance of eight leagues sooner than twelve pigeons which should be let loose with him. The wager was accepted, and the animal won it. Another story of Champfleury’s concerns the favorite grimalkin of a village curate, who was made rector in a little city five leagues from his former parish. Besides the cat, the priest’s family consisted of an old servant and a crow. Tommy was something of a thief; the crow had a passion for pecking at his quadruped companion; the granny scolded them both, and the rector interested himself in these small quarrels. The day after the removal, to the great grief of priest, granny, and crow, the cat disappeared. A few days later he was found caterwauling around the old parsonage, was seized and carried back to the rectory. A second flight; the successor of the curate was kept awake by the nightly lamentations of the animal; another forcible restitution, pussy being now in a frightful state of leanness. The old housekeeper tried to win him by kindness, fed him luxuriously, and left the pantry open so that he could indulge his propensity for small stealings. All useless; once more the ancient parish resounded with his caterwaulings; there was danger that wrathful peasants might blow him out of the world with sacrilegious fowling-pieces. But the affection of the housekeeper followed him, and she persuaded a masculine friend to undertake his reformation. The cat was caught once more, popped into a sack, and dipped in a puddle, after which he was carried to the rectory dripping wet and in a state of indignation which can be imagined. The remedy was effectual, and here ended his escapades.

Cats are made uneasy by changes in their domicile. When I lately had a door opened between two rooms in my house, my two pussies surveyed the operations of the carpenters with evident anxiety and distrust, frequently coming up to me with a look which seemed to say, Do you know what these men are about? The door finished, they examined it from one side; walked around the chimney and examined it from the other side; peered through, drew back, looked aloft, smelled, investigated in every fashion; all this before venturing to make use of the new passage. If there is a packing of trunks, a preparation for removal or for a journey, these animals are equally disturbed. In short, they are silver gray conservatives.

There is a prejudice against cats because dogs hate them. We defer overmuch to the opinion of the dog because he is “faithful,” or in other words, because he is our humble boot-licker and toady. One of the greatest satisfactions of my boyhood consisted in watching the warfare which was carried on against the canine race by a little and lissome black tabby who abode in the principal “store” of the village. She seemed to be crazy to avenge the wrongs of her kind: she went at every dog-skin on four legs the moment she saw it; disparity of size or numbers was a matter of no consideration. On one occasion a cur rolled howling out of the store in agony; two other canines, who had heard the noise of the conflict, arrived simultaneously; whereupon the black paws struck out right, left, and forward, one, two, three, with the quickness of rapiers; the result being a victorious cat in the middle and three yelping fugitives taking three different roads for safety. The miller’s black and tan terrier, having been once pitched bleeding down a staircase, conceived such a terror of this fierce avenger of centuries of wrong, that, when his master came to the store for groceries, he could not be wheedled nearer than the blacksmith’s shop, an eighth of a mile away, but remained there barking anxiously until the imprudent human should return. As for the postmaster’s dog, a long, lean, and frouzy spaniel, much given to pointing and setting at stray bones and swill-pails, scarcely a week passed that he was not caught in the storekeeper’s garden and soundly scratched for his poachings. Hurry scurry through the squash vines and green corn; dog “a leetle ahead,” but pussy close on his bushy tail; now the fugitive reaches the board fence and squats for a leap; in that moment a streak of furry lightning mounts his back and draws a yelp; away now to another hopeful corner, and another and another; a lucky bound at last and then a straight race for life; of course the longest legs win it. This feline fencer was tremendous on eyes; she lunged right at them and held on like a tiger. I have seen a short-legged, stout-bodied, obstinate cur whirl her three times around his head, with her claws fastened in the skin of his stolid physiognomy. She was pitched a couple of yards at last, and with great violence; but the moment she struck earth she was up like Antæus, and at him again. Of all the dogs in the neighboring country, only big Pomp Wheeler was ever known to make Pussy Lewis turn her tail. Both these heroic combatants are now with Hector and Julius Cæsar. Peace to their manes, such as they had!

