IS it not true that there is a very general want of recognition of family-life among domestic animals? It is a great mistake to suppose they are incapable of it; often, as a matter of fact, they do not lead domestic lives, for the simple reason that people will not let them. If, for instance, you won’t keep a whole family of cats, how can you expect them to develop domestic affections? We talk of their being “domesticated,” but we mean that they are made a part of our domestic arrangements, without being allowed to have any of their own; yet they are quite as capable of it as we are. Of course their domesticity does not last long, naturallyand necessarily not, because they have not one family but a series of families, and one family must be dismissed before the next is taken on; so domestic affectiondevelopes into murderous desires. However, I must say that in all experiences I have personally had of cats, guinea-pigs, rabbits, dogs, goats, and birds, I have only known one murder, and that was by an uncle.
Rector was allowed to have all his family about him. His wife was decidedly under-bred. He was called Rector, in fact, because he would not catch the mice, and had to have another less aristocratic but more useful cat to help him. The curate was called Jenny. She was a low-bred tabby. Rector could not help despising Jenny, and if anything vexed him he used to bite her badly; but she was a very meek drudge, and took it as a matter of course. Rector was white, with blue eyes, so we only kept the white kittens, some of which were blue-eyed, andnotdeaf; blue-eyed or not, Rector used to take them out walks in the evening.
The four—papa and mamma and two kittens—used to proceed together to the mound near the pump, and Jenny then left them, to crouch in the bushes,—this for a purpose of her own.
Then began the game. Rector rolled the kittensover and played with them gently, until all three became a little excited; then, if Rector got carried away, and bit or scratched his infant till it squeaked, out bounced Jenny from the bushes to deal him a handsome box on the ear; and, having thus admonished her husband to take better care of the children, she retreated again to the shelter of the yew-trees.
If you keep a whole family, you will find that there is not only a parental, filial, brotherly, and sisterly relation, but also a grand-parental. When Midge had some white kittens, Jenny, whose under-bred offspring had been put out of the way shortly before, helped her to nurse them, with as much pride and perhaps more solicitude than Midge herself showed. It was a most charming scene. We went to see the family soon after the birth of the kittens, and found Midge, in the rôle of the interesting young mother, leaning back upon Jenny. Jenny put a paw round her, while they surveyed—the mother languidly and the grandmother proudly—the squirming white family.
But it is not cats only who have these strong domestic ties; almost every animal shows the same thing in a greater or less degree.
We inherited, on changing our home, a beautifulpair of swans. The first year that they became ours they had four cygnets, and brought them up extremely well. It is true that when they were full grown, the cock-swan, if one may use such an expression, tried to kill them; but that was only natural, they had become his rivals. They were variously disposed of: one was taken up to a pond in London, from which, not being properly pinioned, he escaped, and kept a cockney crowd for an hour well amused on London Bridge by flying over it and swimming under, after which he—or, as he could not possibly be caught, the abstract idea of him—was presented to the Thames Conservancy.
So far, this doesn’t seem to have much to do with the swan’s idea of home, but, as some candid preacher said, “You may think this has not got much to do with my text, but I’m coming to it presently.”
The swans lived on in peace and happiness through the autumn and winter, but in the spring, when they ought to have been nesting, some wicked boy hit the lady swan on the head with a stick, and she sickened and died.
For some time the widower was left solitary; then we thought this was rather cruel, and busied ourselves in getting a mate for him; and a fineyoung swan was procured. When lo! it was found that the old fellow would not let his young companion come into the pond. We thought it would “wear off,” and left the young one to its fate; and many times we passed the pond to find the poor young thing squatting sadly on the road, and the widower swelling up and down.
Then we found there was a slight mistake, the young swan was a cock-swan also.
So we changed him, and got a real lady instead. This time he would just let his companion come into the pond, but oh! she had a bad time of it there; he pulled her feathers out, and he drove her away from the bread; but it had to be gone through,—it was his way of showing constancy, and it turned out all right. She is treated now with as much respect as his first wife.
But she was a very young wife; so, when she had hatched three eggs into cygnets, her pride knew no bounds. The father, getting into his dotage, encouraged her in her maternal follies. The cygnets were fine healthy birds, but the two old birds took them out walking to such an extent that one by one they died. No one quite knows why. Some say that there was not enough grass by the pond, and the parents took them to findgrass; and some say that parental vanity wished to display such flourishing offspring; but anyhow, the fact remains that the cygnets took walks with their parents till they died. There is nothing more domestic than the family walk.
But now contrast this domestic affection with the melancholy fate of the inebriate swan.
A clergyman’s wife kept one swan, and the swan, no one knows how, got into the habit of going to eat malt at a public-house. If he had done this within bounds it would not have mattered, but he got regularly intoxicated, and every evening reeled homewards. His mistress tried to reform him, but to no purpose; and she tried to shut him up, but he got out; and she used to meet him coming home with rolling, uncertain step and hanging head. She wept, for it was such a bad example to the parish; but that had no effect on him. At last, one evening, he was run over and killed while reeling home in a state of intoxication.
Now, how far more melancholy is such an end than that of the three infants killed by family affection! I would rather die three times over from walking with my family than once from intoxication.
What is the moral? Do not break up the family too early. The presence of the children(up to the age when he wants to kill them) will have a softening and steadying effect on the manners of the father; while who knows what stores of masculine experience he may not impart to his children up to the time when they wish to fight him.
Besides all this, it is really much more amusing.