[Illustration]
Very much do I love cats; and I suppose that I could write a large
book about the different cats which I have kept, in various climes and
times, on both sides of the world. But this is not a Book of Cats; and
I am writing about Tama for merely psychological reasons. She has been
uttering, in her sleep beside my chair, a peculiar cry that touched
me in a particular way. It is the cry that a cat makes only for her
kittens,--a soft trilling coo,--a pure caress of tone. And I perceive
that her attitude, as she lies there on her side, is the attitude of
a cat holding something,--something freshly caught: the forepaws are
stretched out as to grasp, and the pearly talons are playing.
*
We call her Tama ("Jewel")--not because of her beauty, though she is
beautiful, but because Tama is a female name accorded by custom to
pet cats. She was a very small tortoise-shell kitten when she was
first brought to me as a gift worth accepting,--a cat-of-three-colours
(miké-neko) being somewhat uncommon in Japan. In certain parts of the
country such a cat is believed to be a luck-bringer, and gifted with
power to frighten away goblins as well as rats. Tama is now two years
old. I think that she has foreign blood in her veins: she is more
graceful and more slender than the ordinary Japanese cat; and she has a
remarkably long tail, which, from a Japanese point of view, is her only
defect. Perhaps one of her ancestors came to Japan in some Dutch or
Spanish ship during the time of Iyéyasu. But, from whatever ancestors
descended, Tama is quite a Japanese cat in her habits;--for example,
she eats rice!
*
The first time that she had kittens, she proved herself an excellent
mother,--devoting all her strength and intelligence to the care of her
little ones, until, by dint of nursing them and moiling for them, she
became piteously and ludicrously thin. She taught them how to keep
clean,--how to play and jump and wrestle,--how to hunt. At first, of
course, she gave them only her long tail to play with; but later she
found them other toys. She brought them not only rats and mice, but
also frogs, lizards, a bat, and one day a small lamprey, which she must
have managed to catch in a neighbouring rice-field. After dark I used
to leave open for her a small window at the head of the stairs leading
to my study,--in order that she might go out to hunt by way of the
kitchen roof. And one night she brought in, through that window, a big
straw sandal for her kittens to play with. She found it in the field;
and she must have carried it over a wooden fence ten feet high, up the
house wall to the roof of the kitchen, and thence through the bars of
the little window to the stairway. There she and her kittens played
boisterously with it till morning; and they dirtied the stairway,
for that sandal was muddy. Never was cat more fortunate in her first
maternal experience than Tama.
But the next time she was not fortunate. She had got into the habit of
visiting friends in another street, at a perilous distance; and one
evening, while on her way thither, she was hurt by some brutal person.
She came back to us stupid and sick; and her kittens were born dead. I
thought that she would die also; but she recovered much more quickly
than anybody could have imagined possible,--though she still remains,
for obvious reasons, troubled in spirit by the loss of the kittens.
*
The memory of animals, in regard to certain forms of relative
experience, is strangely weak and dim. But the organic memory of
the animal,--the memory of experience accumulated through countless
billions of lives,--is superhumanly vivid, and very seldom at fault....
Think of the astonishing skill with which a cat can restore the
respiration of her drowned kitten! Think of her untaught ability to
face a dangerous enemy seen for the first time,--a venomous serpent,
for example! Think of her wide acquaintance with small creatures
and their ways,--her medical knowledge of herbs,--her capacities of
strategy, whether for hunting or fighting! What she knows is really
considerable; and she knows it all perfectly, or almost perfectly. But
it is the knowledge of other existences. Her memory, as to the pains of
the present life, is mercifully brief.
*
Tama could not clearly remember that her kittens were dead. She knew
that she ought to have had kittens; and she looked everywhere and
called everywhere for them, long after they had been buried in the
garden. She complained a great deal to her friends; and she made me
open all the cupboards and closets,--over and over again,--to prove to
her that the kittens were not in the house. At last she was able to
convince herself that it was useless to look for them any more. But she
plays with them in dreams, and coos to them, and catches for them small
shadowy things,--perhaps even brings to them, through some dim window
of memory, a sandal of ghostly straw....