Have cats intellect? A living Frenchman, resurrecting and amplifying some nonsense of Descartes, has undertaken to prove that the spiritual action of the lower animals is not intelligent, but automatic. Cats dream; sometimes they dream terrible things, as you can see by their twitchings and cryings; sometimes what is agreeable, as is obvious by their awakening with a look and gesture of pleasure. Now, can any one tell me positively whether dreaming is a result of mental power, or whether it demands something as high as automatic ability? My own heresy is that a dreaming animal must be a thinking animal, and that a thinking animal must possess intellect. As to the question, “What is intellect?” I decline to try to answer it, foreseeing that I shall not have time enough in this life. All that I venture to urge is that the brain action of the cat probably differs from our brain action in degree rather than in nature.

Observe the patient intelligence with which he performs his special duty of watching for prey. He loves ease and warmth; but he will sit for hours in the cold beside a mouse-hole; and before he commenced his siege he had examined the whole room to see if there was any other exit for the vermin; he had effected a reconnoissance which would have done credit to a Mohawk scalp-hunter, or an experienced general. During the last summer my two youthful cats accomplished such a slaughter of birds as made my heart ache, bringing in one or two nearly every day. Now it must require no little reflection, caution, and adroitness, to enable an animal who has merely legs to catch one who has both legs and wings. If the reader doubts, let him try it, and though he take a bag of salt with him, I wager that he does not bring home a robin. It was amusing to observe the plaintive mew of annoyance with which my hunters watched a bird who was obviously beyond their reach.

Champfleury tells us of a cat who used to divide her game between her master and her kittens, only she always brought her rats to the former and her mice to the latter, judging that the larger creature needed and could manage the bigger mouthfuls. My Maltese opens a door which is ajar most judiciously; he does not put nose or foot into the opening, knowing that the former might get banged and the latter pinched; he places one paw against the obstacle, braces himself sidewise on the other three legs, and so pushes; the operation is admirable for caution and for calculation of the needed power. In Greenville, South Carolina, I had the honor of knowing a magnificent tom, weighing eight pounds, who opened doors by leaping up, seizing the knob forcibly between his fore-paws, and turning it, his only defect in the matter being that he could not close the door after him. Some years ago a family residing in New Haven, Connecticut, was alarmed by what the servants supposed to be a ghost, and the lady of the house, a thief. An outside door was repeatedly opened, no one entering but the cat. In spite of watching, nobody was discovered, and the mystery grew to be frightful. At last the ghost was caught, and it proved to be pussy. She had observed, she had reflected, she had drawn an inference; in other words, she had performed three distinct intellectual operations. The result was that she knew how to open doors by leaping up to the latch and pressing her paw on the thumb-piece.

Champfleury quotes from the Baron von Gleichen, a German diplomatist of the last century, a story which shows the feline powers of observation and reasoning. The baron had noticed that his cat was much interested in the mystery of mirrors, looking at her own reflection in them, withdrawing, approaching, and scratching at the frames. His mirrors being all set in pieces of furniture, and an obstacle being thereby put to the animal’s investigations, he bought for her especial use a toilette glass and placed it in the middle of a room. Pussy discovered it, walked up to it, butted against it, and thus assured herself that it resembled the others. Next she rushed behind it repeatedly, each time running faster than before. Not catching a cat in this manner, she went to the edge of the mirror, and looked first along the rear and then along the front. Her conclusion evidently was, that, as this strange creature which she had seen was neither before the glass, nor behind it, it must be inside. Sitting up on her hind legs, she stretched out her fore paws and carefully felt the thickness of the plate until she had satisfied herself that it was too thin to contain anything of the bigness of a cat. This fact established in her mind, she seemed to come to the decision that here was a phenomenon which was beyond the circle of her ideas and which it was therefore useless for her to investigate; and, giving it up with a common-sense promptness worthy of the imitation of many human philosophers who have got beyond their depth, she walked away from the mirror and never afterwards was seen to look into one.

As for feline language, there is not a doubt of its existence, nor of its easy comprehensibility to those who are born to it. When one of my cats comes in hungry from a fruitless expedition, he smells of his comrade’s nose to see if the latter has had dinner, and, if the mute response is a fragrant one, he “yowps” for his share. From this simple means of communication up to the mew of distress, the mew of inquiry for the whereabouts of the family, the krr of joy at finding some one, the purr of calm satisfaction, the caterwauling of rage, the spitting of fright, and the vastly various notes of love-making, there is an extensive gamut. Much of it is comprehensible to us, and all of it is perfectly comprehensible to cats. Have they not orators and songsters among them who are reckoned superior to other orators and songsters? I doubt it not. When two furry rivals or lovers squall at each other by the hour together under the light of the moon, do you suppose that they are not saying a great deal and that it is not all understood? The supposition that so much noise is made without a meaning is preposterous. A vast store would be added to man’s knowledge, if he could fully comprehend the speech of animals. He might learn that what he now calls instinct is reason, and that on some points it is a reason as acute as his own.

