When our time was up and the next contingent due, we drove back to Clinton. The cats made loud objection the entire way, and I know it was only my imagination, but I seemed to detect in their mournful cries not only their objection to automobiles but also despair that they should be yanked out of paradise with so many woodsy tasks yet undone.
It was at Wanahoo that they became sophisticated and deft about trees. As we sat on the porch we would hear thrashings in the leaves of the smaller trees on the slope of the bank, and then, at our level, a cat face would appear to stare at us. This was a look-at-me, look-at-me device, typical of all young males. Roger made up in reckless abandon what he lacked in co-ordination and judgment. Ascending he was superb, but descending was a frantic and perilous procedure, usually ending with a quick twist, a shower of shredded bark and too long a drop to the ground. Geoff descended with all the careful assurance of a middle-aged lineman. He backed down tree trunks, setting each foothold firmly, looking down over his shoulder exactly as in those pictures of koala bears Down Under. His final drop was usually of one foot or less, followed by a glance up at where he had been.
Also it was at Piseco that they became acquainted with the half brother, Heathcliffe. Geoff and Heath soon learned to tolerate each other, though in grudging fashion. Geoff was not belligerent, at least not when he seemed to feel it a waste of time. He was ready to make those small, constructive adjustments which simplified life. But Rog and Heath reacted to each other with an undying malevolence, noisy warnings, frequent displays of claw and fang, springing back with steam-valve hissings when they met unexpectedly in doorways. It was hate at first sight, and it never lessened.
The world of the cats was growing more complex, and they were learning.
Five
It is difficult to appraise the intelligence of any creature, including man. I.Q. in man, maze skills in rats, chickens who play baseball, chimps who pile the boxes to reach a banana, the quicker learning and longer retention of cattle as compared to horses, the circus dog who will walk grotesquely on his front feet — all these things are small illuminations in a great darkness. Too often we confuse some adaptive instinct with reasoning power. There is, for example, one small and enchanting crab in tropical waters which carefully plucks bits of marine weed and, with all the care of a woman doing her own hair, plants these living bits atop his shell so as to make himself less noticeable in his environment. The hermit crab, growing too large for his mobile home shell, will crawl from empty shell to empty shell, using his claws to measure the opening, as businesslike and thoughtful as any carpenter measuring for a shelf. Finding one a suitable degree larger, he will take a long and careful look around before, with frantic haste, he hoists his soft nether portions out of the old home and slips them into the new. (If watching this sort of thing entertains you, grab a hermit crab and put him in a shallow pan of sea water along with several empty shells. Then take one of those tap-icers and carefully crack the back end of the shell he lives in, carefully enough not to damage him. Put him back and watch him pick a new house.)
Another area of confusion in measuring intelligence in animals is our tendency to give the higher marks to the animals most willing to follow orders. (The kid who strains to do well on the I.Q. test may be of lower intelligence than the boy who, lacking sufficient motivation, drifts through it thinking of more entertaining things and makes a lower score.)
Cats are not interested in pleasing anyone by a display of obedience. They are unfailingly pragmatic, which in itself seems to denote a kind of intelligence we are not yet equipped to measure. If a cat can detect no self-advantage in what it is being told to do, it says the hell with it, and, if pressure is brought to bear, it will grow increasingly surly and irritable to the point where it is hopeless to continue. Yet, where the advantage to be gained is clearly related to the task required, the learning process is so acute as to be almost instantaneous. Once learned the feat will be repeated only when the cat is interested in the result.
Geoff was constructed in such a curiously square fashion, we could not help but notice that he had a strange habit, when sitting, of sometimes lifting his forepaws off the floor, sitting much in the manner of a ground squirrel. Sometimes he would adopt this posture for the business of face washing. When he was interested in what people were eating, he would sit near the table, and it took just a little upward gesture of the hand with a morsel in it to bring him up into his sitting position. The implied guarantee of receiving the scrap would keep him there, like a small dog.
Yet after the novelty of that wore off, we did not continue it. It was a question, I suppose, of appearances and of dignity. The cat who emulates a small, supplicant dog has somewhat the same inadvertent ludicrousness of, for example, a small and extremely fat man. The grin of conviviality is always a little abashed. In some obscure way it shamed the three of us to shame him in a way he accepted so solemnly, and without ever having to discuss it, we all gave it up.
It was Geoffrey, when we lived on College Hill, who provided us with the most memorable example of reasoning power we can remember.
It came about this way. We used to go quite often to the Fort Schuyler Club in Utica with my parents. Johnny was popular with the staff, and they would take him out into the kitchen. One of the other guests had brought in pheasant that fall, and it was being prepared for his table when Johnny went out there. One of the chefs gave him a handful of the big tail feathers of the cock pheasants. He brought them home, and the cats were delighted with them. They could be batted about, knocked into the air, chased, clawed, bitten. They were symbolic birds. In a week or so there were only a few not completely destroyed, and these had been denuded of feathers all except that tuft at the very end which has “eye” markings much like peacock feathers. They were twelve inches of heavy, naked quill with the end tuft.
I should mention here that whereas Roger seemed to prefer co-operative play, either with brother cat or one of the people, Geoff often played alone for long periods, playing solemn and wide-ranging games of solitary field hockey, dribbling a half-bashed ping-pong ball from room to room.
We had finished dinner. Johnny had gone to bed. Roger was sacked out. Dorothy was doing something in the kitchen. I was reading in the living room. She came in and in a hushed voice asked me to come and see what Geoffrey was doing. I went with her and stood quietly in the kitchen doorway and watched him. It was a very long and narrow kitchen. Geoff had invented a game with one of the remaining pheasant feathers. He would circle it and then carefully pick up the quill end in his teeth, adjusting it so that it stuck straight out in front of him. He would flatten himself into the position of the stalk, and then, ears flattened, tail twitching, he would stalk the tuft end of the feather down the length of the kitchen. When he stopped, it would stop. When he moved, it would move. Six feet from the end of the kitchen he would release it, pounce upon it, slide and roll and thump into the wall at the end, biting and kicking the hell out of it. Then he would get up, walk slowly around it, studying it, and pick it up again by the quill end and repeat the same performance. I kept count. I watched him do it seven times, and at the end he left it there and walked out of the kitchen. We could never entice him into doing it again. We wanted witnesses. When we told about it, people looked at us with that tolerant skepticism which is so infuriating. They seemed to think we thought we had seen Geoff do that. He would never do it again because I imagine he felt he had exhausted the possibilities of that game.