A further degree of perversion in this direction is reached in a case of erotic _zoophilia_, recorded by Krafft-Ebing.[40] In this case a congenital neuropath, of good intelligence but delicate and anæmic, with feeble sexual powers, had a great love of domestic animals, especially dogs and cats, from an early age; when petting them he experienced sexual emotions, although he was innocent in sexual matters. At puberty he realized the nature of his feelings and tried to break himself of his habits. He succeeded, but then began erotic dreams accompanied by images of animals, and these led to masturbation associated with ideas of a similar kind. At the same time he had no wish for any sort of sexual intercourse with animals, and was indifferent as to the sex of the animals which attracted him; his sexual ideals were normal. Such a case seems to be fundamentally one of fetichism on a tactile basis, and thus forms a transition between the stuff-fetichisms and the complete perversions of sexual attraction toward animals. In some cases sexually hyperæsthetic women have informed me that sexual feeling has been produced by casual contact with pet dogs and cats. In such cases there is usually no real perversion, but it seems probable that we may here have an occasional foundation for the somewhat morbid but scarcely vicious excesses of affection which women are apt to display towards their pet dogs or cats. In most cases of this affection there is certainly no sexual element; in the case of childless women, it may rather be regarded as a maternal than as an erotic symbolism. (The excesses of this non-erotic zoophilia have been discussed by Féré, _L'Instinct Sexuel_, second edition, pp. 166-171.) Krafft-Ebing considers that complete perversion of sexual attraction toward animals is radically distinct from erotic _zoophilia_. This view cannot be accepted. Bestiality and _zooerastia_ merely present in a more marked and profoundly perverted form a further degree of the same phenomenon which we meet with in erotic _zoophilia_; the difference is that they occur either in more insensitive or in more markedly degenerate persons.