"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 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 silly 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 bit. Crash went a bottle of flower-water 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--I marched up to it as brave as a
button, and it had the audacity to come and meet me.
"`You ugly, deformed little thing,' 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 catch it where you stand, in spite of 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
reflection. 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, but I 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_. [Note 1.]
"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 some one 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."
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Note 1. Not overdrawn. A case of the kind actually occurred some years
ago in the new town of Edinburgh.--The Author.