WHY CATS PURR

Southland Times, Issue 18973, 21 June 1923, Page 10

WHY CATS PURR

Pussy, stretched before a cosy fire and purring loudly, while she kneads the hearthrug with her claws, suggests the very embodiment of domestic comfort, declares E. K. Robinson in the Daily Mail; but what instinct is it which impels the whole tribe of cats when they are happy to make that curious noise, as though breathing through some impediment in the throat, and at the same time to extend and contract their claws ? Thousands of children of successive generations have asked their elders this quet tion, getting only confessions of blank * norance or equivocations in reply. Rare chance brought understanding I the writer at a cheetah hunt in India. Toilsome miles of jolting in a springlc . cart over a rough plain had brought the party at last within the cheetah’s range of a herd of black-buck antelopes. j The great cat was unhooded, and with 1 superb craft it dropped from the off-side ' of the moving cart and for a few yards ' crept beside the revolving wheel till a' little ridge of sand hid it from the antelopes. Here it stopped, while the cart went, on, and its occupants watched the cheetah creep to the ridge and, peeping over, gather itself for the fatal rush. In three magnificent bounds it reached the scattering herd and struck down a fine young buck. The whole party ran to the kill, and while the shikaris were ibusy with their routine 1 watched the beast of prey. I The buck, with broken neck, was dying, ’ and the cheetah, with teeth fixed in its throat, was breathing hard through the stream of blood it drank, compelling it to make a loud purring noise with every breath ; and when the flow of blood slackened, its strong claws, grasping the victim’s chest, spread wide and contracted alternately, kneading the heart, as it were, to force out the last jets of blood. In a flash the vision of puss at home, purring loudly as she kneaded the hearthrug, arose in the mind, and one understood the instinct which impels even a domestic cat, when happy, to reproduce sounds and actions symbolic of the happiest moments in its wild ancestors’ lives. The cat on the hearthrug may never have killed even a mouse, and is probably too weU fed to be thinking even of meat and milk; but the old instinct still works.