Concerning Cats: My Own and Some Others Part 13

In Pegu, Siam, and Burmah, there is a race of cats known as the Malay cat, with tails only half the ordinary length and often contorted into a sort of a knot that cannot be straightened, after the fashion of the pug dog or ordinary pig.

There is another cat known as the Mombas, a native of the west coast of Africa and covered with stiff, bristling hair. Paraguay cats are only one-quarter as big as our ordinary cat, and are found along the western coast of South America, even as far north as Mexico.

The royal cat of Siam is a short-haired cat, yet widely different from other short-haired varieties. They are extremely pretty, with blue or amber-colored eyes by day which grow brilliant at night. These cats also frequently have the kink in the tail, and sometimes a strong animal odor, although this is not disagreeable. The head is rather longer than the ordinary cat's, tapering off sharply toward the muzzle, the forehead flat and receding, and the eyes more slanting toward the nose than the American cat's. The form should be slender, graceful, and delicately made; the body long; the tail very thin and rather short; the legs short and slender, and the feet oval. The body is of a bright, uniform color, and the legs, feet, and tail are usually black.

The Manx cat is considered by many people as a natural curiosity. It differs from the ordinary domestic cat but little, except in the absence of a tail, or even an apology for one. The hind legs are thicker and rather longer than the ordinary cat's, and it runs more like a hare. It is not a graceful object when seen from behind, but it is an affectionate, home-loving creature with considerable intelligence. The Manx cat came from the Isle of Man originally, and is a distinct breed.

So-called Manx cats have tails from one to a few inches long, but these are crosses of the Manx and the ordinary cat. In the Crimea is found another kind of cat which has no tail. The cats known as the "celebrated orange cats of Venice," are probably descendants of the old Egyptian cat, and are of varying shades of yellow, sometimes deepening into a sandy color which is almost red. There are obscure stripes on the body, which become more distinct on the limbs. The tail is more or less ringed toward its termination.

There has been a newspaper paragraph floating about stating that a prize of several thousand dollars had been offered in England for a male tortoise-sh.e.l.l cat. This is probably not true, as a Mr. Smith exhibited a tortoise-sh.e.l.l he-cat at the Crystal Palace Show of 1871. Several tortoise-sh.e.l.l and white toms have been exhibited since, and one of these has taken nine first prizes at the Crystal Palace Show; but the tortoise-sh.e.l.l he-cat is extremely rare. The real tortoise-sh.e.l.l is not a striped tiger nor a tabby. It has three colors usually, black, yellow, and red or brown; but these appear in patches rather than stripes. It is said that the tortoise-sh.e.l.l cat is common in Egypt and the south of Europe. It comes from a different stock than the ordinary short-haired cat, the texture of the hair being different, as well as the color. The tortoise-sh.e.l.l and white cat is much more common, and is the product of a cross between a tortoise sh.e.l.l and a solid color cat. In this case the hair is usually coa.r.s.er and the tail thicker than in the ordinary cat.

Among cat fanciers there is a distinctive variety known as the tortoise-sh.e.l.l tabby. As the tabby cat is one of the varieties of striped or spotted cats having markings, broad or narrow, of bands of black on a dark tan or gray ground, the tortoise-sh.e.l.l cat would have both stripes and patches of color.

Of the tabbies, there are brown tabbies, silver tabbies, and red tabbies. It is said that the red tabby she-cat is as scarce as the tortoise-sh.e.l.l he-cat. The ordinary observer considers the brown tabby with white markings as much the handsomest of the tabbies. But fanciers and judges do not agree with him, the cats having narrow bands and spots being the ones to take prizes. The word "tabby," according to Harrison Weir, was derived from a kind of taffeta or ribbed silk which used to be called tabby silk. Other authorities state that tabby cats got their name from Atab, a street in Bagdad; but as this street was famous for its watered silks perhaps the same reason holds. The tortoise-sh.e.l.l used to be called, in England, the Calimanco. In America, it is sometimes called the calico cat.

The red tabby is of a deep reddish or yellow brown, with a well-ringed tail, orange or yellow eyes, and pink cushions to the feet. The brown tabby is orange brown, with black lips, brown whiskers, black feet, black pads, long tail, greenish orange eyes, and red nose bordered with black. The spotted tabby must have no bands at all. It must be brown, red, or yellow, with black spots. In the brown tabby the feet and pads are black; in the yellow and red, the feet and pads are pink. The spotted cat sometimes resembles a leopard, while the banded tabby resembles more the tiger. Some of the spotted tabbies are extremely handsome, and came originally from a cross between the ordinary cat and the wild cat.

"Self-colored cats" are entirely of one color, which may vary in different cats, but must never be mixed in the same cat, nor even shaded into a lighter tone on the animal; and whether this color be black, blue, red, or yellow, the self-colored cat should have a rich deep tint.

Of course the short-haired white cat is the handsomest of all. One of the peculiarities of this white cat is that it is apt to be deaf. The most valuable white cats, whether long or short haired, have blue eyes.

