AN APPRECIATION OF KITTENS

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7019, 19 September 1929, Page 12

AN APPRECIATION OF KITTENS

Every wise man loves his own cat, but even the foolish love other people’s kittens. All the cats that one has loved best have been full-grown . . . . and yet one feels a temporary affection for any kitten in the world as it scurries under the sofa, protrudes a questioning head from beneath the valance as though the room was an unexplored African jungle, reaches ouit a paw and withdraws suddenly into tlio darkness, throws itself upon its back and engages in a sham fight with the valance, and, righting itself, bolts with demons pursuing it to the folds of the curtain at the windows. . . I suppose we are sentimental in our attitude to all young animals —foals, calves, pigs a month old, chickens and ducklings. ... At the same time, I think our affection for kittens is based on something else besides that vague sentiment of kindliness we all feel in the presence of infancy and innocence. lam as fond of chickens as anyone, but there is a monotony in their behaviour that makes it impossible to watch them with interest for more than a short period. The kitten is the only a.nimal that enjoys looking at things for the sheer pleasure of seeing them moving. Dangle a string before the eyes of a duckling, and, if there is no food at the end of it, it will show no interest. Throw a paper ball along the ground in the presence of a young pig, and it will find it dnlle/r than Euphues. A puppy, to be sure, will run after a ball, but I do not think either a foal or a calf will, and even a puppy lacks the all-embrac-ing curiosity of a kitten. A kitten alone among the animals enjoys the use of its eyes to the full. Take it into the garden, and it starts with excitement at the shadow of a oabbago-but-, tc-rfly passing over the grass. The roseleaf stirring in the wind after the rain draw's it liko a magnet, and it approaches it stealthily, its eyes a-glitter

with interest, and touches it tentatively with its paw, as though everything that moved must be investigated. It creeps among the godetias flattened by the rain, and, as each plant with the removal of its foot jumps upward and swings like a pendulum, the kitten stays to look and wonder and perhaps to box timorously the vacillating flower. It cannot move a step in the garden without seeing something else moving—a privet-loaf, a blade of grass, a bird on the railings. . . . Perhaps it is because we have at our best a great deal in common with kittens that wo cannot help liking them.. The baby taken into its father’s bed before breakfast, notices the movement of the eyelids over the eyes, stares in solemn wonder, and attempts to put its finger into an eye that is the scene of such miracles. One day, it will grow up and cease even to notice the winking of eyelids, unless it is a man of genius; but to-day, like all babies, it has a genius of observation denied to most of its ciders. All through its childhood it detains this genius in however decreasing measure. In the nursery it can watch a raindrop coursing down the window T -pano as though it were the first raindrop that had appeared in the world. . . As it grows older, the tiniest and muddiest rill of water holds it fascinated. It can be happy hour after hour standing on a bridge and throwing grasses or pieces of stick into tho stream, and hurrying to the other sido of the bridge to see them moving downstream on tho moving surface of tho water. All wheels in motion give it pleasure. There is