Let us turn to cat morality. Here we must make the same distinction as if we were studying human nature; we must divide morality into the natural and the social, the innate and the acquired. Can it be absolutely proved that natural morality includes anything more than the proper play of the affections? Supposing this to constitute the whole of it, the cats certainly possess it; at least they possess all of it that is necessary or even possible to an animal in their conditions. A mother who has three or four children at a birth, and perhaps two or three births a year, cannot follow each and every one of her offspring with affection and care during all her life. But while the kittens may be under their parent’s charge, what a beautiful spectacle of love she exhibits! The paws open and shut softly; the whole face expresses gratitude, joy, and affection. No other quadruped is so morally and physically beautiful in the act of nursing its young.

The cat brings her kittens to her master to have them admired and to secure their adoption into the family. If he takes one up and caresses it, she rubs against his legs with maternal pride and thankfulness, while at the same time she cannot always repress a little mew of anxiety. What if he should drop it? You can see a shudder in her eyes as she thinks of that, and if it is dropped, she seizes it hastily and bears it away indignantly. After the nursing comes the education: the mother renewing her youth to join in the sports of her infant; now and then a velvety pat to signify, “Enough! don’t be silly;” the largest share of the milk as soon as it can lap, and presents of mice as soon as it can devour; a wise and yet tender initiation into the maturities of feline existence. It is true that tabbies are sometimes jealous of the superior favor granted to their playful babies. But I have actually seen a human mother who sought to be the rival of her own daughter.

When to maternal affection we have added the affection of gratitude which the cat bears to her master or mistress, we have reached the end of the natural morality of the species. As for its social ethics, they depend, like the social ethics of man, on education. You can teach a cat that it is wrong to steal; if he won’t stop it, he will at least show a guilty conscience; he will squat to receive his punishment, or he will run away to avoid it. Even his strong instincts of the chase can be overcome by tuition. Multitudes of us have seen “happy families,” in which cats lived peaceably with mice and birds. I have been amused in Barnum’s Museum to observe two diminutive monkeys quarreling for a bed on the large, furry flank of a monstrous Thomas of Angora. What struck me, however, as humiliating to my human vanity, was the fact that this cat purred on being stroked by a monkey, precisely as if he had received the same compliment from myself. Vigneul-Marville tells us of a lady at Paris who taught a dog, a cat, a sparrow, and a mouse to live together like brothers and sisters, sleeping in the same bed and eating out of the same plate. The dog was the most selfish, probably as being the biggest; but although he helped himself first and heartily, he allowed certain morsels to the cat; and both these larger animals surrendered the little bits to the sparrow and the mouse. The dog licked the cat, and the cat licked the dog; the mouse played unhurt between the feline paws; the sparrow pecked one and another without losing a feather. The life of this family of brutes was never disturbed by a quarrel.

If cleanliness is next to godliness, the cat has a high moral standing. Considering his limited means for washing himself, he certainly performs that duty with praiseworthy zeal. He is temperate also, not only as to strong liquors, but in the matter of eating. Such a thing as a gluttonous, corpulent, unwieldy feline is almost unknown. I did, however, have one gourmand of a cat, who was so lazy and luxurious that he would eat lying down, and so fat that he was no good at hunting. I remember his having a half-hour’s fight with a chipmunk, which ended in no greater victory than that the squirrel beat a retreat. Both creatures were out of breath; the cat lay down and panted; the savage foe squatted. Then at it again, pussy cuffing and spitting, the squirrel standing on his hind legs, snapping and squeaking. As I have already said, my corpulent friend remained master of the field of battle, but so tired that he slept all the rest of the day.

