ONE LESS THAN FOUR
We all had a most terrible shock. Waking up from our afternoon sleep,
we found that instead of being four, we were only three. Admiral Togo
had gone. Mother had been asleep too, but she missed Togo first, and
went routing about among us to make quite sure.
'I can't surely have mislaid him,' we heard her muttering. 'Or is it
what I fear?'
'Perhaps he has got over the edge of the bed into the great world,'
said Zobeide, 'and is hiding somewhere to tease us.'
'Possibly,' mother said gently. She jumped out of bed, and looked all
over the room and into every corner. She called gently to Togo once or
twice, using a special pet name of her own, and she was still wandering
about when Rosamond came up with mother's dinner. She saw the state of
affairs at once.
'Aha, old girl, looking for your kitten?' she said. 'Can't find Togo,
eh?'
It struck me as suspicious that she knew which of us mother was seeking
without looking into the basket. Mother answered quite crossly, 'No,
nothing in particular.' She didn't want Rosamond to know that she
valued Togo, or any kitten that ever was born.
'Well, then, dear Pet, I must tell you. Togo was getting too old to run
about with women and children, and he has had his curls cut off, and
been packed off to a preparatory school!'
'Tsha!' mother spat angrily. She didn't choose to be chaffed by a
child. 'School! I am not going to be put off with a cock-and-bull story
like that.'
But she couldn't keep it up for very long. She did really care what had
become of Admiral Togo, and she hung her head and dropped her tail and
tried to get behind the door.
'Poor Petronilla! You seem very much distressed!' observed Auntie May,
coming in just then, and kindly lifting mother up, and putting her back
with us. 'But you are a sensible cat--I never knew a sensibler--and
you have been through this kind of thing before. Cheer up! You have
three left.'
'And I wonder how long I shall have them?' mother muttered. 'You are
making pretty quick work with them. You have killed one, and now you
have sold the other--'
Her bitterness made her unjust, because Auntie May didn't kill Blanch,
though she certainly had sold Admiral Togo, for what Rosamond said next
showed it.
'May I go and see Togo?'
'You may. I am sure Mrs. Dillon will have no objection, but don't
imagine for a moment that Togo will be glad to see _you_. Cats have
hardly any memories, and kittens none at all. And a good thing too, for
treated as chattels as they are they would have wretched lives of it.
_They_ don't listen to the rain upon the roof and think of other days,
or have tears come into their eyes when they look at sunsets because
they feel so ancient--'
'Why, Auntie May, you are talking like an old cat, while you are only a
young woman. You aren't _very_ old--not _more_ than thirty, are you?'
'That is just the most miserable age,' said Auntie May; 'when I am
forty I shall be as cheerful as--old boots!' She actually wiped a tear
away as she spoke. 'Good gracious me, Pet is simply murdering Freddy!
Drop it--drop it!'
'Please don't interfere!' mother said, as well as she could speak with
her mouth full of Freddy. 'If you only knew what he had been up to this
afternoon you would be obliged to me, I can tell you! You will miss It
presently, and wonder where it has got to. But I'll make the boy tell
me where it is, and put it back too, before I have done with him!'
She gave it to Fred well, but she spared his pride and never told
_us_ where he had put Auntie May's opera-glasses. She hit very hard
herself, but she never allowed us to lay a paw on each other, except
in kindness. She was so afraid of our hurting each other, like Uncle
Tomyris, who pulled out Uncle Ra's left eye once in a cattery brawl.
'They got Professor Hobday to come and fit him with an artificial one.
They really did, word of an honest cat!' mother said. She told us some
other things that the Professor did, such as bandaging a cat's broken
arm and putting it in splints, also false teeth, but that was a dog, I
think, and it was worth about three hundred pounds. No cat that ever
was born was worth that, mother says, but it is They who settle what we
are all to cost, and They might be mistaken. They have agreed that cats
are inferior to dogs; you may be as silly as you like about a dog, and
even believe he has got a soul if you like, but a cat!--'My dear, it's
too absurd!'
I hear this kind of thing in the drawing-room on Auntie May's at-home
day, when we are often carried downstairs in a basket and allowed to
play about and amuse the people. One hears a good deal. People who
don't like cats think that Auntie May makes a perfect fool of herself
about us. Once when Auntie May was persuaded to bring us down, to
please a Mrs. Wheeler, I heard, with my own big ears, Mrs. Wheeler
begin her sentence one way and finish it another.
'Lovely creatures, so beautiful in the firelight, when the light
catches their outside fur and makes it shine like silver--' (Then
Auntie May moved off and she went on) 'Poor, dear May! She is a bit
of a bore with her cats, don't you think so? Do you notice how she
always brings the conversation round to them in the end? It is a great
mistake. She will be an old maid, it's a sure sign! Look at her now
with a saucer on the floor and those three cats making a Manx penny
all round it, and a nice man wanting to talk to her, and can't get a
word from her! He looks disgusted, and no wonder!'
