Page:The fireside sphinx.djvu/270

 240 Only the cat's impartial mind draws no distinction between mouse and bird.

"An ordinary cat," says Mr. Robinson unkindly, "will devote a whole day to the circumvention of the lodger's canary, rather than spend an hour upon the landlady's rats. A single bullfinch in the drawing-room is worth a wilderness of mice in the pantry."

This I believe to be calumnious; but, as St. George Mivart remarks with a sapiency too obvious to be instructive: "We cannot, without becoming cats, perfectly understand the cat mind." When an animal withholds its confidence, we have no power to break the barriers of its reserve; and who shall boast that he enjoys—save in rare and fugitive moments—the confidence or intimacy of a cat? Men have made this boast, I am aware, and they have themselves believed the truth of their assertion; yet even Gautier and Loti wove into their daily intercourse with their cats the brilliant web of their own imaginings. Gifted beyond most mortals with that delicate and subtle sympathy which enabled them to establish a basis of companionship, they unconsciously assumed a more complete understanding than could ever have existed. For whereas the dog strives to lessen the distance between