An instance of the sagacity of a cat came under my own notice. I was
living, a few years ago, in a country place in Dorsetshire, when one day
a small tortoise-shell cat met my children on the road, and followed
them home. They, of course, petted and stroked her, and showed their
wish to make her their friend. She was one of the smallest, and yet the
most active of full-grown cats I ever saw. From the first she gave
evidence of being of a wild and predatory disposition, and made sad
havoc among the rabbits, squirrels, and birds. I have several times
seen her carry along a rabbit half as big as herself. Many would
exclaim that for so nefarious a deed she ought to have been shot; but as
she had tasted of my salt, taken refuge under my roof, besides being the
pet of my children, I could not bring myself to order her destruction.
We had, about the time of her arrival, obtained a dog to act as a
watchman over the premises. She and he were at first on fair terms--a
sort of armed neutrality. In process of time, however, she became the
mother of a litter of kittens. With the exception of one, they shared
the fate of other kittens. When she discovered the loss of her hopeful
family, she wandered about in a melancholy way, evidently searching for
them, till, encountering Carlo, it seemed suddenly to strike her that he
had been the cause of her loss. With back up, she approached, and
flying at him with the greatest fury, attacked him till blood dropped
from his nose, when, though ten times her size, he fairly turned tail
and fled. Pussy and Carlo, after this, became friends; at least, they
never interfered with each other.
Pussy, however, to her cost, still continued her hunting expeditions.
The rabbits had committed great depredations in the garden, and the
gardener had procured two rabbit-traps. One had been set at a
considerable distance from the house, and fixed securely in the ground.
One morning the nurse heard a plaintive mewing at the window of the
day-nursery on the ground-floor. She opened it, and in crawled poor
Pussy, dragging the heavy iron rabbit-trap, in the teeth of which her
fore-foot was caught. I was called in, and assisted to release her.
Her paw swelled, and for some time she could not move out of the basket
in which she was placed before the fire. Though suffering intense pain,
she must have perceived that the only way to release herself was to dig
up the trap, and then drag it, up many steep paths, to the room where
her kindest friends--nurse and the children--were to be found.
Carlo had been caught before in the same trap, and he bit at it, and at
everything around, and severely injured the gardener, who went to
release him. Thus Pussy, under precisely the same circumstances, showed
by far the greatest amount of sagacity and cool courage. She, however,
not many weeks after her recovery, came in one day with her foot sadly
lacerated, having again been caught in a trap; so, although she could
reason, she did not appear to have learned wisdom from experience. This
last misfortune, however, taught her prudence, as she was never again
caught in a trap.
You will agree with me that Pussy was wise in going to her best friends
for help when in distress; and foolish, having once suffered, again to
run into the same danger.
You, my young reader, will be often entrapped, if you lack strength to
resist temptation. Your kind friends at home will, I am sure, help you
as far as they have the power; but, that they may do so, you must on all
occasions trust them.