Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/108

98 with men and animals, exercise of self-denial, willingness to do favors or to help, understanding of language, ability to make their wants intelligibly known, humor, foresight, knowledge of right and wrong, the use of means to ends, capacity to adapt means to circumstances, the time-sense, and many other forms of intelligence. Lindsay, in his Mind in the Lower Animals, shows also that they, with other brutes, are liable to mental diseases not unlike those to which the human mind is subject.

Théophile Gautier, remarking on the difficulty of conquering the friendship of a cat, says that "she is a philosophical animal, orderly, quiet, tenacious in her habits, a lover of order and propriety, and one who does not bestow her affections blindly. She will gladly be your friend if you are worthy of it, but not your slave. In her tenderness she regards her own free will, and will not do for you what she judges to be unreasonable; but once she has given herself to you, what absolute confidence, what fidelity of affection!" Wood says that there is perhaps no animal so full of trust as a cat that is kindly treated, as there is none which, when subjected to harshness, is so nervously suspicious. Cats keenly recognize these distinctions in character, even among members of the same family, and govern themselves accordingly. Pertinent to this point is the newspaper squib of the maid who told her master that she knew Tom had returned from school, though she had not seen him, because the cat was hiding under the stove.

"Tad," of Burnham, Maine, used to meet his master, a night watchman, every morning at the store-door, and accompany him home. After the master died, "Tad" continued to go for him and wait; then, not finding him, would return home and wander about the house as if in search of him. "Hannah" of North Monroe, Maine, began to take care of the baby as soon as it came; increased its attentions when the child could walk; would go after him and call him back when he started to wander out of bounds, and then go to the house and mew for help till some one came to take the truant in charge. "Thomas," of Sandy Point, Maine, was accustomed to be fed with crumbs from the table by a single