Robert Adams - The Clan of the Cats

“Unlike a dog, which will learn to do just about anything to please its master, will quickly adapt its life-style to fit that same master’s, cats own their own, peculiar set of priorities and will seldom forgo any of those feline imperatives for any other creature or purpose.

“Your cat has a principal imperative of keeping its belly full of high-protein food, and it knows it must feed and care for its young, protect them until they are big enough to see to their own needs. Cats sleep or rest a great deal and possess relatively little stamina over a long haul, so they must have a safe, secure or guarded place to sleep and must obtain their necessary high-protein food with as little stress and danger as possible. They feel pain and suffering as keenly as any animal and they naturally try to avoid anything that would hurt or injure them.

“These two, this mated pair of this singular kind of long-fanged cat, have adapted to hunting in conceit with me and the other men simply because I was able to convince them, to show them, that it was to their advantage to do so as much as it was to ours. This way, they get their bellies filled on a fairly regular basis with the kinds of food best suited to them and they do so with far less exertion and danger of injury than they would’ve had they been doing the usual kind of feline hunting—the kind of tooth-and-claw killing that cost the life of the Mother’s mate and her own crippling injury. The stalk always takes a long while, and it therefore bums up energy, but the most dangerous moments of a hunt—dangerous to the cat or cats—is always the kill, when it is of necessity close enough to be itself killed or crippled by the horns, hooves, teeth or sheer strength of its prey. Hunting in cooperation with us has not only shortened the stalking time, it has eliminated physical risk to the cats, and for these reasons they are more than willing to continue with us as hunting companions.

“They also seem to have quickly learned that it is safe to sleep nearby us, that we not only will not ourselves harm them, but that we will protect them from any other living creature, so they have come to feel safe and secure with us here.

“My next task, of course, is going to be to try to sell them and their certain value to the rest of the clansfolk … and the rest of the clansfolk to them. It will help that so many Horseclansfolk own at least some degree of telepathy and so, conceivably, will be able to actually communicate, mind to mind, with these cats, as they can none of them—or me, either, for that matter—with our dogs and hounds. If these strange cats are as intelligent as I think they are, that will help, too.”

He chuckled to himself, thinking, “The next clan to join us may be a clan composed of sizable, four-legged, furry clansfolk with fur and claws and fangs—the Clan of the Cats.”