Have cats religion? Let us not hastily decide to the contrary. My two cats are aware of no one who has more goodness or puissance than I; and it is quite possible that their veneration for me is religious, or at least superstitious. Of course, they see other mighty men and some mighty women (for instance, the cook); but it does not necessarily follow in their minds that, because I have rivals, therefore I am commonplace. I am strongly inclined to believe that the purrings with which they greet me as soon as possible after daybreak constitute a species of morning devotion. It is true that I am a sham deity, but so were Moloch, Baal, Lucifer, and Ashtaroth false gods, and yet they were honestly and zealously bowed down to.

I have so often alluded to my cats that I feel bound to interpolate a history of them. Nearly two years ago I adopted a couple of twins, a brother and a sister, Patrick and Bridget. They were born on St. Patrick’s Day, amid the rejoicings of our Hibernian fellow-citizens. Both had dappled-gray coats, but Patrick was distinguished by his coarser hair and larger frame, while Bridget’s glossy fur and elegant outlines were the admiration of all beholders. Different morale also: the brother grew up mild, sociable, and affable; you could see it in his countenance. The sister remained wild; she was suspicious of your intentions; she was always on the lookout for her safety; she was caught with difficulty, and was unwilling to be held: she had the expression of a beast of the forest. Amazing was their agility in play, and quite equal their activity after victuals. It took two persons to feed them; one to set down the dish and another to hold the animals, and even then they often broke away and upset the mess. To see them standing on their hind legs, pawing at the plate of meat or saucer of milk, was as appetizing as mustard. The dinnerbell they soon learned to comprehend, rushing for the dining-room at the sound of it in a style which reminded one of old times in our hotels and steamboats, and once there, soliciting food with great energy in their several fashions. Bridget’s habit was to mount a chair, stick out her head, glare like a hungry “poor white” of the South, and mew perseveringly. Patrick, a gentleman by instinct, tried what singing and rubbing could do. Both were excessively polite in the matter of receiving caresses. A single touch on the spine would make them rise to their feet and arch their backs, meanwhile pouring out a stream of purr. Tigers in hunting, they were sure shots on any mouse who came within range, and they effected among birds a perfect massacre of the innocents. I was obliged to compose myself by reflecting that, if the Maker of all things taught his cats to catch his robins, I had no right to be miserable over it.

After a time we were tempted by the beauty of a kitten, a pure Maltese without speck of white, to add him to our family. Fierce jealousy on the part of Patrick and Bridget, who lost their appetites and kept out of the house; or, if set to eat with the new-comer, spit venomously and ran away. After a while, however, this bitterness disappeared under the pressure of hunger and of daily habituation. The Maltese was as different from Patrick and Bridget as they were from each other. The most sociable of creatures, he yelled to be taken up, sang like a music-box in response to a touch, was willing to sleep under bedclothes, would endure anything for human companionship. Having commenced life in a fish shop, he had a remarkable taste for New Haven oysters, a delicacy which was rather disdained by his two comrades. Like other pet cats, he was exceedingly fond of warmth, and would lie imprudently near the fire. The result was that he had a fit, and became for a time sickly and absurdly stolid. On one occasion, as he snoozed on a rug before a Franklin stove, a bit of red-hot anthracite rolled down from the grate and lodged on his stomach. Kitty looked at it and refused to stir; seemed to declare that nothing should get him up; only started from his bed when a large hole had been burnt in his waistcoat. This adventure, coupled with his previous dullness, infuriated us into giving him the name of Stupid, a sarcasm which still clings to him, although he no longer deserves it. There is one elevated taste, however, which he has never shared with his companions. As is proper in the friends of a literary man, Patrick and Bridget have developed a great fondness for manuscripts, always selecting them to sit or lie upon when attainable.

When Bridget died (was she indeed poisoned while foraging in a neighbor’s yard?) Patrick became thoroughly reconciled with Stupid. But even the solace of this friendship did not cause the Maltese’s life to run smoothly. He was a cat of misfortunes; he had a disease which a young medical friend pronounced to be typhoid fever; his ears were hot, his strength gone, and three circular bald spots disfigured his beautiful pelisse. The spots were rubbed with an ointment of lard and zinc, which he licked off; and he was bathed in a decoction of oak bark, which puckered up his tongue so that he couldn’t lick it off; and the result of the dual treatment was that he survived. Next came a swelling in his left ear. Another young medical friend declared it an external symptom of an abscess in the head. Tied up in a towel, he was laid on a table, and the swelling was lanced. I shall never forget his mew of surprise and pain as he raised his agonized eyes and stared at the surgeon when the knife pierced the flesh. But he did not struggle; he seemed to realize at once that this thing was for his good; and, after a glare of inquiry, he submitted in perfect quiet to the suites of the operation. Now came a treatment of lint; then a second lancing, a third, and many; at last he would sit up without compulsion to have his ear treated; in fact, I am ready to risk a Quaker’s oath that he held his head on one side, so that it might be got at the easier. The recovery was a long business.

