CONCERNING OTHER PEOPLE'S CATS
Every observing reader of Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford's stories knows
that she is fond of cats and understands them. Her heroines usually
have, among other feminine belongings and accessories, one or more cats.
"Four great Persian cats haunted her every footstep," she says of Honor,
in the "Composite Wife." "A sleepy, snowy creature like some
half-animated ostrich plume; a satanic thing with fiery eyes that to Mr.
Chipperley's perception were informed with the very bottomless flames;
another like a golden fleece, caressing, half human; and a little
mouse-colored imp whose bounds and springs and feathery tail-lashings
not only did infinite damage among the Venetian and Dresden
knick-knackerie, but among Mr. Chipperley's nerves."
In her beautiful, old-fashioned home at Newburyport, Mass., she has two
beloved cats. But I will not attempt to improve on her own account of
them:--
"As for my own cats,--their name has been legion, although a few remain
preeminent. There was Miss Spot who came to us already named, preferring
our domicile to the neighboring one she had. Her only son was so black
that he was known as Ink Spot, but her only daughter was so altogether
ideal and black, too, that she was known as Beauty Spot. Beauty Spot led
a sorrowful life, and was fortunately born clothed in black or her
mourning would have been expensive, as she was always in a bereaved
condition, her drowned offspring making a shoal in the Merrimac,
although she had always plenty left. She solaced herself with music. She
would never sit in any one's lap but mine, and in mine only when I sang;
and then only when I sang 'The Last Rose of Summer.' This is really
true. But she would spring into my husband's lap if he whistled. She
would leave her sleep reluctantly, start a little way, and retreat,
start and retreat again, and then give one bound and light on his knee
or his arm and reach up one paw and push it repeatedly across his mouth
like one playing the jew's-harp; I suppose to get at the sound. She
always went to walk with us and followed us wherever we went about the
island.
"Lucifer and Phosphor have been our cats for the last ten years:
Lucifer, entirely black, Phosphor, as yellow as saffron, a real golden
fleece. My sister lived in town and going away for the summer left her
cat in a neighbor's care, and the neighbor moved away meanwhile and left
the cat to shift for herself. She went down to the apothecary's, two
blocks away or more. There she had a family of kittens, but apparently
came up to reconnoitre, for on my sister's return, she appeared with one
kitten and laid it down at Kate's feet; ran off, and in time came with
another which she left also, and so on until she had brought up the
whole household. Lucifer was one of them.
"He was as black as an imp and as mischievous as one. His bounds have
always been tremendous: from the floor to the high mantel, or to the top
of a tall buffet close under the ceiling. And these bounds of his,
together with a way he has of gazing into space with his soulful and
enormous yellow eyes, have led to a thousand tales as to his nightly
journeyings among the stars; hurting his foot slumping through the
nebula in Andromeda; getting his supper at a place in the milky way,
hunting all night with Orion, and having awful fights with Sirius. He
got his throat cut by alighting on the North Pole one night, coming down
from the stars. The reason he slumps through the nebula is on account of
his big feet; he has six toes (like the foot in George Augustus Sala's
drawing) and when he walks on the top of the piazza you would think it
was a burglar.
"Lucifer's Mephistophelian aspect is increased not only by those feet,
but by an arrow-pointed tail. He sucks his tail,--alas, and alas! In
vain have we peppered it, and pepper-sauced it, and dipped it in
Worcestershire sauce and in aloes, and done it up in curl papers, and
glued on it the fingers of old gloves. At last we gave it up in despair,
and I took him and put his tail in his mouth and told him to take his
pleasure,--and that is the reason, I suppose, that he attaches himself
particularly to me. He is very near-sighted with those magnificent orbs,
for he will jump into any one's lap, who wears a black gown, but jump
down instantly, and when he finds my lap curl down for a brief season.
But he is not much of a lap-loving cat. He puts up his nose and smells
my face all over in what he means for a caress, and is off. He is not a
large eater, although he has been known to help himself to a whole steak
at the table, being alone in the dining room; and when poultry are in
the larder he is insistent till satisfied. But he wants his breakfast
early. If the second girl, whose charge he is, does not rise in season,
he mounts two flights of stairs and seats himself on her chest until she
does rise. Then if she does not wait on him at once, he goes into the
drawing-room, and springs to the top of the upright piano, and
deliberately knocks off the bric-a-brac, particularly loving to
encounter and floor a brass dragon candlestick. Then he springs to the
mantel-shelf if he has not been seized and appeased, and repeats
operations, and has even carried his work of destruction around the room
to the top of a low bookcase and has proved himself altogether the wrong
sort of person in a china-shop.
