Peace and cooperation among Natural Enemies educating a Rat-killing Cat to Cooperate with a Hooded Rat

At the Cleveland Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1950, the author made a preliminary report of his work on cooperation between the cat and the rat. Three domestic kittens about one month old and four alley cats about two months of age were brought in to live with laboratory white rats. All of them lived peacefully and cooperated with white rats in the Tsai Cooperation Apparatus. It is the purpose of the present experiment to investigate whether a confirmed habitual rat-killing cat can be educated to cooperate with a hooded or pigmented rat. The apparatus is composed of three sections, each separated by a screen gate electrically controlled. The first section is the entrance, where the cat and the rat assemble for each test. When I open the gate, the animals enter the second section, the reaction chamber, where cooperation is to take place. To get into the third section, the goal chamber, where a dish of food awaits them, both the cat and the rat must each step on a floor button simultaneously.