Chapter Eighteen.Hints upon Breeding and Rearing Cats for Exhibition, and a Word about Cat-Shows.At nearly all the cat-shows which I have visited of late, I have been invariably impressed with this one idea: here, in these shows, we see pussy as she is in the present day—the live mouse-trap, the barn cat, at best the fireside favourite—but, at all events, the animal, of all our domestic animals, that is least cared for, and the only animal we possess, whose improvement in condition and species we have never cared to study. What this animal—the domestic cat—can become, the perfection to which she may attain through judicious selection and careful breeding, it is for future years to show.Other nations—such as the Persians and different other Asiatics—know far more about the domestic cat than we do, and quite put us to the blush with their splendidly-bred and high-blooded animals.It is one of the many popular fallacies current in this enlightened land of ours, that there is in the cat a certain number of bad qualities—a certain spice of the devil, so to speak—that never can be bred out. This is simply absurd, for there is no animal that lives and breathes on God’s fair earth but is susceptible of improvement, both physically and morally; for, remember, a cat, little as you may think of her, has a mindand a soul, as well as you have. She has thought, and memory, and reasoning powers; she can love and she can fear, can be happy and gay, or sad and sorrowful, and she knows something too of the mystery of death.With all these qualities will you tell me that she cannot be improved? I say she can; even as to race; for what can be accomplished with individual cats, may be accomplished with the whole race. I can introduce you to dozens of cat-fanciers in this country, who have made the peculiarities of pussy’s nature their study, and who find that they can, at will, not only improve the physical condition of their cats; but even, by careful training, occasional gentle correction, kindness, and good-feeding, raise them from good to better, and wean them from the ways which are so objectionable in other, or merely half-domesticated cats. And, look you, the progeny of such animals—by a law well-known to all breeders—take after them, or inherit the good qualities of their parents. Hence, I repeat, if you can improve the individual cat, through time you may improve thegenus. That time may be long in coming—granted; but that the lovers of cats, in this country, have boldly seized the bull by the horns, and are taking a step in the right direction, is a positive fact which admits of no denial.Now, to those who are fond of cats, and would fain improve the particular breed they have a fancy for, and probably win prizes at our great shows, I beg to offer the following hints:—First. Having made up your mind as to what particular breed you mean to go in for, stick by that breed for a time, at least, and go in for no other.Secondly. Be careful in your selection of parents. For instance: we will suppose you mean to breed pure white Angoras; well, purchase at a first-class show a Tom kitten and a queen kittenfrom different litters. Choose the liveliest, biggest, and most healthy-looking kitten of each litter, not, as in choosing pups, the heaviest and sleepiest-looking. The funny kitten turns out the best cat, and is more easily trained than a sulky or frightened one.Having gotten your purchases home, remember that the royal road to a kitten’s affection is straight through its stomach. Be, yourself, then, the first to present pussy with a saucer of warm, creamy milk.Thirdly. How to get size. This is accomplished by the quantity and quality of pussy’s food, and the regularity with which she gets her meals. Whatever you give a young cat, and a growing cat to eat, do not let it be too abundant. Never let her gorge herself; give her little and often. Don’t let her want for a saucerful of pure water, to which she can always find access. Let her allowance of milk be put down to her and taken up again when she has had all she wants; what she leaves had better be given to the pigs. Bad milk is a fruitful source of diarrhoea, dysentery, and some forms of skin disease. A little sulphur—about as much as will lie on a fourpenny-bit—should be given at least once a fortnight, or half that quantity once a week.Train your cats early to habits of cleanliness. Don’t forget the flower-pot saucer; and remember that, if the cats you wish to take prizes with, belong to any of the finer breeds, theymustbe parlour cats, and not kitchen-bred brutes.If you want your cats to grow large, let their food be nourishing but not stimulating; boiled cow’s or sheep’s lights they can eat their stomachs full of; but avoid beef, it is too gross and heating, and don’t patronise the cat’s-meat man.Kittens and growing cats, in order to grow large, must have plenty of exercise and fun. Leaping exercise is best. Teach them to jump through a hoop, and keep them at it. They ought to have a ball as a toy, or a hare’s foot; and ridiculous as it may seem to many, it is a positive fact, that cats—especially queen cats—thrive best who have a looking-glass conveniently placed to admire themselves in, and to wash and dress in front of.“Ilka little maks a mickle,” is a good old Scotch proverb, and believe me it is attention to little matters, to minutiae, which makes one successful in properly rearing any animal.Fourthly. How to get Good Pelage on a Cat. The feeding of course has much to do with the length and gloss of the coat. Fish I have found is good for the coat, and a mixed diet generally, with not too much vegetables to scour them. But your sheet-anchors, after all, are the brush and the comb. The comb must be fine, and not too close in the teeth, and it should be used gently, after which brush the coat briskly all over with a long-haired soft hair-brush—a baby’s brush in fact. The comb is not only a gentle stimulant to the skin, but it prevents matting, while the brush removes dust, and gives a nice glitter to the pelage. Both together act as a charm.Fifthly. In cats other than white you will find that certain kinds of food strengthen the colours of the pelage. I am convinced, for instance, that boiled bullock’s lights do, and so does sheep’s blood. This fact is perhaps worth knowing. I am making experiments with other foods and some condiments, but am not yet in a position to state results.Sixthly. Breeding