ANIMAL AUTOBIOGRAPHIES
THE CAT
BY VIOLET HUNT
LONDON
ADAM & CHARLES BLACK
1905
'I had rather be a kitten and cry--Mew!'
SHAKESPEARE.
AGENTS IN AMERICA
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64 & 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
_UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME._
_PRICE 6s. EACH._
THE DOG.
BY G. E. MITTON.
THE BLACK BEAR.
BY PERRY ROBINSON.
THE RAT.
BY G. M. A. HEWETT.
TO
ANNE CHILD
[Illustration: LOKI.]
PREFACE
A cat is of all animals the most difficult to know; it is so intimate,
but so detached; so dependent on human beings for its comfort, so
loftily indifferent to their wishes. It requires one who has lived
with cats and seen their idiosyncrasies, their whims and their strong
individuality, to write about them, and in the present author they
have found a spokeswoman who knows them through and through. A sense
of humour is necessary in dealing with the subject--and the humour is
not lacking. Loki is a real cat in more senses than one, and those who
follow his life story will find themselves better able to understand
their own cats than they have ever been before.
THE EDITOR.
CONTENTS
I. THE NURSERY
II. ONE LESS THAN FIVE
III. TO LAP OR NOT TO LAP
IV. THE SCHOOLROOM
V. ONE LESS THAN FOUR
VI. THE FIRST JOURNEY
VII. AN INVALID
VIII. A MAN WHO HATED ME
IX. MY FIRST MOUSE
X. THE CHILDREN'S HOUR
XI. THE SURPRISE THAT FELL FLAT
XII. FROM TOP TO BOTTOM
XIII. CATAPUK
XIV. 'POOSH!'
XV. THE BLACK COMMON CAT
XVI. THE BLACK CAT BRINGS MEASLES
XVII. A WEDDING IN THE HOUSE
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY ADOLPH BIRKENRUTH
Loki
The milk ran down the creases to the floor
She used to stand on her hind legs and look at the painting
Out of that dog's way, at any rate
Auntie May took me across her shoulder
I played with shavings for about an hour
A black cat brings good luck to a theatre
I did not want to see any one of them again
Mistigris used to lie in wait for me
'I believe we shall have to make up a bed on the stones,'
she said
That boy was rough and played experiments with him
She married Mr. Fox in less than a month
THE CAT
CHAPTER I
THE NURSERY
I first saw the light--at least I did not exactly see the light, for I
was blind, so they tell me, for about a week after I was born--on the
twenty-third of April 19--. There were five of us, three boys and two
girls. Our mother was a pure-blooded Persian; so was our father, and
it was, I believe, considered by Them a very good match. They arrange
all our matches for us in this country, and indeed manage most of our
affairs, but then it must be remembered that we are strangers, as the
title Persian denotes. Moreover, we belong to that division of the race
that is called 'Blue Smokes,' which means, not that our fur is blue,
for that would be ugly and loud, but that if you part it and look
carefully at the roots you will see that it is exactly the shade of
blue that smoke is when you get a lot of it together. Papa's name is
'Blue Boy II.,' and he is excessively handsome, and has taken prizes at
cat-shows all over the country. His mistress, Miss Goddard, who lives
at West Dulwich, is always travelling about with him to show him, and
mother is very proud of that.
The first sound that I heard--for I wasn't born deaf as well as
blind--was the voice of Rosamond, a little girl who lives in our house
sometimes, screeching at the top of her voice, 'Oh, Auntie, Auntie May!
Petronilla has got her kittens! Hooray! Hooray!'
My mistress came running upstairs two steps at a time, and put her foot
through her dress--I heard it rip. Then she leaned over us, for I felt
her breath on my face, and said in a voice quite gurgly with pleasure,
'Brava, Petronilla!'
Then another voice--I learnt afterwards that it was the voice of the
parlour-maid, a good soul and as fond of cats as Auntie May--said,
'They look just like so many grey boiled rags, don't they, Miss?'
'Oh, p-p-please, Auntie May,' began Rosamond, stuttering in her
eagerness, 'mayn't I take one out to look at it?'
'Certainly not. How dare you propose such a thing! Go and do your
health exercises. Petronilla is to be left entirely alone and not
bothered.'
