and they walk on the ends of their fingers and toes.

Cats are distinguished from the remainder of this section by the
shortness of the skull, and reduction of the teeth to thirty, there
being but one true molar on each side, that of the upper jaw being so
minute that it is probably getting ready to disappear.

Civets, genets, and ichneumons are small as compared with most cats;
they are fairly well distinguished by skull and tooth characters; their
claws are never fully retractile, and many have scent glands, as in the
civets. No member of this family is American.

Hyaenas have the same dental formula as cats, but their teeth are
enormously strong and massive, in relation to their function of crushing
bone.

No carnivore has teeth so admirably adapted to a diet of flesh as the
cat, and, in fact, it may be doubted if among all mammals, it has a
superior in structural fitness to its life habits in general.

The _Felidae_ are an exceedingly uniform group, although they do
present minor differences; thus, some species have the orbits completely
encircled by bone, while in most of them these are more or less widely
open behind; in some the first upper premolar is absent, and some have a
round pupil, while in others it is elliptical or vertical, but if there
is a key to the apparently promiscuous distribution of these variations,
it has not yet been found, and no satisfactory sub-division of the genus
has been made, beyond setting aside the hunting-leopard or cheetah as
_Cynaelurus_, upon peculiarities of skull and teeth.