Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/570/en

The essential expression of the house-and-farm cat is an entirely different one. It seems to have fallen evolutively deeper into wildness. It lives, as it were, two lives. In the one it lives itself out apart from the human being, nocturnal as its wild kindred. With all its senses at full stretch it follows its hunting instincts, steals along its own ways, lies in wait for its prey, and seizes it in a powerful spring. Rodents — mice and rats — are its preferred nourishment; and unfortunately birds as well: ground-nesting birds, those nesting in low branches, or swallows that shoot too close to the ground by day, which it makes its sure quarry with a nonchalant upward-darting paw. Its second life it spends seeking out the domesticity of the human being as its sleeping place, purring its way around the family members in coaxing affection, delighting the children in playful sport — and thereby recommending itself for this further form of provisioning. Then at night the way out opens again into the other life. Here again it is human emotionality that, when misdirected, reduces the cat to a mere house pet and creature of cuddling.