It was morning. Bright rays of sunlight were streaming into the nursery
through the lacy curtain that the frost had drawn across the panes of
the windows. Vania, a boy of six with a shaven head and a nose like a
button, and his sister Nina, a chubby, curly-haired girl of four, woke
from their sleep and stared crossly at one another through the bars of
their cribs.
“Oh, shame, shame!” grumbled nursie. “All good folks have had breakfast
by now and your eyes are still half-closed!”
The sun’s rays were chasing each other merrily across the carpet, the
walls, and the tail of nursie’s dress, and seemed to be inviting the
children to a romp, but they did not notice the sun, they had waked in a
bad humour. Nina pouted, made a wry face, and began to whine:
“Tea, nursie, I want my tea!”
Vania frowned and wondered how he could manage to quarrel and so find an
excuse to bawl. He was already winking his eyes and opening his mouth
when mamma’s voice came from the dining-room saying:
“Don’t forget to give the cat some milk; she has kittens now!”
Vania and Nina pulled long faces and looked dubiously at one another;
then they both screamed, jumped out of bed, and scampered into the
kitchen as they were, barefooted and in their little nightgowns, filling
the air with shrill squeals as they ran.
“The cat has kittens! The cat has kittens!” they shrieked.
Under a bench in the kitchen stood a box, the same box which Stepan used
for carrying coal when fires were lighted in the fire-places. Out of
this box peered the cat. Profound weariness was manifested in her face,
and her green eyes with their narrow black pupils wore an expression
both languid and sentimental. One could see from her mien that if “he,”
the father of her children, were but with her, her happiness would be
complete. She opened her mouth wide and tried to mew but her throat only
emitted a wheezing sound. The squeaking of her kittens came from inside
the box.
The children squatted down on their heels near the box, motionless,
holding their breath, their eyes riveted on the cat. They were dumb with
wonder and amazement and did not hear their nurse as she grumblingly
pursued them. Unaffected pleasure shone in the eyes of both.
In the lives and education of children domestic animals play a useful if
inconspicuous part. Who does not remember some strong, noble watch-dog
of his childhood, some petted spaniel, or the birds that died in
captivity? Who does not recall the stupid, arrogant turkeys, and the
meek old tabby-cats that were always ready to forgive us even when we
stepped on their tails for fun and caused them the keenest pain? I
sometimes think that the loyalty, patience, capacity for forgiveness,
and fidelity of our domestic animals have a far greater and more potent
influence over the minds of children than the long discourses of some
pale, prosy German tutor or the hazy explanations of a governess who
tries to tell them that water is compounded of oxygen and hydrogen.
“Oh, how tiny they are!” cried Nina, staring at the kittens round-eyed
and breaking into a merry peal of laughter—“They look like mice!”
“One, two, three—” counted Vania. “Three kittens. That means one for me
and one for you and one for some one else.”
“Murrm-murr-r-r-m,” purred the cat, flattered at receiving so much
attention. “Murr-r-m.”
When they were tired of looking at the kittens, the children took them
out from under the cat and began squeezing and pinching them; then, not
satisfied with this, they wrapped them in the hems of their nightgowns
and ran with them into the drawing-room.
Their mother was sitting there with a strange man. When she saw the
children come in not dressed, not washed, with their nightgowns in the
air she blushed and looked sternly at them.
“For shame! Let your nightgowns down!” she cried. “Go away or else I
shall have to punish you!”
But the children heeded neither the threats of their mother nor the
presence of the stranger. They laid the kittens down on the carpet and
raised their voices in shrill vociferation. The mother cat roamed about
at their feet and mewed beseechingly. A moment later the children were
seized and borne off into the nursery to be dressed and fed and to say
their prayers, but their hearts were full of passionate longing to have
done with these prosaic duties as quickly as possible and to escape once
more into the kitchen.
Their usual games and occupations faded into the background.
By their arrival in the world the kittens had eclipsed everything else
and had taken their place as the one engrossing novelty and passion of
the day. If Vania or Nina had been offered a ton of candy or a thousand
pennies for each one of the kittens they would have refused the bargain
without a moment’s hesitation. They sat over the kittens in the kitchen
until the very moment for dinner, in spite of the vigorous protests of
their nurse and of the cook. The expression on their faces was serious,
absorbed, and full of anxiety. They were worrying not only over the
present, but also over the future of the kittens. They decided that one
should stay at home with the old cat to console its mother, the second
should go to the cottage in the country, and the third should live in
the cellar where there were so many rats.
“But why don’t they open their eyes?” Nina puzzled. “They are blind,
like beggars!”
