_“If you choose to put up with such sufferings as
these, I have the power to help you.... But bethink
you well,” said the witch, “if once you obtain a
human form you can never be a mermaid again!”_
[Illustration: Kitten by Madame Ronner]
Persis was a dainty lady, pure Persian, blue and white, silky haired.
When this story opens she was in middle age, the crisis of her life had
passed. She had had kittens, she had seen them grow up, and as they
grew she had grown to hate them, with a hatred founded on jealousy
and love. She was a cat of extreme sensibility, of passionate temper,
of a character attractive and lovable from its very intensity. We
had been forced to face Persis’ difficulty with her and make our
choice--should we let her go about with a sullen face to the world,
green eyes glooming wretchedly upon it, an intensity of wretchedness,
jealousy and hate consuming her little cat’s heart, or would we follow
Persis’ wishes about the kittens, and give them up, when they grew to
be a burden on her mind and heart? For while they were young she loved
them much. She chose favourites among them, usually the one most like
herself, lavished a wealth of care, with anxiety in a small, troubled,
motherly face, on their manners, their appearance, their amusements.
[Illustration: _Photograph by S. A. McDowall_
“Persis was a dainty lady.”]
I remember one pathetic scene on a rainy evening in late summer, when
the kittens of the time were playing about the room, and Persis came
in wet and draggled with something in her mouth. We thought it was a
dead bird, and though regretting the fact, did not hinder her when she
deposited it before her favourite kitten, a shy, grey creature, and
retired to the lap of a forbearing friend to make her toilet. But while
she was thus engaged we saw that the thing she had brought in was a
shivering little bird, a belated fledgling, alive and unhurt. The grey
kitten had not touched it, but with paws tucked under him was regarding
it with a cold, steady gaze. He was quite unmoved when we took it away
and restored it to a profitless liberty, with a few scathing remarks on
the cruelty of cats. It is so nice and affectionate of a father to
initiate his little son into the pleasures of sport and show him how
to play a fish, but quite another thing for a brutal cat to show her
kitten how to play with a live bird--a cat, indeed, from whom we should
have expected a sympathetic imagination!
When Persis had washed and combed herself she came down to see how her
son was enjoying his first attempt at sport; but no affectionate father
sympathising with his boy for losing his fish would have been half as
much distressed as Persis to find her kitten robbed of his game. She
ran round the room crying as she went, searched for the bird under
chairs and tables, sprang on the knees of her friends to seek it, and
wailed for the loss of her present to her son.
Again, there was no danger that she would not face in defence of her
kittens. My brother had a wire-haired terrier of horrid reputation as
a cat-killer. The name of the terrier, for an occult and complicated
reason, was Two-Timothy-Three-Ten, but it was generally abbreviated.
Tim, large and formidable even to those who had not heard of his
exploits, slipped into the room once where a placid domestic scene was
in process. Without a moment’s pause the cat was on him like a wild
beast. I caught Timothy and held him up, but the cat had dug her claws
so firmly into his foot that she, too, was lifted off the ground.
But as the kittens grew older maternal tenderness and delights faded,
maternal cares ceased, and a dull, jealous misery settled down over
Persis. She had been left down in the country with a kitten once--alas!
a tabby kitten--which was growing old enough to leave her when I came
over for the day and went to see her. The kitten, unconscious of his
unfortunate appearance, was as happy as most kittens; he walked round
the cat and did not mind an occasional growl or cuff. But she, not
responding at all to my caresses, sat staring out before her with such
black, immovable despair on her face that I shall not easily forget it.
Thus the cat’s life was a series of violent changes of mood. While her
kittens were young she was blissful with them, trustful to all human
beings; as they grew older she became sullen, suspicious, and filled
with jealous gloom. When they were gone she again became affectionate
and gentle; she decked herself with faded graces, was busied with
secret errands, and intent on æsthetic pleasure--the smell of fresh
air, each particular scent of ivy leaves round the trunk of the cedar.
She caught influenza once in an interval of peace and came near dying,
and, they said, received attention seriously and gratefully like a sick
person; I was not surprised to hear that her friend sacrificed a pet
bantam to tempt the returning appetite of the invalid.
While we were homeless for a year or more, Persis was lodged at the old
home farm, and lorded it over the animals. Two cats were there: one the
revered and hideous Tom, with whose white hair Persis had bestrewn a
room in a fit of passion. He had left the house at once for the farm
and wisely refused to return. Now he was a prop of the establishment.
He killed the rats, he sat serene in the sun, was able to ignore the
village dogs and cuff the boisterous collie puppies of the farm.
So he met Persis on secure and dignified terms. It was well, for he
had formed a tender attachment to her daughter; they drank milk out
of a saucer together, looking like the Princess and the Ploughboy;
and when the Ploughboy went out hunting (for he must vary his diet a
little--unmitigated rat is monotonous) he invariably brought back the
hind legs of the rabbit for the Princess.
Strange to say, the Princess was the only one of the grown-up kittens
with whom Persis entered into terms of friendship; so while the
Princess ate the rabbits of the Ploughboy, Persis ate the sparrows
provided by the Princess, and they were all at peace.
She rejoined us again when we settled in a country town. The house was
backed by a walled garden; exits and entrances were easier than in the
larger houses where Persis had lived with us before. She loved to get
up by the wistaria, climb across the conservatory roof, and get in
and out through bedroom windows. She found a black grandson already
established, it is true, but in a strictly subordinate position.
Justice was cast to the--cats, and they fought it out between them;
and when Persis threw herself into the fray there could be but one end.