for colour. No matter what colour your parent cats are, you will occasionally find waifs and strays in a litter that you will wonder to find of a different colour. But do not be discouraged; stick only to the true colours, and you will find in time that such anomalies will become few and far between. Be careful to avoid the possibility of any litter of kittens having more than one father.Seventhly. In young cats, which you are breeding to take prizes with, begin to look out for symptoms of the queen’s getting gay, any time after six months, and on the first signs lock her up for a week, or until she becomes herself again. Do not think of breeding from a cat you mean for the show-bench until she is at least eighteen months old, else you will spoil her for size.Some people fancy that to manage cats properly, and guide their breeding to the Tom you desire them to, is very difficult. I have not found it so. There is a little trouble, certainly, but you are amply rewarded, when you find on the birth of the kittens that you have been successful. The only thing you’ve got to do, is to watch the queen well, and lock her up for a night or two with her own lord in an outhouse. Then afterwards keep her prisoner by herself for ten days. The danger is quite past then.Eighthly. About a week before any important show, be more than usually careful with the grooming, etc, of your cats, and feed them up a bit; give them an extra allowance of milk and cream, and boiled rice and sugar, and occasionally mutton and mutton-broth, but take great care not to induce diarrhoea.Ninthly. Send them to the show in a basket lined with flannel and a cushion, and pretty collar or ribbon to match the colour of the coat. Let the colour of the cushion be also effective, and in keeping with pussy’s jacket.As to cat-shows themselves, I have nothing but good to say. All prosperity to their promoters and patrons! They are in general, indeed almost invariably, well managed, and the cats are carefully caged, properly tended and fed, and no lady need apprehend the slightest danger to her feline favourite, in being sent to any of our great shows. It is seldom, if ever, that a cat is lost, the baskets containing the pussies never being opened, until inside the building, and then only with the greatest care. Indeed, one needs to be pretty cautious in handling a strange cat. Your well-bred beauties, in particular, make it a rule to stand no nonsense.The cats are fed morning and night, and regularly supplied with the best and sweetest milk which the town can afford. Indeed, altogether, the poor things appear quite as happy as they are at their own firesides. If it is a four-day show, they soon come to know and welcome with gloved hand, the girl attendants every time they pass. There is no head-splitting noise and din as there is in a dog-show. Peace and quiet and serenity reign everywhere in a cat-show.At nearly all the shows—at all events at all thegreatshows—Mr Sillet, the well-known naturalist of Southampton, has the arrangement of the pens or cages for the pussies. And very well he does his work too. Every cage is supplied with a box for sand at the back, and in the fore part with a beautiful soft cushion. The boxes are emptied daily, and disinfectants are also used, so that everything is sweet and clean. The entries at some of our national shows, such as the Crystal Palace and Birmingham, number between three and four hundred, and every year I trust the numbers will be increased.You see then, reader, that no danger can accrue from sending your feline favourite to a show, and I may tell you also that if she is anything like good at all, she is almost sure of finding herself placed. Cat-shows are only in their infancy, and anyone whochancesto have a good cat, may nowadays take prizes. In future years, there will be no chance work about the matter at all, and those only who study the breeding and rearing of cats in a scientific and sensible manner will be the winners.When you send your entry form up to the secretary, be careful you have placed your pussy in the right class, not only as to breed but as to sex, whether male, female, or gelded. As to breed, you must attend to the colour and also to the length of the coat.There are classes for all kinds of cats, and a class for anomalies besides.I am often sorry, when judging at shows, to have to disqualify many a beautiful specimen of the feline race, because it has been carelessly entered in a wrong class. If people only will read with some degree of attention the description of each class, given in the schedules, they need never make this mistake.To such clever and energetic managers of shows as Mr Wilson, of the Crystal Palace, who seems to have adopted the motto of the Cameron clan, “Whatever a man dares he can do,” or sensible Mr Chaplin, of Birmingham, or Mr Brown, of Edinburgh, or Mr Martin, of Glasgow, I have positively nothing to suggest. Let anyone who wants to get up a cat-show take a lesson out of the books of either.To amateur managers I may say this: Be very tender and gentle with the feline property entrusted to your care; remember not only that cats are extremely nervous and sensitive creatures, but also that numbers of them have a value in the eyes of their owners far above money and above price.Feed with Spratt’s Patent Cat Food. This ought to be used at all shows; it has the advantage of being cleanly, handy, and wholesome. A small allowance of boiled lights may be added.Use chloride of lime, not too much of it, as a disinfectant.Fill the utility boxes with plain garden mould or sand, butnever put charcoal in it. That soils the fur, and doesn’t give a white cat the chance of looking well.Never put sawdust in a cat’s cage. It gets into the milk and spoils it, and if they lick it it will make them ill.Do not receive a cat that is suffering from illness of any sort.If a cat should appear to be ill any time during the exhibition, have her carefully removed and sent home.Finally, if possible, have beautifully ornamented prize cards, and send them home neat and clean to the successful exhibitors. These cards are greatly valued, and generally framed and hung in a conspicuous place.No one, except the initiated, can have any idea what an important little creature a cat becomes that has once taken a prize. She is then more than ever the valued pet of her owners, and an object of interest even to the neighbours.