Sometimes they have one blue eye and one green or yellow, which gives a comical effect, and detracts from their value. By the way, cross-eyed cats are not unknown. The best white cats have a yellowish white tint instead of grayish white, as the latter have a coa.r.s.er quality of fur.

The jet-black cat is thought by many to be the most desirable. The true black cat should have a uniform, intensely black coat, velvety and extremely glossy; the eyes should be round and full, and of a brilliant amber; the nose and pads of the feet should be jet-black, and the tail long and tapering. It is difficult to find a black cat without a white hair, as usually there are a few under the chin or on the belly.

The blue cat is the one ordinarily known in this country as the dark maltese. There is a tradition that it came from the Island of Malta.

Many people do not consider it a distinct breed, but think it a light-colored variety of the black cat. It is known sometimes as the Archangel, sometimes as the Russian blue, the Spanish blue, the Chartreuse blue, but more commonly in this country as the maltese. When it is of a deep bluish color, or of the soft silver-gray maltese without stripes, it is extremely handsome. The most desirable are the bluish lilac-colored ones, with soft fur like sealskin. The nose and pads of the feet are dark, and the eyes are orange yellow. The maltese and white cat when well marked is extremely handsome, and there is no prettier kitten than the maltese and white.

The black and white, yellow and white, blue and white, and in fact, any self-colored and white cat is a mixture of the other breeds. If well marked they are extremely handsome and are usually bright and intelligent.

The solid gray cat is very rare. It is, in fact, a tabby without the black stripes or spots.

In Australia, New Zealand, and New Guinea there used to be no cat of any kind. The Siamese cat has been imported to Australia, and some authorities claim that the cats known in this country as Australian cats are of Siamese origin. Madagascar is a catless region.

There is in this country a variety known as the "c.o.o.n cat," which is handsome, especially in the solid black. Its native home is in Maine, and it is thought by many to have originated with the ordinary cat and the racc.o.o.n. It grows somewhat larger than the ordinary cat, with thick, woolly fur and an extremely bushy tail. It is fond of outdoor life, and when kept as a pet must be allowed to run out of doors or it is apt to become so savage and disagreeable that nothing can be done with it. When it is allowed its freedom, however, it becomes affectionate, intelligent, and is usually a handsome cat.

The term "Dutch rabbit markings" refers to the white markings on the cat of two or three colors. Evidently, the cats themselves understand the value of Dutch rabbit markings, as one which has them is invariably proud of them. A cat that has white mittens, for instance, is often inordinately vain, and keeps them in the most immaculate state of cleanliness.

CHAPTER XIV

CONCERNING CAT LANGUAGE

Montaigne it was who said: "We have some intelligence of their senses: so have also the beasts of ours in much the same measure. They flatter us, menace us, need us, and we them. It is manifestly evident that there is among them a full and entire communication, and that they understand each other."

That this applies to cats is certainly true. Did you ever notice how a mother cat talks to her children, and simply by the utterances of her voice induces them to abandon their play and go with her, sometimes with the greatest reluctance, to some place that suited her whim--or her wisdom?

Dupont de Nemours, a naturalist of the eighteenth century, made himself ridiculous in the eyes of his compatriots by seeking to penetrate the mysteries of animal language. "Those who utter sounds," he affirmed, "attach significance to them; their fellows do the same, and those sounds originally inspired by pa.s.sion and repeated under similar recurrent circ.u.mstances, become the abiding expressions of the pa.s.sions that gave rise to them."

Fortified by this theory he devoted a couple of years to the study of crow language, and made himself ridiculous in the eyes of his adversaries by attempting to translate a nightingale's song.

Chateaubriand was much interested in Dupont de Nemours's researches into the language of cats. "Its claws," says the latter, "and the power of climbing trees which its claws give it, furnish the cat with resources of experience and ideas denied the dog. The cat, also, has the advantage of a language which has the same vowels as p.r.o.nounced by the dog, and with six consonants in addition, _m, n, g, h, v_, and _f_.

Consequently the cat has a greater number of words. These two causes, the finer structure of its paws, and the larger scope of oral language, endow the solitary cat with greater cunning and skill as a hunter than the dog."

Abbe Galiani also says: "For centuries cats have been reared, but I do not find they have ever been really studied. I have a male and a female cat. I have cut them off from all communication with cats outside the house, and closely observe their proceedings. During their courtship they never once miowed: the miow, therefore, is not the language of love, but rather the call of the absent. Another positive discovery I have made is that the voice of the male is entirely different from that of the female, as it should be. I am sure there are more than twenty different inflections in the language of cats, and there is really a 'tongue' for they always employ the same sound to express the same thing."

I heartily concur with him, and in addition have often noticed the wide difference between the voice and manner of expression of the gelded cat and the ordinary tom. The former has a thin, high voice with much smaller vocabulary. As a rule, the gelded cat does not "mew" to make known his wants, but employs his voice for conversational purposes. A mother cat "talks" much more than any other, and more when she has small kittens than at other times.

