“And the Cat Came Back”

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 53, 25 November 1922, Page 11

“And the Cat Came Back”

A Feline Mystery Dissected by Science

— QgT PEOPLE KNOW—some from painful experience—that it is % /I 'not an easy thing to lose a cat. Unwanted Thomas Cat has even % / B been known to present himself, wet and shivering, at the domestic V A back door lon S bofore owner > thinking the said Thomas Cat safely "corpscd” inside the sugar bag at the bottom of the deep blue sea,' has returned from the drowning expedition. One of the feline mysteries which have long puzzfed cat owners is Bow Thomas or Maria comes back whgn Canis, the faithful friend of man,/.can be hopelessly lost by the simple process of dodging round a block or into a shop. Thomas Cat may be accidentally mislaid at a flag-station halfway along the Main Trunk line from Wellington, but as sure as sure can be he will ultimately return to the domestic hearth and his quiet, persistent contemplation of the, domestic canary. • . The answer to the mystery has apparently been found by an American professor (F. H. Herrick),’ who describes it as Thomas Cat’s "Kinesthetic Sense.” . ' „ He says, in the American "Scientific Monthly”: This "kinesthetic sense is a sense of muscular movement which man does not now possess, but wmeh probably also explains the homing power of pigeons and the tiger, lhe tiger, of course, belongs to the same family as the cat. Through this ‘ kinesthetic sense” a cat, when it is carried away from its home, records involuntarily m all its muscles every twist and turn of its journey in relation to the direction in which its home lies. Put very simply, it is as though within thp muscles of the cat there is a compass whose needle steadily points, homeward, no matter how many twists and turns the animal Undergoes in its journey away. Or as Professor Herrick puts it, it is as though the cat had rubber strings of unlimited elasticity stretching out from its muscles and attaching it to its ( home. The further away the cat is'carried the harder thg invisible strings • pull and as soon as the animal is released it follows the pull of the strings in a straight lino until it .reaches home, when, of course, the pull ceases. To test the theory of the , “kinesthetiq sense” Professor Herrick experimented upon a certain Maria Cat, the mother of a young family, bhe Z large airpowerful animal and therefore able to make a ‘-g joureey ; She had become such an inveterate hunter of birds and chickens that er wished to get rid of her. Seven times this cat made her way home from pointAarying from eng to three miles away. She was secured in a sack, which completely blindfolded her, carried to the release point m a motor car and placed under a wooden box, which was weighted with stones, .lhe box was raised at the moment of release by a cord pulled from the gregn observaton'tent 75 to 100 feet away. ' . She was given her freedom every time about the same hour in the evening and the box was openpd toward the north in every experiment except No. 4, in which the opening was to the east. The professor wished to ascertain: (1) Whether the cat would continue to return to her home and kittens when taken to varying distances beyond her known ,or probable range. (2) Whether under such conditions she would orient—that is, turn toWard her home —immediately and correctly. (3) Whether, after making the correct orientation she would strike off in a direct line for her home and pursue that course, or whether she would be mainly concerned with cover and safety first.

In the first test the cat sprang out of the box, came to attention, as it were, for a moment and faced in the direction of her home, which lay a lew points north of east. SJie moved slowly for a short distance on this course, meowing almost continually, then turned over tq th S north, and after going a few rods suddenly veered and made for cover in a piece of woods. It was se§n that she had turned away as a farmer’s boy appeared on the scene with two dogs. She outdistanced them and in a moment was safe in a tree. All the observers knew about her subsequent movements is that by six o’clock next morning she was home again with her kittens. , In the second experiment she was taken on June 9 over a course of two miles due west. The tent was placed in a com field 150 feet from the highway, along which automobiles and pedestrians Were liable to pass. The box was opened from the north and the cat when free could move in any direction except south without passing the tent, her home course being a point or so north of east. At the moment of her release she faced home perfectly ana began moving iq the right direction, but as in previous cases she soon swerved to the 'north. At that moment two men coming down the street stopped and madp a movement as if to approach the tent. After travelling northward for about a rod the cat stopped, cocked her ears, glanced back at the tent, struck the'home course and began movnig rapidly up the hillside. She was following .a straight line home when lost to view. She probably made home very quickly, but was not seen again until thg following morning. The last two experiments, Nos. 6 and 7, were undertaken mainly as a the first experiment. Anothgr experiment was of an entirely different character. The cat was put under complete anaesthesia by chloroform and conveyed by motor car one and a half miles past by north of its home site, toward the end of the journey she recovered from the anaesthesia so as to bfe able to take care of hersglf when let out of the box. She was set free in a field 50 feet from the highway. She made at once for this road in a direction opposite from that of her home and would have gone beyond it but for a gorge which blocked her path. Then she moved beside the road, very nearly back tracking over the course that the automobile took for several rods appeared in the cover of bushes. She returned home only after an interval of sixty to seventy hours, that is to say, that the distance which she ordinarily covered in the'eourse of a night now required eight times as long. It appears that the anaesthetic had put the homing mechanism of the cat out of action, and that she found her way home simply by wandering. A FRENCH NATURALIST’S STORY. In studying investigations by othgr scientists concerning tho homing powers of the cat, Professor Herrick quotes some statements of J. H. I‘abre, the famous French naturalist. The French author says that in going from Orange to Serignan, a distance of four and three-eighths miles, his oldest cat was confined in a basket, and upon arrival it was kept a prisoner for a week in the hope that it would become used to its new home. Ihis was all to no purpose, for upon regaining its frpedom it returned at once to Orange. When found at its former home the animal was wet to tho skin and its body smeared with red earth, an evidence that-it crossed thg River Aygues and afterward gathered up the dust of the fields, as there was no mud away from the river. Two bridges crossed the river, one at a point above and the other below the course the cat must have followed, but it used neither bridge. Its instinct directed it home by the shortest coursg, and it overcame its repugnance for water to reach its beloved abode. X