He is a common grey kitten; but he is the last of a large family, and
his mother is devoted to him, and takes great pains about his
education. Now that he can run about, his mother fetches indoors
little field-mice for him, and baby rats from the stable; and so the
kitten is quickly learning the trade of all his tribe. But mother was
digesting last night (11/6/09) and would not run about with him, would
only flick her tail; and chasing mother's tail became gradually
monotonous for a kitten that had had a field-mouse in his paws, to say
nothing of a baby rat.
So he went and spoke to the big fat frog that was sitting in the
corner of the dining-room, face to the wall, like a pupil at school
sent to stand in the corner as a punishment. Only, the frog was not
being punished. He was catching flies. He looked round at the kitten
coming near and trying to draw attention. He is a pot-bellied frog, of
elderly look, so that his leaping seems out of character. On this
occasion, however, his deportment was unimpeachable. He looked at the
kitten earnestly, but never spoke, moving nothing but his head, as he
turned it round to see him. He gazed at the importunate little cat, as
once a gaitered bishop gazed at a newspaper-boy who wanted to speak to
him, but seemed unlikely to be polite. "I wish no ill to you, but
please leave me alone." That was what the frog's look seemed to say;
but he uttered no sound. Perhaps he thought that talking might disturb
the flies he was catching, just as the gentle angler sometimes prays
for silence, lest a whisper be heard by the fish.
The kitten took the hint and jumped upon a chair and thence to the
table, and walked across it towards me. He is fond of me; that is to
say, he sometimes comes to me when he has nothing else to do or wants
something. But on the way across the table he saw what seemed more
interesting. The brass Egyptian finger-bowl caught his eye, and he
surveyed it and its doily. He had passed it unconcerned a few minutes
before, but that was when preoccupied about the frog. On this
occasion, after an attentive survey of the finger-bowl, he put out his
paw and tried to push it sideways. It did not move. He tried a spring
and a push, to add momentum to his muscle; and so he shook it a
little.
He raised himself to his full height and looked and beheld something
inside it, moving! Then he became excited.
When you try to think like a cat, you must begin by realising that he
has fewer categories than Aristotle. The universe is, in his mind,
divided into--_himself_ and other things not-himself, which is exactly
the feline counterpart of Hegel & Co.'s Ego and Non-Ego; but, having
to find a living, the cat has passed as far beyond the Hegelian stage
as the Germans themselves have done since Hegel died. He classifies
things not-himself into the Eatable and the Not-Eatable; and again, a
cross-division, into what he fears and what he does not fear; and
thirdly, another cross-division, he distinguishes things that move
from things that do not move. Few hunting animals are long of learning
that last distinction; and yet to know that motionless things escape
the eye is one of the first lessons that scouts have to be taught. The
kitten knew it. He flopped down motionless a while, as soon as he saw
something moving inside the bowl; but men who have been miseducated
into believing without observing, whose minds have been constricted by
Greek grammars and the rest, as the feet of Chinese ladies are
constricted by bandages, men of bandaged brains, in short, still need
to be taught that in their maturity. Better late than never!
Stealthily the kitten now approached the bowl and tried in vain to
jerk out what was inside. The bowl was too heavy for him. He crept
round and round it, and endeavoured to move it by pulling the
tablecloth, but failed again. Then he sat down at a distance, with his
head between his paws, and watched it and considered, concentrating
his intellect upon it, exactly as a boy sits down, with his arms round
his head to puzzle out a thing, retiring into himself, so that
distracting sights and sounds be held aloof, and only the problem to
be solved find access to his brain. It is an excellent thing to make a
_camera obscura_ of your skull in that way at times. I have watched a
great inventor doing it; and with like admiration I now watched the
kitten. No apology is needed to my Brahman friends for mentioning that
this concentration is what they call "Yoga," described as "a
discipline whereby the powers in man are to be so trained that they
will attain their utmost development, and will realise and respond to
the subtlest and minutest influences which bear on him from outside."
Such is ever the way of the wise; and it may be attempted by the
simple too, if they are sincere. It is conceit and affectation that
make the fool. The kitten had no weakness of that kind. So he
meditated to some purpose; for he saw what to do.
He put out his paw and tugged the doily. Hurrah! The bowl moved
briskly. The hunt was up now at the fifth tug the water flew out. The
triumphant kitten darted round the bowl to catch his prey and found
nothing. The tablecloth was wet; but how could he connect the wetness
of the tablecloth with the thing that had leapt from the bowl?
I tried to console him with milk, but he was transported beyond the
reach of sordid comforting. Besides, he was not hungry. He returned
again and again to investigate the matter, till he was tired. Where
had the thing gone to? He never guessed, and I could not tell him.
Poor little puss! For him, as for humanity, the ocean of mystery, on
which all things swim, is very close at times.