a special education, I may here enumerate just a few of the many simple
performances, which, with firmness, gentleness, and patience, you may
easily teach any cat of ordinary brain calibre. A cat may be taught to
beg like a dog; to embrace you; to pat your nose or your neighbour's
nose when told--(N.B. It's just as well it should _always_ be your
neighbour's nose)--to down charge; to watch by a mouse's hole; to stand
in a corner on her hind legs; to move rhythmically to music; to mew when
told; to shut her eyes when told; to leap six or eight feet through a
hoop or over your head; to feign sleep; to feign death; to open or shut
a door; to ring the bell; to fish; to swim, and retrieve either in the
water or on the land.
I have a cat who, if I hold her up in front of the map of London, will
place her paw upon any principal building I like to name. The cat has
been used to be carried round the room to catch flies on the wall. The
principal buildings in the map are marked with square black spots, which
she naturally mistakes for flies, so you have only to hold her in front
of the map nearest to the spot you want her to touch, and slightly
elevate your voice when you name the place, and the thing is done.
CHAPTER TWELVE.
AGREMENS OF CAT LIFE.
Before we can thoroughly understand the ways and habits of any animal,
we must try, in a manner, to put ourselves in that animal's place, and
thus be able to study life from its point of view.
I don't believe that God made any creature to be otherwise than happy,
and He has endowed each member of His creation with just that amount of
reason and instinct which shall enable it to find its food and a place
to rest in, make love in its own way, marry after its own fashion--by
civil contract--bring up its young, and, in a word, be generally jolly.
I found a poor bee this morning getting drowned in the water-butt.
"Yes," I said, "I'll save your life, but I will give you as a treat to
my pet spider." Man has the proposing, but not the disposing. I laid
my bee for one moment on the edge of the butt to dry, when whirr! away
he darted through the bright morning sunshine, and my spider had to be
content with a bluebottle for breakfast. This spider, I may tell you,
is a very large and beautiful specimen, striped and marked like a silver
tabby. He lives in an outhouse, and has a web, the network of which is
a yard in diameter, with goodness knows how many feet of tack, and
sheet, and stay, and guy. And a very amusing rascal he is, and not a
bit afraid of me. Nearly every day, I give him a bee with the sting
out. (It is in the kaleidoscope of events; that some day I may leave
the sting in, just to see how he feels it.) I place the bee in the web,
and it is amusing to see how quickly my friend shins up the rigging--he
catches the bee by the shoulders, and makes him spin for a few seconds
like a top, till he is completely enveloped in a gauzy shroud, and there
is a big hole in the web. I tell my spider he shouldn't make a hole in
the web. "Never mind that," he replies, "soon make that all right," and
sure enough next morning the web is nicely repaired, and the bee nearly
eaten. I don't think he eats all the bee himself. I am convinced that
he has a little wife who lives somewhere in a corner, and that every day
he is careful to send her a leg, or a wing, or a bit of the breast.
Well, he is happy, I know. Hadn't he a nice private house, without rent
or taxes, maybe a wife, and a thriving business, to say nothing at all
about the bee. I have studied cats as I have studied that spider. I
have imagined myself that spider. I have been, or imagined myself to
be, a cat--a Tom, you know, and I can fully understand a pussy's life
and a pussy's joys and sorrows.
"How different," I thought, as I mused one morning under a tree, "is the
life of a cat from that of a dog. I'm the parson's cat to be sure, but
then I'm my own master. Now, there is the parson's Saint Bernard dog,
Dumpling for instance,--an honest, contented fellow enough, but, bless
you, he isn't free. _I_ am. Dumpling can't do as he pleases. I can.
I can go to bed when I like, rise when I like, and eat and drink, when,
where, or what I choose. Dumpling _can't_. Really I feel I can forgive
Dumpling for chasing me into the apple-tree last Sunday when I think of
the dull life the dog leads, and how few are his joys compared to mine.
Poor Dumpling needs servants to wait upon him, and he can't even walk a
couple of miles, and make sure of his way home, or sure of not getting
into a row, or not getting stolen, or something else equally ridiculous.