Ra liked comfort, but his sensibilities were undeveloped. If he could
get the food he desired (and he invariably entered the room with fish
or pheasant) he did not care how or where it was given him; a plate of
fish-bones in the conservatory would be more grateful than a stalled
ox under his grandmother’s eye. But to the old cat the attention was
everything; she took the food not so much because she cared for it as
because it was offered individually to her. If Ra managed to establish
himself on the arm of a chair he would remind the owner of his desires
by the tap of a black paw, or by gently intercepting a fork. But
Persis’ sole desire was that she might be desired; the invitation was
the great point, not the feast; she lay purring with soft, intelligent
eyes, which grew hard and angry if the form of her dusky grandson
appeared in the open door. She would get down from the lap on which she
was lying, strike at the hand which tried to detain her, and--but by
this time Ra had been removed and peace restored.
Her most blissful moments were when she could find her mistress in bed,
and curl up beside her, pouring out a volume of soft sound; or when she
was shown to company. Then she walked with dainty steps and waving tail
as in the old days, with something of the same grace, though not with
the old beauty, trampling a visitor’s dress with rhythmically moving
paws, and the graciously modest air of one who confers an honour. It
came near to pathos to see her play the great lady and the petted
kitten before the vet, who came to prescribe for her. Now she was all
gratitude for attentions, and whereas when she was young she would not
come to a call out of doors, but coquetted with us just beyond our
reach, now she would come running in from the garden when I called her,
loved to be taken up and lie with chin and paws resting on my shoulder,
looking down from it like a child. The old nurse carried her on one
arm like a baby, and the cat stretched out paws on each side round her
waist.
She had more confidence in human dealings, too. I had to punish her
once, to her great surprise. She ran a few steps and waited for me
with such confidence that it was difficult to follow up the punishment,
more especially as Taffy watched exultant, and came up smiling to
insist on the fact that he was a good dog.
Taffy’s relationship with the cat was anything but cordial. It was
her fault, for he had well learnt the household maxim “cats first and
pleasure afterwards.” But Persis can hardly be said to have treated him
like a lady; she did not actually show fight, but vented ill-temper by
pushing rudely in front of him with a disagreeable remark as she passed.
All this time Persis was growing old and small. Her coat was thick, but
shorter than of old; her tail waved far less wealth of hair. She jumped
into the fountain one day by mistake, and as she stood still with
clinging hair under the double shock of the water and the laughter one
noticed what a little shrunken cat she had become; only her face was
young and vivid with conflicting passions.
Then the last change of her life came. We went to a place which was
a paradise for cats, but a paradise ringed with death; a rambling
Elizabethan house, where mice ran and rattled behind the panels;
a garden with bushes to creep behind and strange country creatures
stirring in the grass; barns which were a preserve for rats and mice;
and finally the three most important elements of happiness, entire
freedom, no smuts, and no grandson.
Persis was overwhelmed with pressure of affairs; one saw her crouching
near the farm in early morning; met her later on the stairs carrying
home game, and was greeted only by a quick look as of one intent on
business.
The one drawback to this place was that it was surrounded by woods,
carefully preserved.
By this time I had come to two clear resolves; the first, that I would
never again develop the sensibilities of an animal beyond certain
limits; for one creates claims that one has no power to satisfy. The
feelings of a sensitive animal are beyond our control, and beyond its
own also.
And the second was this; since it is impossible to let an animal when
it is old and ill live among human beings as it may when it is healthy;
since it can by no possibility understand why sympathy is denied it and
demonstrations of affection checked; I would myself, as soon as such
signs of broken intercourse occurred, give Persis the lethal water.
I had been haunted by the pathos in the face of a dog who had been
and indeed still was a family pet; but he was deaf. Even when he was
fondled an indescribable depression hung about him; he had fallen into
silence, he knew not how or why. Dogs respond to nothing more quickly
than the tones of the human voice, but now no voice came through the
stillness. Despairingly he put himself, as they told us, in the way of
those who passed, lay on steps or in the doorways. Since we cannot find
means to alleviate such sufferings we can at least end them.
But I never needed to put this determination into effect. The last
time I saw Persis was once when she came to greet me at the door, and
lifting her I noticed how light she was; and again I saw her coming
downstairs on some business of her own, with an air at once furtive and
arrogant, quaint in so small a creature.
Then Persis vanished.
She had been absent before for days at a time; had once disappeared
for three weeks and returned thin and exhausted. So at first we did
not trouble; then we called her in the garden, in the fields and the
coverts, wrote to find out if she had returned to some old home, and
offered a reward for her finding; but all was fruitless. I do not know
now whether she had gone away as some creatures do, to die alone, for
the signs of age were on her; or if she had met a speedy death at the
hands of a gamekeeper while she was following up some wild romance of
the woods.
So vanished secretly from life that strange, troubled little soul of
a cat--a troubled soul, for it was not the animal loves and hates
which were too much for her--these she had ample spirit and courage
to endure, but she knew a jealous love for beings beyond her dim
power of comprehension, a passionate desire for praise and admiration
from creatures whom she did not understand, and these waked a strange
conflict and turmoil in the vivid and limited nature, troubling her
relations with her kind, filling her now with black despairs, and
painful passions, and now with serene, half understood content.
Who shall say whether a creature like this can ever utterly perish? How
shall we who know so little of their nature profess to know so much of
their future?
[Illustration: Kitten by Madame Ronner]
[Illustration: Kitten by Madame Ronner]