The Domestic Cat

Many cases I know of parties having started off with puss in a bag to drown her, and having stopped to talk to a friend on the way back found, on their return, the cat sitting by the fire drying herself! I have many instances of cats having been thrown from bridges and other high places, with the intention of killing them, but without fatal effect.

Cats have been buried alive for days and recovered after being dug up. A cat of my acquaintance was sent to live at a mill. This seemed to please pussy very much. You see there were plenty of mice in the mill, and plenty of rats and fish in the mill-lead, so the cat made herself at home. But in course of time pussy became the mother of two kittens, and then the longing for her old home came back with a force too powerful to be resisted. She determined, therefore, to return to her former residence, and she did so, carrying her kittens one by one. The distance she had to travel was two miles, and the night she chose was a dark and stormy one.

There were two cats who dwelt at the self-same house and had kittens at the self-same time. All the kittens were drowned with the exception of two, one being left with each mother. And now comes the curious part of the business. These two mother-cats came to an amicable understanding, that whenever the one was abroad the other should suckle and attend to both babies, and this treaty was carried out to the letter.

Cats are not only fond of human beings, but often get greatly attached to other domestic animals, especially to the family dog. I know at this moment a cat whose constant companion is a Dandy Dinmont; and a rough one he is too, for, although he sleeps in pussy’s arms every night, he thinks nothing of pulling her all round the lawn by the tail at any time, the cat herself seeming to enjoy the fun!

Rabbits and cats often associate together on the most friendly terms, even accompanying each other in long excursions, the cat on these occasions electing herself protector of her feebler friend against predatory dogs and other cats.

A cat belonging to a friend of mine used to be constantly at war with the dog, until one day, with a blow of her ungloved paw, she blinded the poor animal in one eye. No mother could have been kinder to her child than pussy was to this dog, after she saw what she had done. That she bitterly repented the rash act is evident, for she watched beside him night and day, until he grew well again; and now, they are the fastest friends in the world, and the cat is the first to welcome the dog home when he returns from a walk.

As a proof of how cruel it is to take all a cat’s kittens away from her, I may state that, thus bereaved, a cat will take to nursing even chickens, or she will suckle puppies, hedgehogs, or rats.

It is a funny thing that many cats can’t bear music. Some will run out of the room if they hear a fiddle played, and others will growl and attack the musician.

Cats can be easily taught to follow one in a country walk just like a dog, and on these occasions they come much better to the sound of whistling than to any other call.

A well-bred cat will always teach its kittens habits of cleanliness, how to watch for and catch mice, and also how to catch minnows in a shallow stream.

I have already said that cats, as a rule, when well treated, are not thieves, but the very reverse. But when a cat does take to thieving for a livelihood, she becomes quite a swell at it – shows how clever she is.

Cats are considered in some parts of England to be of some value as an article of diet. I have never to my knowledge eaten cat, so I cannot give the reader any idea what they taste like.

It is ridiculous to suppose, as some do, that a cat’s breath has any effect upon a baby either for good or for evil. Neither will a cat bring blood from a child’s temple by licking it with its rough tongue.

An ugly old woman isn’t necessarily a witch because she keeps a black cat. Neither is a black cat a devil.

They say that witches sail over the sea in riddles accompanied by their black cats, and that they have rather a jolly time of it upon the whole, having plenty to eat, and plenty to drink – flagons of wine, in fact. Don’t you believe it, reader.

Cats are not afraid of snakes; but snakes, even the dreaded cobra, will invariably give pussy a wide berth.

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 idéal, so my mistress says, of what every decent, respectable, well-trained cat ought to be – and I looked in the glass 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-glass. 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-glass mirror. But I will not soon forget the day I first knew what a looking-glass 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 glass, 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 button, 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 glass!”

I struck straight from the shoulder, and with a will too. Down went the glass, 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-glass 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 gratitude 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, pussy 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 glassy 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 glass! 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 butterflies 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 glass, 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, pussy, pussy, do not die!” she was crying.

Pussy 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. Nobody owns me, and I owe allegiance to nobody. Nobody feeds me; nobody puts a saucer on the ground and says, “Here, pussy, there’s a drop of milk for you, my pet.” Nobody ever gave me a bit of fish in my life, and nobody, 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. Circumstances 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 noble 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 attitudes 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.