The other day Dumpling actually sat on the door-step for two hours in
the rain, till his great shaggy coat was wet through and through,
because, forsooth, he didn't know how to get the door opened. Would I
have done that? No. I should have walked up politely to the first
kind-faced passenger, and asked that passenger to `be good enough to
ring this bell for me, please, 'cause I ain't big enough,' and the thing
would have been done. Could Dumpling unlatch a door or catch a mouse?
Could he climb a tree and rob a sparrow's nest? or could he find his way
home over the tiles on a dark night? I would laugh to see him try.
"Now here am I on this bright, beautiful summer morning, as fresh as a
daisy, as happy as a king. Catch me sleeping in the house on a summer's
night!
"How sweetly the birds are singing, but how much more sweetly they will
taste! What a glorious day I had of it yesterday all through! Put in
an appearance at the parson's breakfast-table, just for fashion's sake,
and pretended to drink the milk my kind mistress placed before me.
Fairly won the old lady's heart by rubbing my head affectionately
against the canary's cage. `Dear Tom,' said she, `_you_ would never
touch the pretty bird?' Oh! wouldn't I, though?
"What a nasty old man that Farmer Trump is! I'm sure, if it wasn't that
I have a taste for pigeons, and am a little bit of a Columbarian, I
would never have thought of looking at his lot, anyhow. Besides, I had
only eaten two when in came _he_, and out went _I_. Well, if he didn't
take his gun and fire after me. Well, if he hadn't done anything of the
sort, he wouldn't have shot his bantam cock.
"I didn't go into that milk cellar of my own free will. It was purely
accidental. I was chased by a dog, but being in, how could I, being
only a thirsty cat, and amid such profusion, help helping myself to a
drop of cream? And if the clumsy old dairymaid hadn't thrown her shoe
at me, she wouldn't have broken the milk-house window. It was no
business of mine. I met Master Black-and-tan outside, and warmed him.
I gave _him_ sore eyes. That old shoe brought luck with it, however,
for about an hour after I found myself in a large and beautiful garden,
filled with beds of the rarest flowers. It isn't always you get a bed
made for you, thinks I; so I scraped about me a bit, and went off to
sleep in the sun. Where did that half-brick come from? I wonder. I'm
somehow of opinion that it was meant for me. However, if people will
use profane language, and heave bricks at the heads of unoffending cats,
they mustn't be astonished if they do smash the cucumber frame.
"I find it so much better to live in the free forest, because, if I live
in the house, a day never passes that I do not get into a row, and I
always get the worst of it. Only yesterday I looked in for a few
minutes at tea-time, and there was Dumpling standing, with a yard of
tongue hanging from one side of his mouth; and Master must pat him, and
call him a fine fellow; then I jumped on the sofa-stool, and smacked him
in the face, and Dumpling knocked down the stool to get at me, besides a
cup and saucer, with his wisp of a tail, and I bolted through a pane of
glass, and got blamed for that. Day before, a mouse was pleased to get
behind a china vase, and I had to break the vase to get at it--I got
blamed for that. Same day I ran away with a mackerel. That mackerel
seemed positively to say, `Oh, pussy, do run away with me, and eat me in
some nice, quiet corner.' And I did; and, would you believe it, I was
even blamed for that!
"I'm going to see Zelina to-night. Zelina is a beautiful black Persian
angel, with hazel eyes and flowing fur, and a voice that would lure the
larks from the sky. Zelina belongs to the barber, and I met her by
appointment in the back garden, and found her very thick with three
other fellows. That's the worst of Zelina. But I fellowed them! For
five minutes you wouldn't have seen either of us for fluff, and at the
end of that time little remained of the other cats save the teeth.
Meanwhile Zelina looked calmly on. Then I wooed Zelina beneath the
moon, and thrashed her, and beat her, and bit her, till at last she
consented to fly with me to a foreign shore; but we made such a row that
we awoke the brute of a barber, and he threw a basin of dirty water
right over us, and there was no more foreign shore thought of. But I'll
see her to-night, sweet Zelina!"
