MY CATS.
Does the love of pets originate in benevolence? It is generally associated with sensibility, a spurious virtue as different from benevolence as revery is from thought. The sentimental Sterne, though heartless to all who had legitimate claims on his affection, wept, or affected to weep, over a dead ass; Couthon, when the innocent he was consigning to the guillotine trod on his cur, shrieked out, “Wretch, have you no humanity?” and there are yet sensitive ladies to whom the sarcastic inquiry of the barbarian whether the Roman dames who fondled lapdogs had “no children to love” is very applicable.
But it is by no means to be inferred from such anomalies that quickness of sympathy with brutes of necessity denotes a perversion of feeling. Sensibility does not necessarily exclude, though it may overshadow, benevolence; as parasitical plants blight the trees they cling to. A fondness for pets certainly does not invariably indicate tenderness of heart; but conversely, as killing flies was the recreation of the boy Domitian, he who is unkind to brutes is never very considerate towards men. Sympathy with brutes implies, even in the coldest heart, some glimmering of the Supreme Love; as a passion for flowers implies an apprehension, more or less clear, of the divine Thought expressed in them:—yet there are hard, practical Christians who conceive that disinterested kindness to creatures emphatically declared to be objects of the Divine care is a wrong to our fellow men; though, that somewhere men are in want of bread would seem a very inconclusive argument against feeding creatures which are not useless if they awaken an unselfish love in our hearts, and whose storgé, or instinctive trust in man, was designed by the Father of All to arouse our benevolence.
Due allowance being made for particular circumstances, it may be assumed that the choice of pets is generally an index to character. The farmer entertains a dull affection for some gentle heifer, with mild Juno-like eyes and aromatic breath. His man Giles lounges at leisure moments round the sty, and fondly scratches the fat backs of the lethargic tenants with a clownish smile evoked by visions of future flitches. Community of tastes and pursuits leads the huntsman to seek an object of affection in his stables; and the soldier, whose life may depend on the fleetness and endurance of his charger, will share his last crust with him. A bucolic partiality for sheep can only be accounted for by the drowsy placidity of rural life. The love of birds is almost peculiar to women; and there is a graceful appropriateness in the tenderness of young girls for canaries and other little creatures, nimble, sweet-tongued, and sensitive as themselves. Matrons have a thoughtful preference for poultry. Venerable spinsters relish the spitefulness and loquacity of parrots, and admire a gaudiness of plumage according with their own æsthetic tastes. Some mental perversity may be inferred in a young lady who pets a parrot; and the Roman lady who, according to Martial, fondled a snake, must have been a sour old maid.
An attachment to a dog is honourable to both parties; and though dogs are sometimes kept at first from selfish considerations, he must be bad indeed who does not in the end appreciate and benefit by association with so noble an animal. There is a curious likeness between certain social classes and the dogs they respectively affect—between the stately staghound and the patrician, the eager pointer and the country squire, the bluff mastiff and the farmer, the furtive lurcher and the poacher, the pugnacious bulldog and the man of the ring, the brisk terrier and the London gamin, the peevish lapdog and the listless woman of fashion. The scarred and red-eyed bulldog of Landseer’s admirable “High and Low Life” is perfectly in keeping with the clay pipes, battered porter-pot, and other plebeian accessaries; but all our notions of the fitness of things would be outraged were he to take the place of the dignified hound in the library; and on seeing him there we should inevitably form a low estimate of the tastes of the aristocratic owner. Not only is the dog ordinarily a clue to the social status of the man, but a shrewd guess may be made at the disposition of the master from that of the dog.
Many years ago, when I was chatting about dogs with a distinguished American gentleman, whose guest I was, the latter asserted that a dog can distinguish in conversation words whose meaning he has once acquired; and, noticing my incredulous smile, he offered me immediate proof of it. To the rear of his house was a paddock, the herbage of which was so much to the taste of the cows of the neighbourhood that they were constantly breaking through the fence to get a bite of it, and keeping the dog in such a fever of indignation that the mere mention of a cow awoke his ire. The dog referred to, a fine Newfoundlander, was reposing after the fatigues of the day at the other end of the room we were sitting in. Requesting my silent attention, my friend spoke for a few moments on indifferent matters, and then, without any perceptible pause, or inflexion of voice, or glance at the unsuspicious animal, observed, “there’s a cow in the garden.” The effect was magical. With a groan expressing extreme disgust at so unseasonable a call, the dog arose, and, passing through the open door, set off for the paddock. Ere our laughter had ceased, the abused animal returned from his bootless errand, and, casting a reproachful glance at his master, recomposed himself to slumber.
Unlike those learned pundits who rejoice in their affinity to apes, I never see one of those odious caricatures of humanity without a sense of humiliation; and the person who pets a monkey may a priori be set down as a cynic. Nevertheless, I was once the possessor of one; a friend about to leave India, and at a loss how to provide for his favourite, pressed the tiny wretch on my acceptance, very much against my will. A few days’ confinement having familiarised him with his new abode, I left Jacko to follow the bent of his inclination—to roam where he pleased, and indulge that ill-regulated curiosity which led him, like the philosophers claiming kinship with him, to pry into matters far above his comprehension, and to seek the why and the