THE WILD CAT
(Felis catus)
SAVAGE as a wild cat is a proverbial expression; and although in attitudes of repose, like the one selected for the coloured Plate, the ferocity of look may temporarily disappear, there are few animals fiercer or more bloodthirsty thanFelis catus. Indeed, a wild cat brought to bay or caught in a trap is a perfect fiend incarnate.
The wild cat and the lynx are the only feline Carnivora indigenous at the present day to central and northern Europe; and of these two the lynx has long since disappeared from the British Isles, and has become very scarce throughout the greater part of the Continent, but is still common in Scandinavia and Russia. The wild cat, on the other hand, survives in most European countries, and is far from uncommon in the Alps and many parts of France and Germany, although in Great Britain its sole remaining refuges are among the highlands of Scotland, and even there it has been suggested that many of the so-called wild cats are hybrids, or domesticated cats run wild. Eastward, the range of the wild cat extends at least as far as the Altai, where its representative has a larger and more woolly coat than the typical western race.
In Africa the place of the European wild cat is taken by a closely allied but somewhat less strongly striped species known asFelis ocreata, of which the northern race was protected and held sacred by the ancient Egyptians in Bubastis and other cities. That the European and the African wild cats have given rise to the domesticated cats of the greater part of the Old World may be considered certain, although there is some difference of opinion as to the respective shares taken by the two wild species in the production of the tame breeds. Among the ordinary house-cats of western Europe, the type coming nearest to the wild ancestor is the one with black transverse stripes on a grey ground. The true tabby, on the other hand, that is to say the type in which the dark markings take the form of broad longitudinal or obliquely longitudinal bands arrayed in a ring-like or spiral manner on the flanks, is unlike either of the two wild cats, and it has been suggested that it may have had a totally distinct ancestry.
By choice the wild cat, which for most of the year lives alone, frequents large, thick, and sequestered pine-forests, where it selects rocky situations as affording the best hiding-places. In addition to clefts in the rocks, it chooses, however, for its lair the burrows of the fox or the badger, or holes in large tree-trunks, while it will sometimes make its abode in thick bushes.
wild cat
In regard to food, the wild cat preys chiefly upon rats, mice, and small birds,but it also kills larger animals, such as pheasants, hares, rabbits, and squirrels, while it occasionally ventures to attack the fawns of roe-deer and red deer, springing on their backs, and tearing open the arteries of the neck. There is an old monkish Latin line that “catus amat pisces, sed non vult tingere plantas” (the cat loves fish, but does not like to wet its feet); but this applies only to the domesticated breed, for when dwelling near streams or lakes the wild cat will capture both fishes and water-fowl. Like many other animals, it will often kill more than it can devour, as if from the very love of slaughter.
The male and female live together only during the pairing-season, and while the kittens are unable to look after themselves. At other times each individual has its own particular haunt, from which, however, it makes long excursions into the surrounding forest or the neighbouring plains; such foraging expeditions often lasting for days together. In winter it frequently deserts the forest to take up its abode in old uninhabited buildings or other safe places of refuge.
In some sheltered situation the female gives birth in spring to five or six kittens, very similar to those of domesticated cats, and likewise born blind.
When captured, wild cats, whether old or young, are impossible to tame; and it is for this reason that the species is so seldom seen in menageries. As already mentioned, it has been suggested that many of the cats found wild in Scotland are hybrids between the wild species and the tame breed, but there is no evidence that such interbreeding takes place; and such of these animals as are not true wild cats seem to be individuals of the domesticated breed which have reverted to the wild state, and have thereby assumed to some extent the characters of the ancestral type.