FELINE EDUCATION. Published in The Independent, August 15, 1861, page 6.
I hope "Wonks" will not be an intruder if she again appears in The Independent.
"Connecticut" was kind enough to notice my appeal regarding Wonks's light fingered propensities towards birds and birdlings, and suggest a tintinabulum (sic) about her neck as a remedy.
I should like to thank "Connecticut" for her (Connecticut is feminine, I believe) excellent suggestion -- beneficial to an extent.
Thus all grown birds whose faculties of hearing and flying are developed, likewise all rate and mice, made wise by the narrow escapes they have suffered, feel vastly obliged to this magnanimous assassin, who, though she steals upon them unawares, shod in velvet, yet sounds a bell at the final spring. The rattlesnake is the type of honor among reptiles, so must "Wonks" appear to be among carnivora. Hardly, however, to parent birds ; for alas ! to helpless birdlings peeping in their nest, this warning bell is quite unavailing. I found her master in a grand passion this morning. He was distracted by the cries of two cat-birds and followed them to a large grape-vine trained over a piazza. There an upset nest was falling from the branch, and softly stepping down from the trellis came Wonks. Some incipient feathers hanging to her moustache betrayed her monstrous morning meal. Her master beat her, and when she quickly returned rubbing against his feet and purring as usual he stoned her away, saying, "I hate the sight of you."
Pitying her evident bewilderment and trouble, I queried, Is not the fault of this bird-murder less with the cat family than with the genus Homo?
Cats have strong love of approbation. Cats are amenable to public opinion. Through many generations of domesticity, the cat has come to respect the life of a chicken. Why not that of a bird? I have seen this same "Wonks" spring toward a chick half concealed in the garden, and, discovering her mistake, walk away quite ashamed of herself.
The chicken was property! Public opinion at all times, in all places, so strongly protected it, that well-bred cats even felt irs force, and if the same indignation had followed, the injury of a bird, this most domestic of all animals would have learned to respect it. The farmer never tolerates the feline monster that devours his poultry, but Pussy is at liberty to hunt mice or birds as she pleases. As is touchingly set forth in her last dying speech and confession :
Now tell me, kind friends, was the like ever heard,
That a cat should be kill'd just for catching a bird ?
And I'm sure not the slightest suspicion I had
But the catching a mouse was exactly as bad.
Indeed I can say, with my paw on my heart,
I would not have acted a mischievous part ;
But, as dear mother Tabby was often repeating,
I thought birds and mice were on purpose for eating.
It requires more than one generation of education to remove propensities inherent in human nature, as also in cat nature.
Among the South American Indians were tribes of cannibals who considered human flesh as the most exquisite of all dainties. A Jesuit missionary one day visited a Brazilian woman in extreme old age, and almost at the point of death. Having instructed her for many years, as he conceived, in the nature of Christianity, catechized her, and taken complete care of her soul, he thought he might not inquire into her temporal necessities, and asked her if she could take any kind of food.
"Grandam," said he, "if I were to get you a little sugar now, or a mouthful of some nice things which we get beyond sea, do you think you could eat it?"
"Ah, my grandson," she replied, "My stomach goes against anything. There is but one thing which I think I could touch. If I had the little hand of a tender little Tapuya boy, I think I could pick the little bones. But woe is me! There is no one to go out and shoot one for me!"
It took eminent Jesuit missionaries a century of arduous instruction to imbue the Indian mind with a horror of cannibalism. It has taken many centuries of Christian teaching for mankind hereabouts to learn to value the life and happiness of the little birds. Some generations of cats must be reared and pass away, I fear, before the cat conscience will likewise be developed. Already I despair of Wonks's reform.
Her propensities may be modified. At times she may appear to have cast off her besetting foible, but I fear that in the hour of hunger, of fastidious appetite, like the Brazilian convert, a yearning for the dainties of her youth will overcome the instructions of her age.
But Wonks is her mother. A week ago she gave the children a mysterious invitation to follow her to the barn, which they did, full of wondering expectation. There, from an idle manger, they drew forth five fat kittens, with fur as soft as chinchilla! Although visitors were in the parlor, the children rushed in with the apronful of cats -- Wonks trotting alongside in proud approbation. While they were being admired she stretched herself, opened and shut her eyes, opened and shut her claws, rolled over, purred, and showed her intense enjoyment of the notice bestowed upon her family. The visit of the kittens became a daily ceremony, till, noticing that Wonks grew shadowy under the drain upon her maternal system, I directed that all but one of the kittens should disappear.
Do cats count?
A hen is well content with one chicken as with a dozen, but "Wonks" missed her lost darlings.
Losing all faith in mankind and children unkind, she hid her remaining treasure in some inaccessible recess, then perambulated up and down with a long step, quite unlike her usual happy trot, uttering a mournful noise that was much like ""Poor-Wonks, Poor-Wonks."
This morning, after her unfortunate breakfast and unhappy interview with her master, she disappeared till he had gone to his business and the older children were off at school. The baby was alone with his grand-mamma, and for once in his life was sitting still upon the floor. Suddenly he gave a shout of delight as Wonks laid her only kitten in his lap. Whether she entered at the door or the window no one could tell. As he bent down to bite the end of its sharp tail, Wonks rubbed her face against his round forehead, purring, "Little master, I trust no one but you." After he had held it up-side down, and turned it wrong-side outwards for a quarter of an hour, she seized it, sprang through the window, and conveyed it again to its retirement.
As I said, have no hopes of Wonks's reformation, but this kitten -- this "little Wonks" -- just opening her eyes and ears upon sights and sounds, I hope to educate, so that when in turn she takes her little Tabbies mousing in the loft, she will not take them also birdnesting on the lawn.
In the near future I see a happy picture -- the grandchildren of the master sporting with the descendants of the great-great-great-grandmother (Wonks, while in these tree-tops -- grown higher and broader -- dwell the robin and the oriole, the mocking-bird and the thrush, the wren and the sparrow. The boys of this coming vision never "Kill cock-robin," and the civilized cats scorn to molest the fledglings. The birds know no fear of either, but dwell together in millennial harmony. RODENSE.