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PREFACE The killing of time takes place in different ways, according to the temperament and inclination of different people. Soon after I was lodged in the Barcilly Central Jail, a small kitten one day strayed into my room. I gave it some milk, and it stayed on. In course of the scientific studies I was doing at that time, I was interested in animal psychology. Animal psychology can be studied only on the basis of the principles of behaviourism. In odd moments, I used to observe how the cat behaved in different circumstances, and reflect what might be the mental process behind its psychological behaviours. Thus begun, the reflections recorded in the following pages, however, did not remain limited to strictly scientific observations. In moments of relaxation, one thought leads to another, and the chain may be prolonged at random to touch an endless variety of subjects. I thought, for future reference, a record of those thought-processes set off by the observation of this or that phenomenon, not selected, neither isolated, for the purpose of any strictly scientific study, could be kept usefully. The result was more or less long, more or less systematic, more or less complete, more or less serious, random writings which are now being published as the fragments of a prisoner's diary. They will be divided into three volumes, this being the first.
This book is incomplete in a sense. Originally, I did plan to record the events in the life of my cat, of course as long as we would be together
