The Domestic Cat Part 11

Cats are fond of fish, absurdly so, and if you offer them even the gold-fish, they won't feel offended. It is only out of respect for the owner thereof that they don't devour the canary. They prefer canary living, with the feathers on. It tickles their palates and makes them laugh.

Chickens are dainties in a cat's _cuisine_; they also rather like a nice plump partridge, and won't refuse to suck an egg when occasion offers.

Cats are, as a rule, Good Templars; the proof of which rule is this: I had a Red Tabby Tom who would eat oatmeal and whisky until he couldn't stand. The servants knew this failing, and encouraged him in his evil ways; so that half his time, instead of being as sober as a judge--as every decent, respectable cat ought--Tom was as drunk as a piper.

It is funny to listen to a cat's concert about two o'clock in the morning. Of course, if you are rather nervous, and want to go to sleep, it isn't so funny. (N.B.--If cats were better treated, they would hold their concerts in daylight in the garden, instead of at midnight on the tiles. Mind you, there is something in that.)

Altogether, cats are funny things, and the more you study them the funnier you find them. That's so!

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

THE FIRESIDE FAVOURITE.

The lines of some cats fall in pleasant places. Mine have. I'm the fireside favourite, I'm the parlour pet. I'm the _beau ideal_, so my mistress says, of what every decent, respectable, well-trained cat ought to be--and I looked in the gla.s.s and found it so. But pray don't think that I am vain because I happen to know the usages of polite society, and the uses and abuses of the looking-gla.s.s. No cat, in my opinion, with any claim to the dignity of lady-puss, would think of washing her face unless in front of a plate-gla.s.s mirror. But I will not soon forget the day I first knew what a looking-gla.s.s meant. I was then only a cheeky little mite of a kitten, of a highly inquiring turn of mind.

Well, one evening my young mistress was going to a ball, and before she went she spent about three hours in her dressing-room, doing something, and then she came down to the parlour, looking more like an angel than ever I had seen her. Oh, how she was dressed, to be sure! And she had little bunches of flowers stuck on all over her dress, and I wanted to play at "mousies" with them; but she wouldn't wait, she just kissed me and bade me be a good kitten and not run up the curtains, and then off she went. Yes; I meant to be an awfully good little kitten--but first and foremost I meant to see the interior of that mysterious room. By good luck the door was ajar, so in I popped at once, and made direct for the table. Such a display of beautiful things I had never seen before.

I didn't know what they all meant then, but I do now, for, mind you, I will soon be twenty years of age. But I got great fun on that table. I tried the gold rings on my nose, and the earrings on my toes, and I knocked off the lid of a powder-box, and scattered the crimson contents all abroad. Then I had a fearful battle with a puff which I unearthed from another box. During the fight a bottle of ylang-ylang went down.

I didn't care a dump. Crash went a bottle of fragrant floriline next.

I regarded it not. I fought the puff till it took refuge on the floor.

Then I paused, wondering what I should do next, when behold! right in front of me and looking through a square of gla.s.s, and apparently wondering what _it_ should do next, was the ugliest little wretch of a kitten ever you saw in your life--a long-nosed, blear-eyed, pingey-wingey thing. I marched up to it as brave as a b.u.t.ton, and it had the audacity to come and meet me.

"You ugly, deformed little beast," I cried, "what do you want in my lady's room?"

"The same to you," it seemed to say, "and many of them."

"For two pins," I continued, "I would scratch your nasty little eyes out--yah--fuss-s!"

"Yah--fuss-s!" replied the foe, lifting its left paw as I lifted my right.

This was too much. I crept round the corner to give her a cuff. She wasn't there! I came back, and there she was as brazen as ever. I tried this game on several times, but couldn't catch her. "Then," says I, "you'll have it where you stand, and hang the pane of gla.s.s!"

I struck straight from the shoulder, and with a will too. Down went the gla.s.s, and I found I had been fighting all the time with my own shadow.

Funny, wasn't it?

When mistress came home there was such a row. But she was sensible, and didn't beat me. She took me upstairs, and showed me what I had done, and looked so vexed that I was sorry too. "It is my own fault, though,"

she said; "I ought to have shut the door."

She presented me with a looking-gla.s.s soon after this, and it is quite surprising how my opinion of that strange kitten in the mirror altered after that. I thought now I had never seen such a lovely thing, and I was never tired looking at it. No more I had. But first impressions _are_ so erroneous, you know.

My dear mother is dead and gone years ago--of course, considering my age, you won't marvel at that; and my young mistress is married long, long ago, and has a grown family, who are all as kind as kind can be to old Tom, as they facetiously call me. And so they were to my mother, who, I may tell you, was only three days in her last illness, and gave up the ghost on a file of old newspapers (than which nothing makes a better bed) and is buried under the old pear-tree.

