It has been supposed that I denied the cat the power of sleeping, but
this must have arisen entirely from a misconception of my expression;
for although I was not aware of their sleeping so soundly, as I am now
informed is sometimes the case, yet I always knew they slept in some
degree. M. Pasumot, of the academy at Dijon, has communicated to me a
letter on this subject; he says, "Although the cat sleeps seldom, it is
very sound, and might sometimes be considered as a kind of lethargy.
I have had at least ten instances; a favourite cat used to lay upon
the feet of my bed; one night I pushed him away, but found him so
immoveable that I conceived him to be dead. I pulled and tossed him
about for some time before he shewed any kind of life, when at last he
began to awake, but it was even then very slowly. This sound sleep, and
difficulty of awaking cats, I have often observed; and I am acquainted
with a gentleman who has also been witness of their sleeping in this
sound manner, and which he says is always at the time of great heat, or
previous to stormy weather."
M. de Lestrie, a merchant of Chalons, in Champagne, has remarked to me,
that the breath of cats frequently exhales an odour resembling musk;
particularly when they purr and are tranquil, or when suddenly alarmed
and make a hissing noise, from which he inclines to conclude that
there are some vessels in the breast of a cat filled with an aromatic
quality; but nothing of this nature is to be discovered by anatomy.
In my former history of this animal, I remarked there were cats in
China, whose ears were pendant, but as this variety is not found in any
other place, it is possibly an animal of a different species; and I
am led to this supposition from there being an animal called _Sumxu_,
mentioned by travellers, which they say they can compare to nothing but
the cat, which it greatly resembles. It is found among the Chinese,
who are extremely partial to it, both on account of its beauty, its
hair being of a bright black or yellow colour, and because it readily
destroys rats.
We have also another variety of cats in our own climates; as there are
some produced with pencils at their ears. M. de Save writes me word,
that in November, 1773, he had a young kitten brought forth at his
house in Paris, very like what we have described as a Spanish cat, with
pencils at her ears, although neither of the parents had them, and that
in a few months they were as large in proportion to her size as those
of a Canadian lynx. At Madagascar they have tamed some wild cats which
have twisted tails, and are called _Saca_ by the inhabitants; but they
intermix with the domestic, and are of course of the same species.
I have had the skin of an animal sent me from Cayenne, which much
resembles a wild cat. They call it Haïra in Guiana, and the natives
there eat its flesh, which is white and palatable; I therefore suspect
a mistake has been made in its name, and that it is the Taïra, a small
martin, of which notice is taken in the latter part of this work.