"However, it is conceded in the family that Phosphor is not a cat
merely: he is a person, and Lucifer is a spirit. Lucifer seldom purrs--I
wonder if that is a characteristic of black cats?" [No; my black cats
fairly roar.] "A little thread of sound, and only now and then, when
very happy and loving, a rich, full strain. But Phosphor purrs like a
windmill, like an electric car, like a tea-kettle, like a whole boiled
dinner. When Phosphor came, Lucifer, six weeks her senior (Phosphor's
excellencies always incline one to say 'she' of him), thought the little
live yellow ball was made only for him to play with, and he cuffed and
tossed him around for all he was worth, licked him all over twenty times
a day, and slept with his arms about him. During those early years
Phosphor never washed himself, Lucifer took such care of him, and they
were a lovely sight in each other's arms asleep. But of late years a
coolness has intervened, and now they never speak as they pass by. They
sometimes go fishing together, Lucifer walking off majestically alone,
always dark, mysterious, reticent, intent on his own affairs, making you
feel that he has a sort of lofty contempt for yours. Sometimes, the mice
depositing a dead fish in the crannies of the rocks, Lucifer appears
with it in the twilight, gleaming silver-white in his jaws, and the
great eyes gleaming like fire-balls above it. Phosphor is, however, a
mighty hunter: mice, rats by the score, chipmunks,--all is game that
comes to his net. He has cleaned out whole colonies of catbirds (for
their insolence), and eaten every golden robin on the island.
"It used to be very pretty to see them, when they were little, as El
Mahdi, the peacock, spread his great tail, dart and spring upon it, and
go whirling round with it as El Mahdi, fairly frantic with the little
demons that had hold of him, went skipping and springing round and
round. But although so fierce a fighter, so inhospitable to every other
cat, Phosphor is the most affectionate little soul. He is still very
playful, though so large, and last summer to see him bounding on the
grass, playing with his tail, turning somersaults all by himself, was
quite worth while. When we first happened to go away in his early years
he wouldn't speak to us when we came back, he felt so neglected. I went
away for five months once, before Lucifer was more than a year old. He
got into no one's lap while I was gone, but the moment I sat down on my
return, he jumped into mine, saluted me, and curled himself down for a
nap, showing the plainest recognition. Now when one comes back, Phosphor
is wild with joy--always in a well-bred way. He will get into your arms
and on your shoulder and rub his face around, and before you know it his
little mouth is in the middle of your mouth as much like a kiss as
anything can be. Perhaps it isn't so well bred, but his motions are so
quick and perfect it seems so. When you let him in he curls into heaps
of joy, and fairly stands on his head sometimes. He is the most
responsive creature, always ready for a caress, and his wild, great
amber eyes beam love, if ever love had manifestation. His beauty is
really extraordinary; his tail a real wonder. Lucifer, I grieve to say,
looks very moth-eaten. Phosphor wore a bell for a short time once--a
little Inch-Cape Rock bell--but he left it to toll all winter in a tall
tree near the drawing-room window.
"A charm of cats is that they seem to live in a world of their own, just
as much as if it were a real dimension of space; and speaking of a
fourth dimension, I am living in the expectation that the new
discoveries in the matter of radiant energy will presently be revealing
to all our senses the fact that there is no death.
"We had some barn kittens once that lived in the hen-house, ate with the
hens, and quarrelled with them for any tidbit. They curled up in the egg
boxes and didn't move when the hens came to lay, and evidently had no
idea that they were not hens.
"Oh, there is no end to the cat situation. It began with the old fellow
who put his hand under the cat to lift her up, and she arched her back
higher and higher until he found it was the serpent Asgard, and it won't
end with you and me. I don't know but she _is_ the serpent Asgard.
I don't know if you have hypnotized or magnetized me, but I am writing
as if I had known you intimately all my life, and feel as though I had.
It is the freemasonry of cats. I always said they were possessed of
spirits, and they use white magic to bring their friends together."
Mrs. Spofford's "barn kittens" bring to mind an incident related by Mrs.
