CATS ALWAYS COME BACK.

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 641, 14 June 1921, Page 5

CATS ALWAYS COME BACK.

THEY MAY RETURN HOME AFTER BEING AWAY FOR MONTHS.

A cat which had been taken \ distance of two hundred miles has found its way back after two months’ absence.

We are all familiar with the cal that can't be banished. And now and again science takes up the interesting problem of the sense of location strong in the lower animals—only to drop it again with vague theories about animals’ “sixth sense.” Iv. is true that you can “lose” a cat. but you cannot deprive a cat of its homing instinct. Unlike the dog, the cat is moved entirely by self-in-terest. If - a cat doesn’t return after straying it is because it has found a new home, not because it could not find its way back.. In the wilds, many hunted animals can detect the presence of the hunter from a distance of five miles. Every man has his individual peculiar odour, though he himself is unaware of it. Experiments tried in France with cats proved that the animals, after they had been taken away, invariably returned to persons rather than places—so it may be that they are guided by their sense of smell. Insects cannot be “lost.” By what means they find their way unerringly back to their nests is unknown, but it is certainly not by their sense of smell.

Some wasps were once removed from their nests, placed in small cylinders and taken to a spot in any miles distant, where they were liberated. Next day all the wasps had returned to their nests.

Again, the parasite wasp sometimes lays her eggs in the •.-.oils of the mason bee. she bee, to protect her own eggs, seals the cells with clay. Upon this clay the bee places

a. further coating of mud, which bakes hard in the sun. When ' the parasite ~wasp returns site --moves over the hard ground trying- this spot and that with her sensitive feelers. At last she stops, and begins to “dig.” The job may take hours, but eventually a tiny ,-hr.ft is sunk to the spot where the wasrvs ecus are concealed.