'Quite right, Miss Rosamond!' said Mary; 'I've heard say that if you
watch her she'll do them a mischief. I knew a cat what ate all her
kittens--'
'Ssh, Mary, I am sure Petronilla would not do such a thing. She isn't a
common cat. But I tell you what she will certainly do if she thinks we
are going to touch them or take them away from her--she will hide them.
She knows it isn't good for them to be handled. You have no idea of the
amount cats know, and though Petronilla is only four years old, she
knows as much as the best nurse ever did. Now be off, all of you, and
leave her alone!'
All very well, but Mary the maid simply couldn't keep away, and about
three days after this she came in to dust the room (although she had
been forbidden to do that just yet, for fear of blowing the germy dust
into our eyes and down our throats); and when she had done dusting,
she bent down and took us all out one by one, and examined us till
she was sure to know us again. Mother looked at her reproachfully, but
did not lift a paw to her, for she knew Mary was a dear good creature,
and, though silly, would sacrifice her life for a single grey hair off
mother's head, or indeed a hair of anywhere off her, and she once said
so. But when Mary had gone she took a decided line, and said that she
was determined to make an end of all this fingering and pawing of young
limbs, which would certainly prevent them from growing and developing
properly.
There was a large press with low flat shelves in a corner of the room,
full of Auntie May's clothes, that just suited her purpose. She took
us all up, one by one, carefully, in her mouth, keeping her teeth back
somehow or other not to hurt us, though she could not help making us
most disagreeably wet, and carried us along to the cupboard, bumping us
as little as she could help on the floor, but still she did bump us.
Then with one of us in her mouth, she jumped up to the shelf she had
chosen--having first opened the folding doors of the cupboard with her
paws--and laid him or her carefully down in the corner, and so with us
all.
When Auntie May came up to find her clothes for going out, she
discovered us. Mother purred at once to disarm her, for it was known
that Auntie May could not manage to be really cross with dear Pet for
long, IF she purred.
'Oh, you _beast_--darling, I mean! Right on the top of my best white
wuffy hat! Come out of it at once, angel--pet! And here is another on
my ermine boa! And another on my best painted _crèpe de chine_ blouse!
Oh, this is too much, Petronilla, my lamb--'
And she took us all out quite gently, not hurting us half so much as
mother did in bumping us along the floor, and put us back into our bed
of fresh hay, that we have to lie in so as to make us smell sweet.
Auntie May always says that very young infant kittens are like babies,
and need beautiful accessories, such as blue bows, and green hay, and
white powder puffs.
They fastened the wardrobe door very tight and strictly forbade Mary
to touch us, and for many days after this we just lay still and
ate--ate--ate! Mother, however greedy we were, never pushed us away.
She was like a soft hill of wool that we had leave to lie up against
and browse upon. Every now and then she spread out her paws, which were
like silver streaks, wide and square, all over us, not heavily, so as
to weigh us down, but lightly, like a sort of lattice that kept the
cold draughts off us, and that we might fancy to be a wall or a hedge
between us and the world if we liked.
It was the great advantage of mother's being a pet cat that she and her
family lived in the house, not in a cattery, as they are called. Mother
knew very well what a cattery was like--she had been in one before a
man bought her and gave her to Auntie May as a present. She cost three
guineas, she said. It was a very nice cattery, as catteries go--she
admits that--and she will always look upon it with affection as being
her first home, but still there was a lot of difference between it and
Auntie May's house. A cattery has generally hard trodden-in earth for a
floor, without a carpet, except for a few unhemmed bits spread here and
there. There's generally an old chair--wooden--to scrape your claws on:
now velvet, such as is kept here, mother says, is much more interesting
and efficacious. The bed is inside, under cover--I grant you that--but
only made out of a few old packing cases, and there is generally a
horrid smelly oil-lamp to warm the whole place. Now Auntie May had us
in her own bedroom for the first week of our lives, and when she did
move us, it was only into her study. She was an authoress and had to
have a study; at least her father, who was a distinguished painter and
R.A., and adores his daughter, thought she had as much right as he to
have a studio--same word as study. 'She sells her books, and I don't
sell my pictures!' he said. (I call her Auntie May because Rosamond
does, and because it sounds more respectful, and mother said I ought.)