I'll conclude this paper with a rather curious anecdote, told me by
Captain A. Brown, late of Arbroath, now of Chatham, Canada. "We have a
cat," says Captain Brown, "who brought up a kitten in a loft above the
woodshed, until it was old enough to wean; she then brought it down to
run about, but the dog (a puppy) would on every opportunity take the
kitten in its mouth and drag it about. This the cat didn't seem to
like, so one day she took it in her mouth, and carried it along, on the
top of the fence, to the nearest farm, a quarter of a mile off, where
the _kitten's father lived_. She placed the kitten at the male parent's
feet, gave it suck once more, then started off home along the fence, and
never went near it again."
This anecdote, for the truth of which the captain vouches, clearly
proves that pussy has a much larger amount of reasoning power than most
people give her credit for. It was just as though pussy had addressed
the male cat thus:
"I've brought you your youngster, Thomas. It cannot live at home for
the mischievous puppy. Goodness knows I've done _my_ duty to him as a
mother; now, hub, you have a turn. Time about's fair-play, Thomas;
good-bye."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
SAGACITY OF THE CAT.
"The dignity of life is not impaired
By aught which innocently satisfies
The humbler cravings of the heart; and he
Is still a happier man, who, for the heights
Of speculation not unfit, descends,
And such benign affections cultivates,
Among the inferior kinds."
Wordsworth.
I think many of the miseries which the "harmless necessary cat" has to
endure in this wicked world of hers and ours would be mitigated if not
entirely removed, were we only to take the trouble to study and consider
what a wonderfully reasoning and sensible little thing she is. "Leave
the study to old maids," I think I hear some manly (?) reader exclaim.
But why to old maids? It is you who are unkind to pussy, and regardless
of her comforts, and not old maids. And indeed, indeed now, I never for
the life of me could see why any stigma should attach itself to an old
maid any more than to a cat. Most of the old maids I have known were
very agreeable persons indeed, and I've spent many a quiet and enjoyable
hour with old maids over a cup of homely tea. My two maternal aunts are
old maids, they even plead guilty to the soft impeachment, but cheerier
bodies you wouldn't meet anywhere. They go three times to the kirk on a
Sunday, to be sure, and wouldn't cook a meal on that sacred day for a
world. But just see them on a week-day, look at their bright smiling
faces--what odds if they do try to appear a few years younger?--and ah!
just see them go through the intricate figures of the mazy Reel o'
Tulloch, and hear them crack their thumbs, and cry "hooch!" you wouldn't
say old-maidendom was so very dreary after that. It isn't always a
woman's fault if she can't get married: many, whose early affections
have been blighted, would not marry if they could, for haven't they got
a posy somewhere, a locket with a face, a lock of hair, and a faded
ribbon which erst was bonny blue--relics of lost love, around which
cling sweetest memories of the past? Besides, have not unmarried ladies
more opportunities to taste the sweets of doing good, and, better still,
more time to cherish hopes of happiness hereafter, which are worth a
world of wedded bliss?
Cats then, like old maids, are fifty times worse than they are painted,
and the reason why people don't like them is because they don't
understand them. I have at this moment a large and beautiful tabby, and
I positively rejoice that that cat is so fierce to everyone but me,
because before I got her she was subjected to the most barbarous
treatment, neither fed, nor housed, nor watered, and I believe I was the
first person from whom she ever got a word of kindness. No wonder that
at first she did not understand my meaning. But she does now, though
she never will be tame; but if I am asleep she mounts guard on the table
near me, and her purring chant is speedily turned into a low, ominous
growl if any one but touches the handle of the door. Does she know that
I am asleep, and that one in sleep is helpless as regards defence? I'm
sure she does, for--
_Cats know the nature of sleep in others_.--A friend of mine has a
pussy, Kate to name, who has been early trained to habits of
cleanliness. When Kate wishes to get out at night she goes to her
master's bedside, and mews loudly and entreatingly. To see how she will
behave, sometimes her master pretends to be fast asleep, and snores
loudly. "Oh!" thinks puss to herself, "this will never do;" so she
invariably stands upon her hind legs, and pats his face with her gloved
hand. When he gets up, she trots pleasantly before him towards a little
window, which he opens for her, and admits her into the garden. The
same cat for many years used to seat herself regularly every night on a
chest of drawers, waiting patiently till the door of the adjoining
cupboard was thrown open for her: this cupboard was a very prolific
hunting-ground of pussy's. When she had kittens, and they were able to
eat, she used to bring all the mice to them, and present them with that
fond "murring" mew which all cat lovers know so well.