Dear me, how often I have wondered how other poor cats who have neither kind master nor mistress manage to live. But, the poor creatures, they are _so_ ignorant--badly-bred, you know. Why, only the other day the young master brought home a poor little cat, he had found starving in the street. Well, I never in all my life saw such an ill-mannered, rude little wretch, for no sooner had it got itself stuffed with the best fare in the house, than it made a deliberate attempt to steal the canary. There was grat.i.tude for you! Now, mind, I don't say that _I_ shouldn't like to eat the canary, but I never have taken our own birds-- no--always the neighbours'. I did, just once, fly at our own canary's cage when I was quite a wee cat, and didn't know any better. And what do you think my mistress did? Why, she took the bird out of the cage and popped me in; and there I was, all day long, a prisoner, with nothing for dinner but seeds and water, and the canary flying about the room and doing what it liked, even helping itself to my milk. I never forgot that.

Some cats, you know, are arrant thieves, and I don't wonder at it, the way they are kicked and cuffed about, put out all night, and never offered food or water. I would steal myself if I were used like that, wouldn't you, madam? But I have my two meals a day, regularly; and I have a nice double saucer, which stands beside my mirror, and one end contains nice milk and the other clean water, and I don't know which I like the best. When I am downright thirsty, the water is so nice; but at times I am hungry and thirsty both, if you can understand me--then I drink the milk. At times I am allowed to sit on the table when my mistress is at breakfast, and I often put out my paw, ever so gently, and help myself to a morsel from her plate; but I wouldn't do it when she isn't looking. The other day I took a fancy to a nice smelt, and I just went and told my mistress and led her to the kitchen, and I got what I wanted at once.

I am never put out at night. I have always the softest and warmest of beds, and in winter, towards morning, when the fire goes out, I go upstairs and creep (singing loudly to let her know it is I) into my mistress's arms.

If I want to go on the tiles any night, I have only to ask. A fellow does want to go on the tiles now and then, doesn't he? Oh, it is a jolly thing, is a night on the tiles! One of these days I may give you my experience of life on the tiles, and then you'll know all about it-- in the meantime, madam, you may try it yourself. Let it be moonlight, and be cautious, you know, for, as you have only two feet, you will feel rather awkward at first.

Did I ever know what it was to be hungry? Yes, indeed, once I did; and I'm now going to tell you of the saddest experience in all my long life.

You see it happened like this. It was autumn; I was then about five years of age, and a finer-looking Tom, I could see by my mirror, never trod on four legs. For some days I had observed an unusual bustle both upstairs and downstairs. The servants, especially, seemed all off their heads, and did nothing but open doors and shut them, and nail up things in large boxes, and drink beer and eat cold meat whenever they stood on end. What was up, I wondered? Went and asked my mistress. "Off to the seaside, p.u.s.s.y Tom," said she; "and you're going too, if you're good."

I determined to be good, and not make faces at the canary. But one night I had been out rather late at a cat-concert, and, as usual, came home with the milk in the morning. In order to make sure of a good sleep I went upstairs to an unused attic, as was my wont, and fell asleep on an old pillow. How long I slept I shall never know, but it must have been far on in the day when I awoke, feeling hungry enough to eat a hunter. As I trotted downstairs the first thing that alarmed me was the unusual stillness. I mewed, and a thousand echoes seemed to mock me. The ticking of the old clock on the stairs had never sounded to me so loud and clear before. I went, one by one, into every room.

Nothing in any of them but the stillness, apparently, of death and desolation. The blinds were all down, and I could even hear the mice nibbling behind the wainscot.

My heart felt like a great cold lump of lead, as the sad truth flashed upon my mind--my kind mistress had gone, with all the family, and I was left, forgotten, deserted! My first endeavour was to find my way out.

Had I succeeded, even then I would have found my mistress, for cats have an instinct you little wot of. But every door and window was fastened, and there wasn't a hole left which a rat could have crept through.

What nights and days of misery followed!--it makes me shudder to think of them even now.

For the first few days I did not suffer much from hunger. There were crumbs left by the servants, and occasionally a mouse crept out from the kitchen fender, and I had that. But by the fifth day the crumbs had all gone, and with them the mice, too, had disappeared. They nibbled no more in the cupboard nor behind the wainscot; and as the clock had run down there wasn't a sound in the old house by night or by day. I now began to suffer both from hunger and thirst. I spent my time either mewing piteously at the hall-door, or roaming purposelessly through the empty house, or watching, watching, faint and wearily, for the mice that never came. Perhaps the most bitter part of my sufferings just then was the thought that would keep obtruding itself on my mind, that for all the love with which I had loved my mistress, and the faithfulness with which I had served her, she had gone away, and left me to die all alone in the deserted house. Me, too, who would have laid down my life to please her had she only stayed near me.