Auntie May didn't really keep us downstairs very long, and the nice
man, as it happened, carried us up for her to her study, and put us all
back in our basket, and stayed up talking with her quite a long time,
and talking about Mrs. Wheeler, the very woman who had been abusing
Auntie May for loving us so.
'She's a cat, that's what she is!' the nice man said, and Auntie May
agreed, which was rather insulting to us. I am, however, not quite sure
whether he didn't say a _d_ instead of a _t_, which with them makes
quite a different word.
Presently they said it was June, and the weather got beautiful. Auntie
May thought we ought to take the air in the garden, and be allowed to
run about on the grass. Rosamond was overjoyed, and so were we, at
first. Then we began to get frightened. There was absolutely nothing on
the top of us except the sky and the sun. I missed the nice sheltering
bed and the cosy walls of the room we had lived in always. I felt as
if the top of my skull had been taken off. I saw nothing to hide
under either, except black poles that simply ran up straight into the
blue. The sun was very hot, too, and I suppose I looked wretched, for
suddenly Rosamond said:
'I do believe Loki has got a sunstroke, like Kitty had last year. His
poor little head is so hot--feel!'
Auntie May was in such a fright that she bundled us all into the house.
Next day, when the sun was not quite so hot, she took us out again and
we soon got used to it. Sometimes she chose me alone and took me on
a lead and held the loop of it while she worked. She wrote on great
white sheets of paper that the wind got under and tried to blow away.
She told me to make myself useful and be a paperweight, but then when
I sat on the freshly-written sheets it spread the ink all about and
she did not seem to like that. At last the wind went down and she got
interested and forgot me entirely. Rosamond sneaked the end of the lead
out of her hand when she was not looking and held it; it seemed to give
her the greatest pleasure to hold me in. It is odd how that child likes
managing people, and positively begs for responsibility. Well, she took
it this time, and a nice mess she made of it!
She opened her hand as she got interested in her book, and I simply
walked away with the lead bobbling after me. I liked responsibility too.
Suddenly I saw a dog coming towards me--I knew it was a dog from the
one that was embroidered on the child's crawler we had to lie on at
home. He was black, coarse-furred, with small mean eyes, and a fringe
that kept tumbling into them. He approached me. I did not like to turn,
or cringe, or look afraid, but I felt my tail stiffening and my claws
sliding out all ready, by no will of my own. There was an odd feeling
in my back too. I knew as well as if you had told me that I should be
rude and spit at him if he came nearer.
He did. I spat. He barked. Still Auntie May didn't leave off putting
her pencil in her mouth and writing with it. Then my mood changed. I
felt I should like to leave that dog--I wanted not to be where it was.
After all I was only a kitten, and I turned round slowly and walked in
the direction of Auntie May.
He came prancing after me. I ran. He ran. The lead was most awfully in
my way. I went straight past Auntie May in my nervousness, and up one
of the straight black poles that seemed to lead up to Heaven--out of
that dog's way, at any rate. It was a tree, so I heard after. Perhaps
he could climb too--I didn't know! It was an instinct. The loop of
the lead lay along the ground, and the idiotic puppy, as he must have
been, hadn't the sense to hang on to it and drag me down. I think it
was pretty clever of me to climb my first tree handicapped and shackled
like that. Auntie May heard his short, sharp, cross barks, and came
running and caught hold of the end of the lead to prevent me from going
any higher up. Some people called off the puppy, and then, and not till
then, did I allow myself to come down on to her shoulder, which she
obligingly held under the exact bit of tree I was on.
[Illustration: OUT OF THAT DOG'S WAY AT ANY RATE.]
It was much easier to go up than to come down. Perhaps I was excited
then and made light of difficulties, but still mother told me that it
was always the same way with her. Cats should look before they climb.
I scratched Auntie May's nose terribly for her as I came down, and it
bled and had to be bathed. She was most kind about it.
'Never mind, darling, it won't matter. I am an ugly thing anyway, and
I have _only_ got to be presented at Court to-morrow! Just a little
unimportant occasion of that kind.'
'Can't you explain to the Queen,' said Rosamond, 'that your cat
scratched you? I have always heard she is so very kind.'
'No, I shan't worry her with explanations,' said Auntie May; 'only
soldiers' scratches are worth talking about. Let us go in.'
Mother lectured me when she heard of my adventure. 'You should not have
run,' she said, 'with that great heavy lead and all. If he had had the
spirit of a flea he would have broken your back for you. You should not
have shown it him; you should have stopped still and gone for his nose.
That hurts, and he knows it. He would have run away from you the moment
you raised your paw. Remember!'