or as near as it can get, and
look round, evidently asking someone to turn it for her? Is it
reasonable to deny that a reasoning process is going on in the cat's
mind, whereby she connects her wish with the steps necessary for its
fulfilment, and also with certain invariable symbols which she knows
her master or mistress will interpret? Once, in company with a
friend, I watched a cat playing with a house-fly in the window of a
ground-floor room. We were in the street, while the cat was inside.
When we came up to the window she gave us one searching look, and,
having satisfied herself that we had nothing for her, went on with
her game. She knew all about the glass in the window, and was sure
we could do nothing to molest her, so she treated us with absolute
contempt, never even looking at us again.

The game was this. She was to catch the fly and roll it round and
round under her paw along the window-sill, but so gently as not to
injure it nor prevent it from being able to fly again when she had
done rolling it. It was very early spring, and flies were scarce,
in fact there was not another in the whole window. She knew that if
she crippled this one, it would not be able to amuse her further,
and that she would not readily get another instead, and she liked
the feel of it under her paw. It was soft and living, and the
quivering of its wings tickled the ball of her foot in a manner that
she found particularly grateful; so she rolled it gently along the
whole length of the window-sill. It then became the fly's turn. He
was to get up and fly about in the window, so as to recover himself
a little; then she was to catch him again, and roll him softly all
along the window-sill, as she had done before.

It was plain that the cat knew the rules of her game perfectly well,
and enjoyed it keenly. It was equally plain that the fly could not
make head or tail of what it was all about. If it had been able to
do so it would have gone to play in the upper part of the window,
where the cat could not reach it. Perhaps it was always hoping to
get through the glass, and escape that way; anyhow, it kept pretty
much to the same pane, no matter how often it was rolled. At last,
however, the fly, for some reason or another, did not reappear on
the pane, and the cat began looking everywhere to find it. Her
annoyance when she failed to do so was extreme. It was not only
that she had lost her fly, but that she could not conceive