How slowly the time dragged on--how long and dreary the days, how terrible the nights! Perhaps it was when I was at my very worst, that I happened to be standing close by my empty saucer, and in front of my mirror. At that time I was almost too weak to walk, I tottered on my feet, and my head swam and moved from side to side when I tried to look at anything. Suddenly I started. Could that wild, attenuated image in the mirror be my reflection? How it glared upon me from its gla.s.sy eyes! And now I knew it could not be mine, but some dreadful thing sent to torture me. For as I gazed it uttered a yell--mournful, prolonged, unearthly--and dashed at me through and out from the mirror. For some time we seemed to writhe together in agony on the carpet. Then up again we started, the mirror-fiend and I. "Follow me fast!" it seemed to cry, and I was impelled to follow. Wherever it was, there was I. How it tore up and down the house, yelling as it went and tearing everything in its way! How it rushed half up the chimney, and was dashed back again by invisible hands! How it flung itself, half-blind and bleeding, at the Venetian blinds, and how madly it tried again to escape into the mirror and shivered the gla.s.s! Then mills began in my head--mills and machinery--and the roar of running waters. Then I found myself walking all alone in a green and beautiful meadow, with a blue sky overhead and birds and b.u.t.terflies all about, a cool breeze fanning my brow, and, better than all, _water_, pure, and clear, and cool, meandering over brown smooth pebbles, beside which the minnows chased the sunbeams. And I drank--and slept.

When I awoke, I found myself lying on the mat in the hall, and the sunlight shimmering in through the stained gla.s.s, and falling in patches of green and crimson on the floor. Very cold now, but quiet and sensible. There was a large hole in my side, and blood was all about, so I must have, in my delirium, _torn the flesh, from my own ribs and devoured it_. [Not overdrawn. A case of the kind actually occurred some years ago in the new town of Edinburgh.--The Author.]

I knew now that death was come, and would set me free at last.

Then the noise of wheels in my ears, and the sound of human voices; then a blank; and then someone pouring something down my throat; and I opened my eyes and beheld my dear young mistress. How she was weeping! The sight of her sorrow would have melted your heart. "Oh, p.u.s.s.y, p.u.s.s.y, do not die!" she was crying.

p.u.s.s.y didn't die; but till this day I believe it was only to please my dear mistress I crept back again to life and love.

I'm very old now, and my thoughts dwell mostly in the past, and I like a cheery fire and a drop of warm milk better than ever. But I have all my faculties and all my comforts. We have other cats in the house, but I never feel jealous, for my mistress, look you, loves me better than all the cats in the kingdom--fact--she told me so.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

THE DUNGHILL CAT.

I'm the dunghill cat--that is what I am. n.o.body owns me, and I owe allegiance to n.o.body. n.o.body feeds me; n.o.body puts a saucer on the ground and says, "Here, p.u.s.s.y, there's a drop of milk for you, my pet."

n.o.body ever gave me a bit of fish in my life, and n.o.body, so far as I can remember, ever called me pet names or spoke kindly to me. Not that I care, you know, but I merely mention it, that's all. But don't you despise me because I am only a poor dunghill cat. It isn't my fault but my misfortune, as you shall presently hear. Circ.u.mstances over which I had no control have rendered me what I am; but I am come of respectable parents for all that. To be sure I could not swear to my father, not knowing exactly who he was, and the mum herself being at times a little hazy on the point. But my mother, madam, came from Egypt, and was descended from a long line of n.o.ble ancestors in that beautiful land, where, they tell me, there is bread enough for all, and where a poor cat is honoured and respected, as she always ought to be. And the mum told me that her original ancestors came over with the Conqueror--Cambyses, you know--so that is good enough, surely. Yes, madam, without meaning the slightest offence, I may just remind you that when your forebears were dressed in pig-skins, and not much of that; when they wore flint-headed spears, and stalked about the hills with painted faces, doing att.i.tudes and saying "Ugh!" when astonished, my progenitors dwelt in palaces, loved and respected by all, and were considered the equals of prince, or priest, or peer--what do you think of that? But I'm not proud; I'm only the poor dunghill cat, that all the dogs chase, that all the little boys stone, and Bridget shakes the broom at. Bridget never can catch me, though--ha, ha! Won't I eat her canary, first chance--you see if I don't.

