Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/392

378 over a squirrel which had been given them. Their mother cuffed them, then bit the squirrel in two, and gave half of it to each. Coonie, of Belfast, sitting on the window-sill by the side of the ladies of the family when the glass was much clouded, put up her paw and wiped off the mist. This act may be matched by animals breaking ice to get at the water, and horses scraping the snow from the ground to reach the grass beneath it, but it also shows capacity for adaptation to circumstances. The same Coonie usually had to suffer the loss of all but one of each litter of her kittens. She finally seems to have determined to choose the one that should be saved. She selected one, carried it away, and left the rest to their fate. A Scotch cat, of Greenock, where the family were in the habit of throwing out crumbs for the birds, hid in the shrubbery to catch one of the birds when they came up. One afternoon the crumbs were not eaten, and were covered with snow during the night. In the morning, Puss was observed picking the crumbs out of the snow and putting them on top, after which she retired to her hiding-place. This was noticed two or three times; and at last Puss's success in catching the birds forced the family to cease feeding them. Dr. G. Frost, of London, found his cat in the habit of waiting in ambush for the throwing out of crumbs for the birds. The practice of feeding the birds was left off for a few days; and Dr. Frost avers that he and another member of the household saw the cat herself scattering crumbs on the grass, "with the obvious intention of enticing the birds." Mr. James Hutchings tells, in Nature, of a cat which, finding a young blackbird fallen from its nest to the ground, spent several hours in keeping a strange kitten away from the young bird, and at the same time herself teasing it, in order to entice the parent, which was hovering around, within her reach. The cat showed wonderful persistency through several defeats, and played a variety of tricks to deceive or attract the parent bird, till Mr. Hutchings forcibly put an end to the cruel sport. A cat living in a hospital in Massachusetts is described in Nature, which discovered the blindness of one of the inmates, and regularly took advantage of the fact to steal a part of her meal from her. Mr. Lawson Tait relates that a mutual dislike arose between a visitor at his house and his family of unusually intelligent cats. Although the cats had always been scrupulously neat and clean, they regularly left a noxious mess at the guest's room door so long as he stayed at the house. Just as the slaughter of the whole tribe as nuisances had been determined upon, the visitor went away, and the objectionable deposit ceased.

A story is told in the Hartford Times of a cat which became