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 passion and repeated under similar
recurrent circumstances, become the abiding expressions of the passions
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.
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