Cat language has been reduced to etymology in several tongues. In Arabia their speech is called naoua; in Chinese, ming; in Greek, larungizein; in Sanscrit, madj, vid, bid; in German, miauen; in French miauler; and in English, mew or "miaouw."

Perhaps, if Professor Garner had turned his attention to cat language instead of monkeys we would know more about it. But a French professor, Alphonse Leon Grimaldi, of Paris, claims that cats can talk as readily as human beings, and that he has learned their language so as to be able to converse with them to some extent. Grimaldi goes even further: he not only says that he knows such a language, but he states definitely that there are about six hundred words in it, that it is more like modern Chinese than anything else, and to prove this contention, gives a small vocabulary.

Most of us would prefer to accept St. George Mivart's conclusions, that the difference between all animals and human beings is that while they have some means of communication, or language, we only have the gift of speech. Among the eighteen distinct active powers which he attributes to the cat, he quotes: "16th, powers of pleasurable or painful excitement on the occurrence of sense-perceptions with imaginations, _emotions_;" and "17th, a power of expressing feelings by sounds or gestures which may affect other individuals,--_emotional language_."

Again he says: "The cat has a language of sounds and gestures to express its feelings and emotions. So have we. But we have further--which neither the cat, nor the bird, nor the beast has--a language and gestures to express our thoughts." The sum of his conclusions seems to be that while the cat has a most highly developed nervous system, and much of what is known as "animal intelligence," it is not a human intelligence--not consciousness, but "con-sentience."

Elsewhere St. George Mivart doubts if a cat distinguishes odors as such.

Perhaps a cat starts for the kitchen the instant he smells meat because of the mental a.s.sociation of the scent with the gratification of hunger; but why, pray tell, do some cats evince such delight in delicate perfumes? Our own Pomp the First, for instance, had a most demonstrative fondness for violets, and liked the scent of all flowers. One winter I used to bring home a bunch of Parma or Russian violets every day or two, and put them in a small gla.s.s bowl of water. It soon became necessary to put them on the highest shelf in the room, and even then Pompey would find them. Often have I placed them on the piano, and a few minutes later seen him enter the room, lift his nose, give a few sniffs, and then go straight to the piano, bury his nose in the violets, and hold it there in perfect ecstacy. And usually, wherever they were placed, the bunch was found the next morning on the floor, where Pompey had carried the violets, and holding them between his paws for a time, had surfeited himself with their delicious fragrance.

Still, I am not prepared to say that Pompey had any word for violets, or for anything else that ministered to his delight. It was enough for him to be happy; and he had better ways of expressing it.

Cats do have the power of making people understand what they want done, but so far as my knowledge of them goes, some of the most intelligent ones "talk" the least. Thomas Erastus, whose intelligence sometimes amounts to a knowledge that seems almost uncanny, seldom utters a sound.

There is--or was--a black cat belonging to the city jail of a Californian town, named "Inspector Byrnes," because of his remarkable a.s.sistance to the police force. When, one night, a prisoner in the jail had stuffed the cracks to his cell with straw, and turned on the gas in an attempt to commit suicide, "Inspector Byrnes" hurried off and notified the night keeper that something was wrong, and induced him to go to the cell in time to save the prisoner's life. He once notified the police when a fire broke out on the premises, and at another time made such a fuss that they followed him--to discover a woman trying to hang herself. Again, some of the prisoners plotted to escape, and the cat crawled through the hole they had filed and called the warden's attention to it. In fact, there was no doubt that "Inspector Byrnes"

considered himself a.s.sistant warden at the jail, and he did not waste much time in talk either.

The Pretty Lady had ways of her own to make us know when things were wrong in the household, although she used to utter a great many sounds, either of pleasure or perturbation, which we came to understand. I remember one morning, when my sister was ill upstairs, that I had breakfasted and sat down to read my morning's mail, when the Pretty Lady came, uttering sounds that denoted dissatisfaction with matters somewhere. I was busy, and at first paid no attention to her; but she grew more persistent, so that I finally laid down my letters and asked: "What is it, Puss? Haven't you had breakfast enough?" I went out to the kitchen, and she followed, all the time protesting articulately. She would not touch the meat I offered, but evidently wanted something entirely different. Just then my sister came down and said:--

"I wish you would go up and see H. She is suffering terribly, and I don't know what to do for her."

At that the Pretty Lady led the way into the hall and up the stairs, pausing at every third step to make sure I was following, and leading me straight to my sister. Then she settled herself calmly on the foot-board and closed her eyes, as though the whole affair was no concern of hers.

Afterward, my sister said that when the pain became almost unendurable, so that she tossed about and groaned, the Pretty Lady came close to her face and talked to her, just as she did to her kittens when they were in distress, showing plainly that she sympathized with and would help her.

When she found it impossible to do this, she hurried down to me. And then having got me actually up to my sister's bedside, she threw off her own burden of anxiety and settled into her usual calm content.

"My Goliath is at the helm now," she expressed by her att.i.tude, "and the world is sure to go right a little longer while I take a nap."