However, in about a fortnight, as the
master was sitting in his garden in the dusk of the evening, he
observed his cat, with tail erect, trotting towards him, and calling
with little short inward notes of complacency, such as they use
towards their kittens, and something gamboling after, which
proved to be the leveret that the cat had supported with her milk,
and continued to support with great affection.
Thus was a graminivorous animal nurtured by a carnivorous and
predaceous one!
Why so cruel and sanguinary a beast as a cat, of the ferocious
genus of Feles, the murium leo, as Linnaeus calls it, should be
affected with any tenderness towards an animal which is its natural
prey, is not so easy to determine.
This strange affection probably was occasioned by that desiderium,
those tender maternal feelings, which the loss of her kittens had
awakened in her breast; and by the complacency and ease she
derived to herself from the procuring her teats to be drawn, which
were too much distended with milk, till, from habit, she became as
much delighted with this foundling as if it had been her real
offspring.
Pages:
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332