The spring was doing its New York best. The dirty little English
Sparrows were tumbling over each other in their gutter brawls, Cats
yowled all night in the areas, and the Fifth Avenue family were
thinking of their country residence. They packed up, closed house and
moved off to their summer home, some fifty miles away, and Pussy, in a
basket, went with them.
"Just what she needed: a change of air and scene to wean her away from
her former owners and make her happy."
The basket was lifted into a Rumble-shaker. New sounds and passing
smells were entered and left. A turn in the course was made. Then a
roaring of many feet, more swinging of the basket; a short pause,
another change of direction, then some clicks, some bangs, a long
shrill whistle, and door-bells of a very big front door; a rumbling, a
whizzing, an unpleasant smell, a hideous smell, a growing horrible,
hateful choking smell, a deadly, griping, poisonous stench, with
roaring that drowned poor Kitty's yowls, and just as it neared the
point where endurance ceased, there was relief. She heard clicks and
clacks. There was light; there was air. Then a man's voice called, "All
out for 125th Street," though of course to Kitty it was a mere human
bellow. The roaring almost ceased--did cease. Later the rackety-bang
was renewed with plenty of sounds and shakes, though not the poisonous
gas; a long, hollow, booming roar with a pleasant dock smell was
quickly passed, and then there was a succession of jolts, roars, jars,
stops, clicks, clacks, smells, jumps, shakes, more smells, more
shakes,--big shakes, little shakes,--gases, smokes, screeches,
door-bells, tremblings, roars, thunders, and some new smells, raps,
taps, heavings, rumblings, and more smells, but all without any of the
feel that the direction is changed. When at last it stopped, the sun
came twinkling through the basket-lid. The Royal Cat was lifted into a
Rumble-shaker of the old familiar style, and, swerving aside from their
past course, very soon the noises of its wheels were grittings and
rattlings; a new and horrible sound was added--the barking of Dogs, big
and little and dreadfully close. The basket was lifted, and Slum Kitty
had reached her country home.
Every one was officiously kind. They wanted to please the Royal Cat,
but somehow none of them did, except, possibly, the big, fat cook that
Kitty discovered on wandering into the kitchen. This unctuous person
smelt more like a slum than anything she had met for months, and the
Royal Analostan was proportionately attracted. The cook, when she
learned that fears were entertained about the Cat staying, said:
"Shure, she'd 'tind to thot; wanst a Cat licks her futs, shure she's at
home." So she deftly caught the unapproachable royalty in her apron,
and committed the horrible sacrilege of greasing the soles of her feet
with pot-grease. Of course Kitty resented it--she resented everything
in the place; but on being set down she began to dress her paws and
found evident satisfaction in that grease. She licked all four feet for
an hour, and the cook triumphantly announced that now "shure she'd be
apt to shtay." And stay she did, but she showed a most surprising and
disgusting preference for the kitchen, the cook, and the garbage-pail.
The family, though distressed by these distinguished peculiarities,
were glad to see the Royal Analostan more contented and approachable.
They gave her more liberty after a week or two. They guarded her from
every menace. The Dogs were taught to respect her. No man or boy about
the place would have dreamed of throwing a stone at the famous
pedigreed Cat. She had all the food she wanted, but still she was not
happy. She was hankering for many things, she scarcely knew what. She
had everything--yes, but she wanted something else. Plenty to eat and
drink--yes, but milk does not taste the same when you can go and drink
all you want from a saucer; it has to be stolen out of a tin pail when
you are belly-pinched with hunger and thirst, or it does not have the
tang--it isn't milk.
Yes, there was a junk-yard back of the house and beside it and around
it too, a big one, but it was everywhere poisoned and polluted with
roses. The very Horses and Dogs had the wrong smells; the whole country
round was a repellent desert of lifeless, disgusting gardens and
hay-fields, without a single tenement or smoke-stack in sight. How she
did hate it all! There was only one sweet-smelling shrub in the whole
horrible place, and that was in a neglected corner. She did enjoy
nipping that and rolling in the leaves; it was a bright spot in the
grounds; but the only one, for she had not found a rotten fish-head nor
seen a genuine garbage-can since she came, and altogether it was the
most unlovely, unattractive, unsmellable spot she had ever known. She
would surely have gone that first night had she had the liberty. The
liberty was weeks in coming, and, meanwhile, her affinity with the cook
had developed as a bond to keep her; but one day after a summer of
discontent a succession of things happened to stir anew the slum
instinct of the royal prisoner.
A great bundle of stuff from the docks had reached the country mansion.
What it contained was of little moment, but it was rich with a score of
the most piquant and winsome of dock and slum smells. The chords of
memory surely dwell in the nose, and Pussy's past was conjured up with
dangerous force. Next day the cook 'left' through some trouble over
this very bundle. It was the cutting of cables, and that evening the
youngest boy of the house, a horrid little American with no proper
appreciation of royalty, was tying a tin to the blue-blooded one's
tail, doubtless in furtherance of some altruistic project, when Pussy
resented the liberty with a paw that wore five big fish-hooks for the
occasion. The howl of downtrodden America roused America's mother. The
deft and womanly blow that she aimed with her book was miraculously
avoided, and Pussy took flight, up-stairs, of course. A hunted Rat runs
down-stairs, a hunted Dog goes on the level, a hunted Cat runs up. She
hid in the garret, baffled discovery, and waited till night came. Then,
gliding down-stairs, she tried each screen-door in turn, till she found
one unlatched, and escaped into the black August night. Pitch-black to
man's eyes, it was simply gray to her, and she glided through the
disgusting shrubbery and flower-beds, took a final nip at that one
little bush that had been an attractive spot in the garden, and boldly
took her back track of the spring.
How could she take a back track that she never saw? There is in all
animals some sense of direction. It is very low in man and very high in
Horses, but Cats have a large gift, and this mysterious guide took her
westward, not clearly and definitely, but with a general impulse that
was made definite simply because the road was easy to travel. In an
hour she had covered two miles and reached the Hudson River. Her nose
had told her many times that the course was true. Smell after smell
came back, just as a man after walking a mile in a strange street may
not recall a single feature, but will remember, on seeing it again,
"Why, yes, I saw that before." So Kitty's main guide was the sense of
direction, but it was her nose that kept reassuring her, "Yes, now you
are right--we passed this place last spring."
At the river was the railroad. She could not go on the water; she must
go north or south. This was a case where her sense of direction was
clear; it said, "Go south," and Kitty trotted down the foot-path
between the iron rails and the fence.