WHY CATS COME BACK.

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1371, 24 March 1923, Page 3

WHY CATS COME BACK.

THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED. It is, of course, a cruel thing to take a cat out and try to lose it. But everyone who lias ever tried to do it knows just about how nearly impossible it is. In most cases the cat gets back long before the irritated owner. At any rate it is bound to turn up sooner or later.

The problem of why “the cat comes back'' lias been taken up at 'last by science, says an American authority. Professor Francis H. Herrick, of the Western Reserve University, is one of those greatly impressed by the cat’s peculiar ability; and as be did not find it scientifically explained in text books he determined to throw what light he could on the subject by personal experiment. As a result of a series of such experiments, Professor Herrick has come to the conclusion that neither seeing, smelling, nor hearing enables the cat “to come back." Instead of any of these senses, the ctit's inevitable return to its home is due to a strange and mysterious power of memory in its muscles. Professor Herrick calls this a “kinesthetic sense”—that is. a sense of muscular movement which man does not now possess, but which probably also explains the homing power of pigeons and the tiger. The tiger, of course, belongs to the same family as the cat.

Through this “kinesthetic sense” a cat, which is carried away from its home, records involuntarily in 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 the 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 the invisible strings pull, and as soon as the animal is released it follows the pull of the strings in a straight line until it reaches home, when, of course, the pull ceases. With such an inevitable elastic link of unlimited stretchability, it will be seen that it makes no difference to the cat whether it is put in a bog and carried around by devious routes miles and miles away. The invisible rubber bands upon release immediately pull its head in the direction of home, keep it there, and back comes the cat.