Vania, too, was perturbed by this phenomenon. He set to work to open the
eyes of one of the kittens, and puffed and snuffled over his task for a
long time, but the operation proved to be unsuccessful. The children
were also not a little worried because the kittens obstinately refused
all meat and milk set before them. Their grey mother ate everything that
was put under their little noses.
“Come on, let’s make some little houses for the kitties!” Vania
suggested. “Then they can live in their own separate homes and the old
kitty can come and visit them.”
They put hat-boxes in various corners of the kitchen, and the kittens
were transferred to their new homes. But this family separation proved
to be premature. With the same imploring, sentimental look on her face,
the cat made the round of the boxes and carried her babies back to their
former nest.
“Kitty is their mother,” Vania reflected. “But who is their father?”
“Yes, who is their father?” Nina repeated.
“They _must_ have a father,” both decided.
Vania and Nina debated for a long time as to who should be the father of
the kittens. At last their choice fell upon a large dark-red horse with
a broken tail who had been thrown into a cupboard under the stairs and
there lay awaiting his end in company with other rubbish and broken
toys. This horse they dragged forth and set up beside the box.
“Mind now!” the children admonished him. “Stand there and see they
behave themselves!”
Shortly before dinner Vania was sitting at the table in his father’s
study dreamily watching a kitten that lay squirming on the
blotting-paper under the lamp. His eyes were following each movement of
the little creature and he was trying to force first a pencil and then a
match into its mouth. Suddenly his father appeared beside the table as
if he had sprung from the floor.
“What’s that?” Vania heard him ask in an angry voice.
“It’s—it’s a little kitty, papa.”
“I’ll show you a little kitty! Look what you’ve done, you bad boy,
you’ve messed up the whole blotter!”
To Vania’s intense surprise, his papa did not share his affection for
kittens. Instead of going into raptures and rejoicing over it with him,
he pulled Vania’s ear and shouted:
“Stepan! Come and take this nasty thing away!”
At dinner, too, a scandal occurred. During the second course the family
suddenly heard a faint squeaking. A search for the cause was made and a
kitten was discovered under Nina’s apron.
“Nina, leave the table at once!” cried her father angrily. “Stepan,
throw the kittens into the slop-barrel this minute! I won’t have such
filth in the house!”
Vania and Nina were horrified. Apart from its cruelty, death in the
slop-barrel threatened to deprive the old cat and the wooden horse of
their children, to leave the box deserted, and to upset all their plans
for the future, that beautiful future in which one cat would take care
of its old mother, one would live in the country, and the third would
catch rats in the cellar. The children began to cry and to beg for the
lives of the kittens. Their father consented to spare them on condition
that the children should under no circumstances go into the kitchen or
touch the kittens.
When dinner was over, Vania and Nina roamed disconsolately through the
house, pining for their pets. The prohibition to enter the kitchen had
plunged them in gloom. They refused candy when it was offered them and
were cross and rude to their mother. When their Uncle Peter came in the
evening they took him aside and complained to him of their father who
wanted to throw the kittens into the slop-barrel.
“Uncle Peter,” they begged. “Tell mamma to have the kittens brought into
the nursery! Do tell her!”
“All right, all right!” their uncle consented to get rid of them.
Uncle Peter seldom came alone. There generally appeared with him Nero, a
big black Dane with flapping ears and a tail as hard as a stick. He was
a silent and gloomy dog, full of the consciousness of his own dignity.
He ignored the children and thumped them with his tail as he stalked by
them as if they had been chairs. The children cordially hated him, but
this time practical considerations triumphed over sentiment.
“Do you know what, Nina?” said Vania, opening his eyes very wide. “Let’s
make Nero their father instead of the horse! The horse is dead and he is
alive.”
They waited all the evening for the time to come when papa should sit
down to his whist and Nero might be admitted into the kitchen. At last
papa began playing. Mamma was busy over the samovar and was not noticing
the children—the happy moment had come!
“Come on!” Vania whispered to his sister.
But just then Stepan came into the room and announced with a smile:
“Madame, Nero has eaten the kittens!”
Nina and Vania paled and looked at Stepan in horror.
“Indeed he has!” chuckled the butler. “He has found the box and eaten
every one!”
The children imagined that every soul in the house would spring up in
alarm and fling themselves upon that wicked Nero. But instead of this
they all sat quietly in their places and only seemed surprised at the
appetite of the great dog. Papa and mamma laughed. Nero walked round the
table wagging his tail and licking his chops with great
self-satisfaction. Only the cat was uneasy. With her tail in the air she
roamed through the house, looking suspiciously at every one and mewing
pitifully.
“Children, it’s ten o’clock! Go to bed!” cried mamma.
Vania and Nina went to bed crying and lay for a long time thinking about
the poor, abused kitty and that horrid, cruel, unpunished Nero.