Wood, the beautiful wife of Professor C.G. Wood, of the Harvard Medical
School. At their summer place on Buzzard's Bay she has fifteen cats,
mostly Angoras, Persians, and coons, with several dogs. These cats
follow her all about the place in a regular troop, and a very handsome
troop they are, with their waving, plumy tails tipped gracefully over at
the ends as if saluting their superior officer. Among the dogs is a
spaniel named Gyp that is particularly friendly with the cats. There are
plenty of hens on the farm, and one spring a couple of bantams were
added to the stock. The cats immediately took a great fancy to these
diminutive bipeds, and watched them with the greatest interest. Finally
the little hen had a flock of chickens. As the weather was still cold,
the farmer put them upstairs in one of the barns, and every day Gyp
would take seven or eight of those cats up there to see the fluffy
little things. Dog and cats would seat themselves around the bantam and
her brood and watch them by the hour, never offering to touch the
chickens except when the little things were tired and went for a nap
under their mother's wings; and then some cat--first one and then
another--would softly poke its paw under the hen and stir up the family,
making them all run out in consternation, and keeping things lively once
more. The cats didn't dream of catching the chickens, only wanting,
evidently, that they should emulate Joey and keep moving on.
A writer in the _London Spectator_ tells of a favorite bantam hen
with which the house cat has long been accustomed to play. This bantam
has increased and multiplied, and keeps her family in a "coop" on the
ground,--into which rats easily enter. At bedtime, however, pussy takes
up her residence there, and bantam, the brood of chickens, and pussy
sleep in happy harmony nightly. If any rats arrive, their experience
must be sad and sharp. Another writer in the same number tells of a cat
in Huddersfield, England, belonging to Canon Beardsley, who helps
himself to a reel of cotton from the work-basket, takes it on the floor,
and plays with it as long as he likes, and then jumps up and puts the
reel back in its place again; just as our Bobinette used to get his
tape-measure, although the latter never was known to put it away.
Miss Sarah Orne Jewett is a cat-lover, too, and the dear old
countrywomen "down in Maine," with whom one gets acquainted through her
books, usually keep a cat also. Says she:--
"I look back over so long a line of family cats, from a certain poor
Spotty who died an awful death in a fit on the flagstones under the
library window when I was less than five years old, to a lawless,
fluffy, yellow and white coon cat now in my possession, that I find it
hard to single out the most interesting pussy of all. I shall have to
speak of two cats at least, one being the enemy and the other the friend
of my dog Joe. Joe and I grew up together and were fond companions,
until he died of far too early old age and left me to take my country
walks alone.
"Polly, the enemy, was the best mouser of all: quite the best business
cat we ever had, with an astonishing intellect and a shrewd way of
gaining her ends. She caught birds and mice as if she foraged for our
whole family: she had an air of responsibility and a certain impatience
of interruption and interference such as I have never seen in any other
cat, and a scornful way of sitting before a person with fierce eyes and
a quick, ominous twitching of her tail. She seemed to be measuring one's
incompetence as a mouse-catcher in these moments, or to be saying to
herself, 'What a clumsy, stupid person; how little she knows, and how I
should like to scratch her and hear her squeak.' I sometimes felt as if
I were a larger sort of helpless mouse in these moments, but sometimes
Polly would be more friendly, and even jump into our laps, when it was a
pleasure to pat her hard little head with its exquisitely soft, dark
tortoise-shell fur. No matter if she almost always turned and caught the
caressing hand with teeth and claws, when she was tired of its touch,
you would always be ready to pat her next time; there was such a
fascination about her that any attention on her part gave a thrill of
pride and pleasure. Every guest and stranger admired her and tried to
win her favor: while we of the household hid our wounds and delighted in
her cleverness and beauty.
"Polly was but a small cat to have a mind. She looked quite round and
kittenish as she sat before the fire in a rare moment of leisure, with
her black paws tucked under her white breast and her sleek back looking
as if it caught flickers of firelight in some yellow streaks among the
shiny black fur. But when she walked abroad she stretched out long and
thin like a little tiger, and held her head high to look over the grass
as if she were threading the jungle. She lashed her tail to and fro, and
one turned out of her way instantly. You opened a door for her if she
crossed the room and gave you a look. She made you know what she meant
as if she had the gift of speech: at most inconvenient moments you would
go out through the house to find her a bit of fish or to open the cellar
door. You recognized her right to appear at night on your bed with one
of her long-suffering kittens, which she had brought in the rain, out of
a cellar window and up a lofty ladder, over the wet, steep roofs and
down through a scuttle into the garret, and still down into warm
shelter. Here she would leave it and with one or two loud, admonishing
purrs would scurry away upon some errand that must have been like one of
the border frays of old.
