From David Harper
Feedback reports research involving a “bottomless” bowl of soup (13 October). Readers may be interested to learn of a similar experiment that I carried out on the family cat, Trixie, in about 1952. I hasten to add that I was then in my early teens. There was not then – so far as I am aware – any need to obtain a licence for animal experiments and the cat was free to leave at any moment of her own choosing. Which she did.
I had wondered why it was that a saucer of milk appeared to be just the right measure for a cat. Had saucers been designed with cats in mind? Or perhaps vice versa? So one evening I waited until Trixie had finished her bedtime milk and then refilled the saucer. This she ignored, and indeed became very cross at being repeatedly taken back and encouraged to have a second helping.
Not content with these results, I set up a length of Bunsen tubing feeding the saucer from a glass filter funnel supported by a retort stand. The cat began to slow up when she had drunk the equivalent of two saucers of milk, but carried on valiantly until she was just past her third helping. She then left the house. Quickly.
With the benefit of hindsight it seems I should have published this experiment – I too might have won a prize!
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Le Faouët, Morbihan, France