Everybody knows that cats can open doors if left off the latch, and also
that they soon get up to the mechanism of the old-fashioned
hand-and-thumb latch; they open this by springing up, and holding on to
the hand portion with one arm, while they press down the thumb portion
with the other foot.
A lady friend of mine has a large Tabby Tom who can open a room door, by
standing on his hind legs and turning the knob with his teeth. This is
clever, but cats even know how to _fasten_ doors, at least some do; and
this same _lady was once in_ a cupboard, when one of her pussies came
and turned on the button latch of the door, and made her a prisoner for
some considerable time!
In a small village which I know, there is an old woman who lives by
keeping lodgers of the more humble description. As these have often to
get up and be off early in the morning, the woman always gives them
strict injunctions to shut the door when they go out, for fear of
thieves. One morning a lodger had forgotten to obey his landlady's
instructions. Pussy, however, had witnessed the infraction of the rule,
and walked directly to her mistress's bedside, and began to mew most
plaintively. Nor would she be content till the woman got up, when the
cat led her directly to the door. Pussy wouldn't go out, but so soon as
the door was shut, led the way again back to bed, _singing_. Old
women's cats are nearly always wiser than others--they get more care
taken with their training, and more comfort and love. They know all the
ways, likes, and dislikes of a beloved mistress, and study them just as
they do their own. Indeed, some of the things I have known old women's
cats do are unaccountable in any other way, but the belief that they are
possessed of a very high amount of intelligence and reasoning power. No
wonder our ignorant ancestors believed them possessed of devils.
You see it is just like this--when you once get a cat to love you, you,
and you only, will become the study of her whole life. She soon finds
out what pleases you, and what vexes you, and also what you love, and,
whether that be dog or child, she will love it too, to please you.
Cats will often, very often--just like dogs--lead those they love to
places where something or some creature is in danger. It may be, as
happened to myself once, while residing in Lincoln, two summers ago,
when a cat came towards me out of an entry, and, as plain as any animal
could speak, gazed up into my face, and cried: "Come, oh come and help
me?" I followed, and she led me down the garden to a closet, through
which her kitten had dropped into the cesspool below. Now just think
for one moment of the amount of sagacity shown in this case! Piteously
the little kit had mewed to her mother: "Mother, mother, come and help
me?" Pussy's answer had been: "My dear, I can't, but I'll soon find
those who will." And that was precisely my answer to the mother cat,
when I saw the state of affairs, and I kept my word.
And once again a pussy--this time my own--led me a long way from my work
to a distant outhouse to see her kits. After she got me to the spot
where they were, she rolled on her back and held them up one by one to
be admired.
I knew the case of a cat bringing her mistress hastily to a room where
her sick child lay. The child had rolled on to the floor, and would
have been smothered, except for pussy's timely aid.
Some will hardly credit this, because they do not see the working of the
internal machine--pussy's mind--nor know the motive power--love, love,
love. _Amor vincit omnia_.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
CATS FEEDING THE SICK.
"Ma conscience! mither, it kens its name?" Such was the exclamation of
a little ragged and kilted urchin, in the remote Highlands of
Argyllshire, as he heard me call my dog to give him a drink. The day
was exceedingly warm, and we had had a long walk over the mountain, and
had been kindly invited into a shepherd's hut, and asked to partake of a
draught of cool, sweet whey--the very best of summer beverages. Nero
was having a "talkee-talkee" with some rabbits, and didn't see his whey
until I called his attention to it; hence the wondering urchin's
exclamation.
"Hoo shouldna he?" said the mother; "poor wise-lookin' beast. Ise
warrant he kens mair than that."
The idea of even a child thinking it strange Theodore Nero [the
Newfoundland champion] should know his name was so amusing that I gave
the boy "twa bawbees" on the spot.
And just on a par with this boy's ignorance, is the unbelieving
ignorance of some people who doubt everything they cannot understand,
however well authenticated. This doubting implies an assumption on
their part that the knowledge they possess is the highest attainable,
that their minds are, in fact, complete in themselves. It is people of
this class--fools--who doubt the existence of even a Supreme Being. I
read in a late number of the _Live Stock Journal_ an account of a cat,
which, seeing its master sick in bed, and unable to move, brought a
mouse to him, and on her master pretending to eat it, the same day
brought him a striped squirrel; and every day, until he got well,
brought "game" of some sort and laid them on his bed.