"She used to treat Joe, the dog, with sad cruelty, giving him a sharp
blow on his honest nose that made him meekly stand back and see her add
his supper to her own. A child visitor once rightly complained that
Polly had pins in her toes, and nobody knew this better than poor Joe.
At last, in despair, he sought revenge. I was writing at my desk one
day, when he suddenly appeared, grinning in a funny way he had, and
wagging his tail, until he enticed me out to the kitchen. There I found
Polly, who had an air of calling everything in the house her own. She
was on the cook's table, gobbling away at some chickens which were being
made ready for the oven and had been left unguarded. I caught her and
cuffed her, and she fled through the garden door, for once tamed and
vanquished, though usually she was so quick that nobody could administer
justice upon these depredations of a well-fed cat. Then I turned and saw
poor old Joe dancing about the kitchen in perfect delight. He had been
afraid to touch Polly himself, but he knew the difference between right
and wrong, and had called me to see what a wicked cat she was, and to
give him the joy of looking on at the flogging.
"It was the same dog who used sometimes to be found under a table where
his master had sent him for punishment in his young days of lawless
puppy-hood for chasing the neighbor's chickens. These faults had long
been overcome, but sometimes, in later years, Joe's conscience would
trouble him, we never knew why, and he would go under the table of his
own accord, and look repentant and crestfallen until some forgiving and
sympathetic friend would think he had suffered enough and bid him come
out to be patted and consoled.
"After such a house-mate as Polly, Joe had great amends in our next cat,
yellow Danny, the most amiable and friendly pussy that ever walked on
four paws. He took Danny to his heart at once: they used to lie in the
sun together with Danny's head on the dog's big paws, and I sometimes
used to meet them walking as coy as lovers, side by side, up one of the
garden walks. When I could not help laughing at their sentimental and
conscious air, they would turn aside into the bushes for shelter. They
respected each other's suppers, and ate together on the kitchen hearth,
and took great comfort in close companionship. Danny always answered if
you spoke to him, but he made no sound while always opening his mouth
wide to mew whenever he had anything to say, and looking up into your
face with all his heart expressed. These affectations of speech were
most amusing, especially in so large a person as yellow Danny. He was
much beloved by me and by all his family, especially poor Joe, who must
sometimes have had the worst of dreams about old Polly, and her sharp,
unsparing claws."
Miss Mary E. Wilkins is also a great admirer of cats. "I adore cats,"
she says. "I don't love them as well as dogs, because my own nature is
more after the lines of a dog's; but I adore them. No matter how tired
or wretched I am, a pussy-cat sitting in a doorway can divert my mind.
Cats love one so much: more than they will allow; but they have so much
wisdom they keep it to themselves."
Miss Wilkins's "Augustus" was moved with her from Brattleboro, Vt.,
after her father's death and when she went to Randolph, Mass., to live.
He had been the pet of the family for a long time, but he came to an
untimely end.
"I hope," says Miss Wilkins, "people's unintentional cruelty will not be
remembered against them." Since living in Randolph she has had two
lovely yellow and white cats, "Punch and Judy." The latter was shot by a
neighbor, but Punch, the right-hand cat with the angelic expression,
still survives.
"I am quite sure," says his mistress, "he loves me better than anybody
else, although he is so very close about it. Punch Wilkins has one
accomplishment. He can open a door with an old-fashioned latch: but he
cannot shut it."
Louise Imogen Guiney is famous for her love and good comradeship with
dogs, especially her setters and St. Bernards, but she is too thoroughly
a poet not to be captivated by the grace and beauty of a cat.
"I love the unsubmissive race," she says, "and have had much edification
out of the charming friendships between our St. Bernards and our cats.
Annie Clarke [the actress] once gave me two exquisite Angoras, little
persons of character equal to their looks; but they died young and we
have not since had the heart to replace them. I once had another coon, a
small, spry, gray fellow named Scot, the tamest and most endearing of
pets, always on your shoulder and a' that, who suddenly, on no
provocation whatever, turned wild, lived for a year or more in the woods
next our garden, hunting and fishing, although ceaselessly chased, and
called, and implored to revisit his afflicted family. He associated
sometimes with the neighbor's cat, but never, never more with humanity,
until finally we found his pathetic little frozen body one Christmas
near the barn. Do you remember Arnold's Scholar Gypsy? Our Scot was his
feline equivalent.... Have you counted in Prosper Merimée among the
confirmed lovers of cats? I remember a delightful little paragraph out
of one of his letters about _un vieux chat noir, parfaitement laid,
mais plein d'ésprit et de discrétion. Seulement il n'a eu que des gens
vulgaires et manque d'usage._"
Mrs. A.D.T. Whitney, who has written so many helpful stories for girls,
is another lover of cats. Cats do not lie curled up on cushions
everywhere in her books, as they do in Mrs. Spofford's. But in "Zerub
Throop's Experiment" there is an amusing cat story, which, she declares,
got so much mixed up with a ghost story that nobody ever knew which was
which. And the incident is true in every particular, except the finding
of a will or codicil, or something at the end, which is attached for
purposes of fiction.