Her study was quite nicely furnished and full of bureaus and manuscript
cupboards and high things to perch on. Mother says it is advisable when
choosing a perch to get as high as possible, because of the draughts
that run along the floors of even the best rooms.
Mother told us many things as we lay there, but I can't say I took much
notice of them till my eyes opened. It was just a nice sleepy sound she
made that sent us off to bye-bye one after another. I suppose she slept
herself, but I never remember being awake when she wasn't. She was a
very good mother; she hardly ever left us. Of course she got out of the
bed to eat her meals; she detested crumbs in the bed, and so on. If she
went away she always came back with a kind sort of speech--Rosamond
called it a mew--something like 'Here we are again!' or 'Well, how
goes it, infants?' and then lay down right on the top of us. Rosamond
used to scold her and pull her off us, thinking she would hurt us; she
didn't know that we were always able to ooze away from under mother
quite easily when once she had turned round three times and got settled.
Till my eyes opened I did not know how many brothers and sisters I
had, except for mother's telling me. I fought them all without having
the slightest idea of the sort of thing I was fighting. I knew it
had claws, though. I knew that Fred B. Nicholson, as they called him
afterwards, after Auntie May's American cousin, was a regular bully
from the beginning, always putting himself forward, and shoving us away
from the best places. After all, eating is everything in those first
days, and mother was singularly weak where Fred was concerned, and let
him batter us as much as he liked, and never took our side against him.
She only said 'First come, first served!' and 'Heaven helps those that
help themselves!' and certainly he did grow a great strong boy.
Perhaps that was the reason why his eyes opened first!
Rosamond gave us a great deal of attention when her own lessons were
over, and before, and hung over us till she got all the blood to her
head, she said. She called herself cat-maid. One day when she was
leaning over our bed, she suddenly jumped up and screamed:
'Oh, Auntie May, one of them--I don't even know which, but I think it
is Fred B. Nicholson--has got a tiny, tiny slit where his eyes ought to
be! Do you suppose he can see?'
I felt the first grief of my life. I _knew_ there was no slit where
_my_ eyes ought to be, and I felt sure it _was_, as Rosamond guessed,
that horrid boy Fred, who always got first in everything. Next day the
slit in his face was bigger. That evening they said with certainty,
'Yes, Fred can see!' In the daylight Rosamond discovered that his eyes
were blue. By that time _I_ saw what looked like a streak of light,
and guessed that my eyes were going to open soon, and wondered if they
would be blue too! I asked mother, and she laughed at Rosamond and at
me, saying that all kittens' eyes are blue at first. Even Rosamond
ought to have known that. The question was, would they be green or
orange afterwards?
'I should be very sorry,' mother said, 'if any of you turned out to
have green eyes. That would defeat all poor Auntie May's plans. I have
green eyes myself, alas! and she is most good to overlook it in me,
but your father has the most beautiful golden eyes in the world, or in
any cat-show, and let us hope that you will have the luck to take after
him!'
Fred began, the others followed. My eyes were the last to open. I
suppose I had caught cold; I am sure I was not delicate. They took warm
milk and mopped the place where the eyes ought to be. Mother licked me.
They raced to cure me. Mother always said that she backed her licking,
but I fancy the warm milk did it, myself. And pretty soon I saw. We all
saw, and so when we quarrelled we managed to aim better.
I really saw very little besides untidy spiky bits of hay sticking up
all round me, and beyond that, a wall of wicker. I sometimes saw great
moonfaces bending over me, and Rosamond's long golden fur tickled me as
she put her head right into the basket. _She_ had blue eyes, but then
she was still a child. I wondered if they would be green or orange when
she grew up? Auntie May's were brown, shot with green; she had quite
dark fur too, and tied up, not hanging down like Rosamond's.
If I chose to keep my eyes _inside_ the basket, I saw my mother's
green eyes, and they were so pretty and mournful. Auntie May used to
call them Burne-Jones eyes. She meant it as a compliment, and mother
always purred. She loved being praised.
