I tried to be brave, but when I heard the pitiful cries of Lord Roberts, I
broke down and almost gave up in despair. This, then, was the end of my
dreams of a happy life during my old age. Oh, human beings! Could you
realize how dependent we are upon your kindness, you would never forget us
in a time like this. I wished that I was a human being possessed of a
soul, and could pray to God for deliverance from such misery as I had
witnessed, when suddenly I remembered that I had heard a teacher in one of
the class-rooms read from the Bible one morning that not even a sparrow
could fall to the ground and He not heed. It gave me courage for I thought
if He could care for a sparrow, He would surely protect us from harm. I
felt better and saying words of encouragement to Lord Roberts, went back
to the house where I crawled under the piazza and remained there
throughout the dreary night.
What a cruel awakening, no fire and nothing to eat. I dragged myself to
Lord Roberts and found that he had fared somewhat better, for he had
discovered a pan of water under the ice-chest, and (he hated to admit it)
had caught and eaten a mouse (I thought again of his liver for breakfast).
He said that he knew they would come back for us and I really thought
myself that they would as soon as they found that we were missing. It had
not rained for some time and, as I walked down to the beach, I saw some of
the cats who had been left go down and try to lap up the salt water. It
seemed to make them more frantic and miserable than ever.
Some of these cats had been kept alive by eating such things as they could
find in the refuse left by the summer people. A few rats and mice had
helped to keep them alive, and one poor creature had been so hungry that
he had pushed his head into an empty tomato can, and as he could not get
it out was rushing wildly about, shaking the can with much violence. He
got to be a horror to us all, but we could not help him and he finally
smothered to death. Oh, peaceful release from torture! Such maddening
thirst and not a drop of water to be had. I went around to see how Lord
Roberts was getting along and found him discouraged and heart broken. He
said, "It can not be possible that our people have abandoned us, it must
be some horrible mistake." I went every day to the main road and watched
for motor cars, which never came. I grew thinner and thinner. There were
no city streets to get a living from, no milk jars; nothing but a barren
waste, over which the wind howled like a lost soul, and the cruel sea,
with its waste of water, but none to drink. What torments we all suffered!
Yet it was all so needless. How could our people eat, drink, and be merry
while we were starving? I got so hungry that I became delirious with
fever. In the long watches of the quiet nights I dreamed of my mother and
my childhood. Soon in my vision I was wandering without a home, then came
to my new people and my bountiful home. I awoke with parched mouth, weak
from hunger and thirst.
The next morning I dragged myself to the front path and feebly lay down in
despair. When suddenly "What was that I heard?" I started up--surely a
dream--No! a reality!!
The welcome sound of a motor car!!! In a few minutes a car came thundering
up the drive. It was our own--my own--and I was saved. They all jumped out
and lifted me tenderly up and I saw tears in the eyes of my mistress. It
seemed that they thought I had been lost from the car and had given me up
until one of the family said, "Perhaps we did not take him on at all. Let
us go back and see." Business, however, had kept the master so tied up
that he could not spare the car. After my rescue they tried to make me
comfortable but I thought of poor Lord Roberts and tried to tell them of
his plight, and when the car was slowly nearing his house I flung myself
out and crept to his window and when they followed, his cry of despair
made them understand, and Lord Roberts was saved!
How happy I was when we reached home and how grateful when the mistress
went to the telephone and called up the kind lady of the Animal Rescue
League. She told her that there were a dozen or more abandoned cats at the
shore and giving directions to her begged her to go, or send at once to
see that, if they could not be saved, they would be put out of their
misery. A happy, peaceful life with dear Tom for a companion followed from
then on. Everyone is so kind and considerate to me now in my old age that
I plead for the others, the less fortunate ones of my species--and I also
pray that all who read these simple annals of my life will find it in
their hearts to remember their faithful feline friends and never under any
circumstances be tempted to ill-use or abandon them.
And as I sit in the gentle glow of the firelight, the light of my life
growing dimmer day by day, waiting to join the great majority, I thank the
God of my master, that I am no longer a nomad, a wanderer, and my heart
goes out to those who are. Shall ye wilfully abandon His creatures, ye
shall not enjoy peace in the hereafter!
End of Project Gutenberg's The Nomad of the Nine Lives, by A. Frances Friebe