A great deal has been written about the New York _Sun's_ famous
cats. At my request, Mr. Dana furnished the following description of the
interesting _Sun_ family. I can only vouch for its veracity by
quoting the famous phrase, "If you see it in the _Sun_, it is so."
"_Sun_ office cat (_Felis Domestica; var. Journalistica_).
This is a variation of the common domestic cat, of which but one family
is known to science. The habitat of the species is in Newspaper Row; its
lair is in the _Sun_ building, its habits are nocturnal, and it
feeds on discarded copy and anything else of a pseudo-literary nature
upon which it can pounce. In dull times it can subsist upon a meagre
diet of telegraphic brevities, police court paragraphs, and city
jottings; but when the universe is agog with news, it will exhibit the
insatiable appetite which is its chief distinguishing mark of difference
from the common _felis domestica_. A single member of this family
has been known, on a 'rush' night, to devour three and a half columns of
presidential possibilities, seven columns of general politics, pretty
much all but the head of a large and able-bodied railroad accident, and
a full page of miscellaneous news, and then claw the nether garments of
the managing editor, and call attention to an appetite still in good
working order.
"The progenitrix of the family arrived in the _Sun_ office many
years ago, and installed herself in a comfortable corner, and within a
few short months she had noticeably raised the literary tone of the
paper, as well as a large and vociferous family of kittens. These
kittens were weaned on reports from country correspondents, and the
sight of the six children and the mother cat sitting in a semicircle was
one which attracted visitors from all parts of the nation. Just before
her death--immediately before, in fact--the mother cat developed a
literary taste of her own and drank the contents of an ink-bottle. She
was buried with literary honors, and one of her progeny was advanced to
the duties and honors of office cat. From this time the line came down,
each cat taking the 'laurel greener from the brows of him that uttered
nothing base,' upon the death of his predecessor. There is but one blot
upon the escutcheon of the family, put there by a recent incumbent who
developed a mania at once cannibalistic and infanticidal, and set about
making a free lunch of her offspring, in direct violation of the Raines
law and the maternal instinct. She died of an overdose of chloroform,
and her place was taken by one of the rescued kittens.
"It is the son of this kitten who is the present proud incumbent of the
office. Grown to cat-hood, he is a creditable specimen of his family,
with beryl eyes, beautiful striped fur, showing fine mottlings of
mucilage and ink, a graceful and aspiring tail, an appetite for copy
unsurpassed in the annals of his race, and a power and perseverance in
vocality, chiefly exercised in the small hours of the morning, that,
together with the appetite referred to, have earned for him the name of
the Mutilator. The picture herewith given was taken when the animal was
a year and a half old. Up to the age of one year the Mutilator made its
lair in the inside office with the Snake Editor, until a tragic ending
came to their friendship. During a fortnight's absence of the office cat
upon important business, the Snake Editor cultivated the friendship of
three cockroaches, whom he debauched by teaching them to drink beer
spilled upon his desk for that purpose. On the night of the cat's
return, the three bugs had become disgracefully intoxicated, and were
reeling around the desk beating time with their legs to a rollicking
catch sung by the Snake Editor. Before the muddled insects could crawl
into a crack, the Mutilator was upon them, and had bolted every one.
Then with a look of reproach at the Snake Editor, he drew three
perpendicular red lines across that gentleman's features with his claws
and departed in high scorn, nor could he ever thereafter be lured into
the inner office where the serpent-sharp was laying for him with a space
measure. Since that time he has lived in the room occupied by the
reporters and news editors.
"Many hundreds of stories, some of them slanderous have been told about
the various _Sun_ office cats, but we have admitted here none of
these false tales. The short sketch given here is beyond suspicion in
all its details, as can be vouched for by many men of high position who
ought to know better."