Though Freddy's eyes were open, he could not scratch himself with his
hind leg without falling over, and I could. Then I found that _I_ could
do something else Freddy could not, that is, make a queer rolling,
rumbling, useless sound in my throat. I don't see much good in it
myself, but it gives Them pleasure. They take it as if we were saying
'Thank you' when we are given food or stroked. But no one, not even the
vet,--that is the cat doctor--know how it is done. I heard him say so.
I have not the slightest idea how I do it. I just listened to mother,
and brooded over the thought for days, and all of a sudden I woke up,
as Rosamond was tickling my stomach, and found myself r-r-ring away
somewhere inside me like anything! Mother even started when she heard
me; I am not sure she was altogether glad.
'Poor child!' she said, 'he is taking up his burden early. They mostly
don't expect recognition from us until we are older. Don't, don't purr
too easily, my son; be chary of your gift: it is wiser.' But Rosamond
buried her face in me and mother, so as to hear better, and presently
she raised it and called out to Auntie May, who was sitting writing at
her little table:
'Oh, Auntie May'--(all her sentences began like that)--'this kitten,
who was so late with his eyes, is at any rate the first to purr! Purr,
darling, purr!'
I purred till my throat was sore, and she stroked my back and tickled
my stomach till I had to curl up and bring my hind legs and my head
together. They think you do it because you like being tickled, not
because you can't help it. I purred so much that day that I had to take
a rest the next, and then They said I was sulky!
And Freddy was jealous. He could not purr, though he _could_ spit.
Mother reproves him, for she says that spitting, though a useful weapon
and a protection against intrusive aliens, is not to be used in private
life between cat and cat. It is good for dogs, if I ever see one.
Mother uses it but rarely for Them. I asked her why she didn't spit at
the people in the house, who, though well-meaning, irritated her by
coming and lifting us out and looking us all over, and talking about
our points, and preventing us from growing? She said, 'I don't do it
to Them, however annoying they are, because, when all is said and done,
I am well bred and Persian.'
I knew mother never said a thing like that without being able to prove
it, so I was a little surprised one day at what one of Auntie May's
friends said. This man took Fred up and handled him as if he didn't
know much about kittens. I watched him. His moonface had a queer little
smile much too small for it--a sly smile.
'Touch of Persian about this cat, I should say!' he observed quietly.
'Why, they _are_ Persian, Mr. Blake!' Rosamond cried out; but Auntie
May said nothing, but simply hoofed him out of her room and ours. His
little smile had grown bigger.
After he had gone, mother boiled with rage.
'I won't stand this!' she exclaimed. 'Come along, my traduced darlings,
with me, and we will hide you, lest you be again exposed to insolent
criticism of that kind. Touch of Persian indeed! Perhaps he thinks
Persians haven't claws! Perhaps he thinks we cannot resent injuries
adequately! Come, my pure-bred doves! Come, my prize darlings, my
pedigree'd angels!'
The door into Auntie May's bedroom next door was left open. Mother
carried us in one by one and laid us on the ground under the famous
cupboard we had been in before, while she leaned up and, with her paw,
turned the handle of the cupboard door. Then she seized me and jumped
with me on to the bottom shelf and stowed me in one corner, pulling
the clothes and what not that was there all over me, so as to hide me
completely. She then left me, recommending me to silence, or I should
get 'what for' with her hind feet, and fetched the others one by one.
She placed them all on different shelves--I saw her leap past me each
time--and stayed herself with Fred, for I did not see her go past
again. That was a long jump, for it took her right up to the fifth
shelf.
All the afternoon we lay there, mother visiting us all in turn.
Unfortunately, she had not been able to succeed in closing the wardrobe
door after her. It yawned in the most suspicious manner, and so Auntie
May thought when she came back from Pinner, where she had gone to dine
and sleep, as soon as Mr. Blake had departed. About eleven o'clock the
next morning she came bouncing in in her hat and jacket, and the moment
her eye fell on the open door she cried out:
'Oh, my prophetic soul! Come here at once, Rosamond, or you will be
sorry!'
She opened the door wider and looked in, but, naturally, could see
nothing.