I believe I, myself, was the first who ever _dared_ to publish a case of
the same kind. The story was this: A poor ploughman, who lived in a
little hut at the foot of the Moffat Hills, in Scotland, fell sick of a
long, lingering illness--and when the poor are ill they are poorer
still; it is then the shoe pinches. This poor man had nothing in the
house but meal and milk. The doctor said he must have wine. His wife
pledged her marriage-gown to get it. The doctor said he must have meat.
That was beyond their power to procure. But a merciful Providence had
willed the man should live; and one day the little tortoiseshell cat,
which was a great favourite with the poor ploughman, and had been very
dull and wretched since his illness, brought in a rabbit--a thing, mind
you, she had never done before--and placed it on the bed. She appeared
to brighten up as she saw it skinned and cooked by the ploughman's wife,
and partaken of by her sick master. And next day she brought another,
and so on, almost every day, a rabbit or a bird, until her master was
well, after _which she brought no more_. I took very considerable pains
to test the truth of this story, and went to some expense about it as
well, and found it in every whit true as first related to me. [See
"Cats," by same Author. Dean and Sons, Publishers, 160a, Fleet Street.]
Since then I have had one or two cases precisely similar to the above,
in which cats brought their "game-bag" to the bed of a sick master or
mistress.
It is indisputable, then, that such things have been done over and over
again. And now the question comes to be, how are we to account for it?
In ancient times, these poor, affectionate pussies would doubtless have
been condemned to death as being witches in feline form.
In our own day such cases are usually put down to a special
interposition of Providence. Now, without doubting for a moment that
there is a Divinity which shapes the end, we must remember that that
Divinity works more by simple laws than miraculous means, and
consequently endeavour to account for the occurrences in a natural way.
Cats, we know, after they have weaned their kittens, are in the habit of
bringing them mice, etc, by way of food. This we do not think at all
strange, and we put it down to that much-abused term--instinct. But the
following anecdote shows, I think, something higher than mere instinct,
and will help us to understand why the cat will bring food to a sick
master or mistress.
A certain cat had kittens. They were all drowned except one, which, of
course, became a great pet with pussy, who, after putting it through a
course of milk, put it through a course of mice, according to the custom
of country cats. The kitten grew up into a fine large Tom, and was big
enough to thrash his mother, which I'm sorry to say the unfilial rascal
sometimes did. But a day came when he had need of that mother's love.
Tom had his leg torn off in a trap, and was confined to his pallet of
straw for several weeks, and never, one single day of his illness, did
his mother miss bringing her wounded son either birds or mice, until he
was able to run once more, though on three legs, to go and hunt them for
himself. This cat is living still, I believe. It is quite evident that
a cat's affection for, and attachment to, a beloved master, are quite
equal to their love for a grown-up son, and the same feelings which
prompt her to minister to the latter when ill, and unable to move, would
cause her to attend on the other.
Cats easily know when any one they love is sick or ailing. I returned
home a few years ago, after an absence of some six months, very bad
indeed. I thought I was a "gone coon," as the Yanks say, and didn't
feel to have any more flesh on my ribs than there is on those telegraph
wires. Well, my pet cat was rejoiced to see me, and hardly ever left my
room. She would never leave me, it is true, but still there was
something very strange in her behaviour. For she must have seen
something strange in my appearance. Whether she took me for an impostor
or not, I cannot say, but she always sat facing me whenever I was
seated, seldom taking her eyes off my face, and her brows were lowered
as if she were angry with me about something. What were pussy's
thoughts? I asked this question one day of my father's housekeeper.
"The cat kens ye'er no lang for this warld," said Eppie; "gin I were
you, I'd just mak' my callin' and election sure." Calling and election!
How I hated the old rook! Cats have an idea that when any one is
ailing, it _must_ be for want of food. Poor things! How often they
suffer hunger and privations themselves, goodness only can tell! This
idea is not confined to cats alone. Dogs, at least, I know possess the
same notion. I could give many anecdotes to prove this, but as this
book is presumably on cats, I must only give one.