My earliest recollection is of being carried by the back of my neck, by something or somebody that I afterwards discovered was my mother. I was taken into a beautiful house, and deposited carefully on a rug in the corner of a cupboard. Then my mother began licking me all over with her tongue, when suddenly said a voice close alongside of me, "I declare that p.u.s.s.y has been and gone and got another kitten--as if one cat of the kind wasn't enough about the house. Sarah, go and put it where you put all the others."

I don't know who the others were, or where they were put; but I know what Sarah did with me. She took me up with the hot tongs, mother screamed and so did I, till I couldn't scream any more because the black water was all around me. Then followed a period of agony, and then a blank, and the next thing I recollect is finding myself lying, wet and cold, in my mother's arms, and she all wet and cold as well as me.

"My dear chee-ild," said my mamma, "this has been a sad morning; but you're safe ne-ow, although the building is humble and your pallet is straw. Shade of Cambyses!" continued the old lady, rubbing a paw over her right ear, "why ever did I leave the land of Egypt?"

When I got a little older I began to look around me. I thought our new home was one of the jolliest places that could be, despite all the flowery accounts my mother used to give me of the land of her birth, with its marble halls and gorgeous tesselated pavements. It was a large, roomy loft in an old, old mill, and I used to run about the floor and chase the great spiders before I was big and brave enough to attack a wild mouse, or the great, untamable rats that used to frighten me so when mother was out, by standing on their hind legs and making dreadful faces at me. But didn't they scamper off when mother came back!

One day mother brought me a live mouse. How brave I suddenly felt. You should have seen how I sprung on it, and heard how I growled. Had anyone, even the immortal Cambyses himself, attempted to rescue that wild mouse from my clutches, he should have died on the spot. How pleased my mother looked! I think I see her yet, with her old-fashioned face and her odd, old-world ways. Very much respected my mother was, I a.s.sure you. I've seen no less than seven well-dressed feline swells talking and singing to her all at once, and she didn't know which of them to speak to first. Met a violent end, did my mother.

Verdict--"Killed by the carrier's collie."

After I had slain and eaten one mouse, I felt every inch a Tom. I declined to lie any more in my mother's arms. No more milk for me; blood, and only blood, was my motto, and I meant it, too. When I was a well-grown cat of nine months old my mother introduced me to her mistress's house, and I became, for a time, a house-cat. I cannot say, however, that I liked the change. The lady of the dwelling was, they told me, exceedingly good and pious, went twice to church on Sunday, and read prayers morning and evening; but, sad to say, she never had studied feline economy. "If cats can't find mice to eat," she used to say, "they ought to starve."

My mother told me that this was something like asking a person to make bricks without straw. My mother was very learned.

Well, one evening--and I had been starving all day, and was dreadfully hungry and too faint to watch for mice--I happened to stroll into the pantry, and there I found such a nice, nice dish of cream. Luscious!

But what a thrashing I got five minutes afterwards--I wasn't hungry for a week. Then the hunger came on again worse than ever, and I stole again. I couldn't help it, really. Then I was called a nasty, thieving brute, and got blamed many times when quite innocent. There is Briddy with the broom again. She hasn't forgiven me for that herring yet, and I can swear it wouldn't have kept for another day. Besides, what do I care if it was for Master Fred's breakfast? Briddy had no business to be upstairs trying on missus's Sunday bonnet, and the kitchen-door wide open. She thinks I don't see all her capers, and her opening drawers, and keeking into cupboards, and examining this, that, and t'other, when her missus is out. But lying on the top of that wall I can see a great deal more than I trouble to tell of. But Briddy blamed me for eating those two new-laid eggs that the baker brought. She "just laid them down outside in the strawberry-basket, m'm, for one minute; and when she turned again, la, m'm, they was broke and eaten, they was!" She forgot to mention how the baker crumpled her cap, though; and she didn't tell how she was all over flour, and had to brush herself from top to toe when the bell rang. But, mind you, it wasn't _me_ that stole the eggs.

I would confess at once if it was; for what could a couple of paltry new-laid eggs add to the weight of crime I have been guilty of in my day? Why, nothing. But Dr Ricket's jackdaw took the eggs, for I saw him hop on to the wall, and he gave a look down, first, with one side of his head, at Briddy and the baker, then, with the other side of his head, to the eggs; then down he went, and it was all over in a moment--I mean the eggs were. Just like Briddy, blaming me for that piece of cold pork. Mind you, I don't say I wouldn't have taken it had I got the chance, but I didn't. "That beautiful piece of pork gone next, m'm; and I never can keep that cat out. And whatever shall I do, m'm?"