'It _looks_ all right!' she said to Rosamond. 'But all the same I feel
sure that Petronilla is somewhere inside. Isn't my _crèpe de chine_
blouse in that corner rucked up rather suspiciously? Gently! Don't let
us spoil poor Petronilla's game of "Hide-and-Seek." We mustn't find
them too soon.'
Fred was under the _crèpe de chine_ blouse, and they found him. Then
they found the other boy, with some artificial violets she wears
pinned on to the front of her dress in the evening on top of him. On
the top story one of the girls was curled into the crown of a hat, and
mother was in the lowest shelf with the other, mixed up with an ermine
boa. The play lasted quite ten minutes, and Rosamond was delighted.
Very little damage was done; in fact, as mother said, a clean,
well-licked-every-day cat, if you don't frighten him and drive him to
desperation, rarely spoils clothes, or breaks ornaments, or leaves any
trace of his presence. But if you chivy him or make him nervous, he
doesn't choose to hold himself accountable for any harm he may happen
to do, naturally!
There were five of us, and, so far, only Fred B. Nicholson had been
christened. Rosamond, who is a child who loves putting things into
their right places and calling them by their proper names, pointed this
out to her Aunt.
'There are certain royalties,' said Auntie May, 'whose religion cannot
be chosen till they have grown up and it is decided whom they are to
marry. The same with kittens' names. The naming ought to be left to the
people with whom they are eventually going to live. I can't keep more
than one of them, you know. We should be what they call _cat-ridden_.'
This was the first I heard of it. From that day the thought hung
over me that our pleasant little party would have to be broken up. I
wondered if I could possibly contrive to be the one They kept. I could
not bear the idea of moving to a new home. But mother said it was the
law of nature. Her motto was from a poem of Miss Jean Ingelow that
Auntie May had once quoted--
_To hear, to nurse, to rear,
To love and then to lose...._
She never worried--much, though she confessed at first it was rather
trying, and that she caught herself wandering about looking into
corners, searching for what she knew went away in a basket the day
before. It was just a habit mothers got into, and when a few weeks had
elapsed she just shook herself and thought no more of the kitten that
had gone to make its mark on some one else's chair cushions. 'Dear me!'
she used to say, 'I have on an average five kittens a year. What should
I do with them all hanging about, getting in my way at every turn? I
should become irritable, I should snap at them, I should positively
hate them as soon as they became independent and I could do nothing for
them. It is best as it is.'
After that speech of mother's, I was not so sure that I wanted to be
the kitten They chose to keep, that is, if mother meant to turn round
and bully me as soon as I could stand up for myself. It seemed strange
to hear her talk like that, and yet one likes to be forewarned.
Rosamond gave us temporary names--reach-me-down names, she called them.
Fred B. Nicholson was allowed to stand; the boy Auntie May called
Admiral Togo, a Japanese name, I understand. The two girls were
Zobeide and Blanch. I was called Loki, after the devil.
They did not know, but we all had one name already, a traditional one
in our family. It was Pasht. Our ancestors lived at a place called
Bubastis. For convenience' sake, however, we stuck to the names They
gave us. They seemed to have an idea that we should answer to them and
come when we were called, but mother told us on no account ever to do
so, it would be false to every tradition of our class. We might go as
far as to twitch an ear when we heard our name spoken pleasantly, but
only on the very rarest occasions were we to stir a paw. Then, if we
decided to go to Them, it was at least manners to stop half-way and
scratch. If the name was spoken in an unfriendly tone, the thing to
do was just to stare the impertinent creature down. At Bubastis, in
the olden time, our ancestors had been worshipped and prayed to. In
the studio downstairs, where mother had been a constant visitor in the
days when she was free of domestic cares, there is one of our ancestors
under a glass case just as he was buried when he died thousands of
years ago. He is all wrapped in a sort of brown greased cloth, so
mother says, many hundred folds of it, but still you can perfectly
well see the original shape of our many-hundreds-of-times-over
great-uncle. Nobody has ever unwrapped him; it would be very wicked
to do it, and might bring misfortune on the house. Altogether he is
treated with the greatest respect, and mother is quite content to have
it so. We are taught to look on that room not as the studio as They
do, but as the Family Tomb, and mother says that when we grow up and
are permitted to sit there sometimes, we must all keep very quiet and
behave seriously and do no romping.