At the suggestion and expense of the human infant of the family, the two cats celebrated Patrick’s last birthday, in conjunction with the Hibernian population. While masses were said in the churches and processions trampled after music through the streets, the cats feasted within on lumps of raw meat and slaked their thirst from a pint of milk set out for them in a quiet closet. They ate and slept well all day. Next morning they went to the closet, and stared in amazement to see no milk there. I should like to know what they thought of that day’s dispensation, and of the comparatively dry time which followed it.

Every morning they come up to the bedrooms to worship their false gods (ourselves) and to get a nap. Every afternoon Stupid is seized by a certain lady, who insists upon his taking another nap with her, a beneficence against which he sometimes rebels, seeking refuge in alien gardens and other wildernesses. He is a favorite because of his singularly thick, soft, and glossy fur, and because in his youth he was so affectionate and pettable. But he is pettable no longer; he does not often deign to sing when he is stroked; he is a spoiled baby. Meanwhile coarse-haired Patrick purrs most gratefully under caresses; moreover he bows and scrapes and humps his back like a gentleman of the old school; there never was a more courteous and affable grimalkin.

Every week or two I observe some new eccentricity in these animals. One whim is to select a particular spot for repose, sleep there regularly for a while, and afterwards never go near it. Now you will always find one in the hall; next week he takes his nap on a particular chair; then on a special bed or sofa; then up garret. It seems probable that in course of time they will become as notional as two old bachelors. This need of variety, this disgust taken to old things without any assignable reason, is only one of the many points in which cats resemble human creatures.

But I must return to Champfleury. He has one interesting chapter on the love of distinguished characters for cats. Here, by the way, one is tempted to look through the other end of the telescope and ask, Why not “the love of cats for distinguished characters”?

Tasso addressed the finest of his sonnets to his cat; Petrarch had his favorite cat embalmed in the Egyptian style; Cardinal Wolsey gave audience with his cat seated beside him. There is or was a statue in a niche of the ancient prison of Newgate, representing the famous Whittington, Lord Mayor of London, with his right hand resting on a cat. Mahomet on one occasion cut off the skirt of his robe, so that he might rise without disturbing his cat, which was sleeping on it. Cardinal Richelieu, the great prime minister of France, always kept a number of kittens in his cabinet to amuse him with their pranks. Chateaubriand loved cats all his life, and his passion for them was so notorious, that when he was ambassador at Rome, the Pope made him a present of one. Michelet, the historian and the essayist on Love and Woman, is so fond of these animals that he will even pet a deformed one, and will not allow it to be molested. Moncrif, a clever French writer and member of the Academy, was another cat lover, and wrote Les Lettres sur les Chats. Then come the German story-writer, Hoffmann, the French poets Baudelaire, Gautier, and Victor Hugo, the historian Mérimée, and our own Edgar Poe, besides a well-known list of English writers. On the whole, the cats have no reason to be ashamed of their intimates.

There have been artists who have loved this creature well enough to do much good work in drawing and painting him. Champfleury’s book is illustrated by eighty excellent wood-cuts, which give us at least a hint of what has been done in this line by the Egyptians, the Romans, the Japanese; by the German Gottfried Mind, “the Raphael of cats; ” by the Dutch Cornelius Wischer; by the Frenchmen, Grandville, Rouvière, and Delacroix; by the English Burbank, and several others. It is remarkable that one of the very best of these limners of the feline race is the Japanese Hok’sai, or Fo-Koa-Say, an artist of really distinguished merit, who died some fifty years since, leaving a prodigious number of sketches, many of which have reached Paris. The cats of Hok’sai are so plump and smooth and gracious, that you feel a desire to catch and fondle them. They are even more like nature than the best work of Delacroix, and they are hardly surpassed by the highly finished pieces of Mind and Wischer and Burbank.