The most respectable cat I have ever known was Thomas Henry. His
original name was Thomas, but it seemed absurd to call him that. The
family at Hawarden would as soon think of addressing Mr. Gladstone as
"Bill." He came to us from the Reform Club, _via_ the butcher, and the
moment I saw him I felt that of all the clubs in London that was the club
he must have come from. Its atmosphere of solid dignity and petrified
conservatism seemed to cling to him. Why he left the club I am unable,
at this distance of time, to remember positively, but I am inclined to
think that it came about owing to a difference with the new _chef_, an
overbearing personage who wanted all the fire to himself. The butcher,
hearing of the quarrel, and knowing us as a catless family, suggested a
way out of the _impasse_ that was welcomed both by cat and cook. The
parting between them, I believe, was purely formal, and Thomas arrived
prejudiced in our favour.
My wife, the moment she saw him, suggested Henry as a more suitable name.
It struck me that the combination of the two would be still more
appropriate, and accordingly, in the privacy of the domestic circle,
Thomas Henry he was called. When speaking of him to friends, we
generally alluded to him as Thomas Henry, Esquire.
He approved of us in his quiet, undemonstrative way. He chose my own
particular easy chair for himself, and stuck to it. An ordinary cat I
should have shot out, but Thomas Henry was not the cat one chivvies. Had
I made it clear to him that I objected to his presence in my chair, I
feel convinced he would have regarded me much as I should expect to be
regarded by Queen Victoria, were that gracious Lady to call upon me in a
friendly way, and were I to inform her that I was busy, and request her
to look in again some other afternoon. He would have risen, and have
walked away, but he never would have spoken to me again so long as we
lived under the same roof.
We had a lady staying with us at the time--she still resides with us, but
she is now older, and possessed of more judgment--who was no respecter of
cats. Her argument was that seeing the tail stuck up, and came
conveniently to one's hand, that was the natural appendage by which to
raise a cat. She also laboured under the error that the way to feed a
cat was to ram things into its head, and that its pleasure was to be
taken out for a ride in a doll's perambulator. I dreaded the first
meeting of Thomas Henry with this lady. I feared lest she should give
him a false impression of us as a family, and that we should suffer in
his eyes.
But I might have saved myself all anxiety. There was a something about
Thomas Henry that checked forwardness and damped familiarity. His
attitude towards her was friendly but firm. Hesitatingly, and with a new-
born respect for cats, she put out her hand timidly towards its tail. He
gently put it on the other side, and looked at her. It was not an angry
look nor an offended look. It was the expression with which Solomon
might have received the advances of the Queen of Sheba. It expressed
condescension, combined with distance.
He was really a most gentlemanly cat. A friend of mine, who believes in
the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, was convinced that he was
Lord Chesterfield. He never clamoured for food, as other cats do. He
would sit beside me at meals, and wait till he was served. He would eat
only the knuckle-end of a leg of mutton, and would never look at over-
done beef. A visitor of ours once offered him a piece of gristle; he
said nothing, but quietly left the room, and we did not see him again
until our friend had departed.
But every one has his price, and Thomas Henry's price was roast duck.
Thomas Henry's attitude in the presence of roast duck came to me as a
psychological revelation. It showed me at once the lower and more animal
side of his nature. In the presence of roast duck Thomas Henry became
simply and merely a cat, swayed by all the savage instincts of his race.
His dignity fell from him as a cloak. He clawed for roast duck, he
grovelled for it. I believe he would have sold himself to the devil for
roast duck.
We accordingly avoided that particular dish: it was painful to see a
cat's character so completely demoralised. Besides, his manners, when
roast duck was on the table, afforded a bad example to the children.
He was a shining light among all the eats of our neighbourhood. One
might have set one's watch by his movements. After dinner he invariably
took half an hour's constitutional in the square; at ten o'clock each
night, precisely, he returned to the area door, and at eleven o'clock he
was asleep in my easy chair. He made no friends among the other cats. He
took no pleasure in fighting, and I doubt his ever having loved, even in
youth; his was too cold and self-contained a nature, female society he
regarded with utter indifference.
So he lived with us a blameless existence during the whole winter. In
the summer we took him down with us into the country. We thought the
change of air would do him good; he was getting decidedly stout. Alas,
poor Thomas Henry! the country was his ruin. What brought about the
change I cannot say: maybe the air was too bracing. He slid down the
moral incline with frightful rapidity. The first night he stopped out
till eleven, the second night he never came home at all, the third night
he came home at six o'clock in the morning, minus half the fur on the top
of his head. Of course, there was a lady in the case, indeed, judging by
the riot that went on all night, I am inclined to think there must have
been a dozen. He was certainly a fine cat, and they took to calling for
him in the day time. Then gentleman cats who had been wronged took to
calling also, and demanding explanations, which Thomas Henry, to do him
justice, was always ready to accord.
The village boys used to loiter round all day to watch the fights, and
angry housewives would be constantly charging into our kitchen to fling
dead cats upon the table, and appeal to Heaven and myself for justice.
Our kitchen became a veritable cat's morgue, and I had to purchase a new
kitchen table. The cook said it would make her work simpler if she could
keep a table entirely to herself. She said it quite confused her, having
so many dead cats lying round among her joints and vegetables: she was
afraid of making a mistake. Accordingly, the old table was placed under
the window, and devoted to the cats; and, after that, she would never
allow anyone to bring a cat, however dead, to her table.
"What do you want me to do with it," I heard her asking an excited lady
on one occasion; "cook it?"
"It's my cat," said the lady; "that's what that is."
"Well, I'm not making cat pie to-day," answered our cook. "You take it
to its proper table. This is my table."
At first, "Justice" was generally satisfied with half a crown, but as
time went on cats rose. I had hitherto regarded cats as a cheap
commodity, and I became surprised at the value attached to them. I began
to think seriously of breeding cats as an industry. At the prices
current in that village, I could have made an income of thousands.
"Look what your beast has done," said one irate female, to whom I had
been called out in the middle of dinner.
I looked. Thomas Henry appeared to have "done" a mangy, emaciated
animal, that must have been far happier dead than alive. Had the poor
creature been mine I should have thanked him; but some people never know
when they are well off.
"I wouldn't ha' taken a five-pun' note for that cat," said the lady.
"It's a matter of opinion," I replied, "but personally I think you would
have been unwise to refuse it. Taking the animal as it stands, I don't
feel inclined to give you more than a shilling for it. If you think you
can do better by taking it elsewhere, you do so."
"He was more like a Christian than a cat," said the lady.
"I'm not taking dead Christians," I answered firmly, "and even if I were
I wouldn't give more than a shilling for a specimen like that. You can
consider him as a Christian, or you can consider him as a cat; but he's
not worth more than a shilling in either case."
We settled eventually for eighteenpence.
The number of cats that Thomas Henry contrived to dispose of also
surprised me. Quite a massacre of cats seemed to be in progress.
One evening, going into the kitchen, for I made it a practice now to
visit the kitchen each evening, to inspect the daily consignment of dead
cats, I found, among others, a curiously marked tortoiseshell cat, lying
on the table.
"That cat's worth half a sovereign," said the owner, who was standing by,
drinking beer.