At nearly all the cat-shows which I have visited of late, I have been invariably impressed with this one idea: here, in these shows, we see pussy as she is in the present day—the live mouse-trap, the barn cat, at best the fireside favourite—but, at all events, the animal, of all our domestic animals, that is least cared for, and the only animal we possess, whose improvement in condition and species we have never cared to study. What this animal—the domestic cat—can become, the perfection to which she may attain through judicious selection and careful breeding, it is for future years to show.
Other nations—such as the Persians and different other Asiatics—know far more about the domestic cat than we do, and quite put us to the blush with their splendidly-bred and high-blooded animals.
It is one of the many popular fallacies current in this enlightened land of ours, that there is in the cat a certain number of bad qualities—a certain spice of the devil, so to speak—that never can be bred out. This is simply absurd, for there is no animal that lives and breathes on God’s fair earth but is susceptible of improvement, both physically and morally; for, remember, a cat, little as you may think of her, has a mindand a soul, as well as you have. She has thought, and memory, and reasoning powers; she can love and she can fear, can be happy and gay, or sad and sorrowful, and she knows something too of the mystery of death.
With all these qualities will you tell me that she cannot be improved? I say she can; even as to race; for what can be accomplished with individual cats, may be accomplished with the whole race. I can introduce you to dozens of cat-fanciers in this country, who have made the peculiarities of pussy’s nature their study, and who find that they can, at will, not only improve the physical condition of their cats; but even, by careful training, occasional gentle correction, kindness, and good-feeding, raise them from good to better, and wean them from the ways which are so objectionable in other, or merely half-domesticated cats. And, look you, the progeny of such animals—by a law well-known to all breeders—take after them, or inherit the good qualities of their parents. Hence, I repeat, if you can improve the individual cat, through time you may improve thegenus. That time may be long in coming—granted; but that the lovers of cats, in this country, have boldly seized the bull by the horns, and are taking a step in the right direction, is a positive fact which admits of no denial.
Now, to those who are fond of cats, and would fain improve the particular breed they have a fancy for, and probably win prizes at our great shows, I beg to offer the following hints:—
First. Having made up your mind as to what particular breed you mean to go in for, stick by that breed for a time, at least, and go in for no other.
Secondly. Be careful in your selection of parents. For instance: we will suppose you mean to breed pure white Angoras; well, purchase at a first-class show a Tom kitten and a queen kittenfrom different litters. Choose the liveliest, biggest, and most healthy-looking kitten of each litter, not, as in choosing pups, the heaviest and sleepiest-looking. The funny kitten turns out the best cat, and is more easily trained than a sulky or frightened one.
Having gotten your purchases home, remember that the royal road to a kitten’s affection is straight through its stomach. Be, yourself, then, the first to present pussy with a saucer of warm, creamy milk.
Thirdly. How to get size. This is accomplished by the quantity and quality of pussy’s food, and the regularity with which she gets her meals. Whatever you give a young cat, and a growing cat to eat, do not let it be too abundant. Never let her gorge herself; give her little and often. Don’t let her want for a saucerful of pure water, to which she can always find access. Let her allowance of milk be put down to her and taken up again when she has had all she wants; what she leaves had better be given to the pigs. Bad milk is a fruitful source of diarrhoea, dysentery, and some forms of skin disease. A little sulphur—about as much as will lie on a fourpenny-bit—should be given at least once a fortnight, or half that quantity once a week.
Train your cats early to habits of cleanliness. Don’t forget the flower-pot saucer; and remember that, if the cats you wish to take prizes with, belong to any of the finer breeds, theymustbe parlour cats, and not kitchen-bred brutes.
If you want your cats to grow large, let their food be nourishing but not stimulating; boiled cow’s or sheep’s lights they can eat their stomachs full of; but avoid beef, it is too gross and heating, and don’t patronise the cat’s-meat man.
Kittens and growing cats, in order to grow large, must have plenty of exercise and fun. Leaping exercise is best. Teach them to jump through a hoop, and keep them at it. They ought to have a ball as a toy, or a hare’s foot; and ridiculous as it may seem to many, it is a positive fact, that cats—especially queen cats—thrive best who have a looking-glass conveniently placed to admire themselves in, and to wash and dress in front of.
“Ilka little maks a mickle,” is a good old Scotch proverb, and believe me it is attention to little matters, to minutiae, which makes one successful in properly rearing any animal.
Fourthly. How to get Good Pelage on a Cat. The feeding of course has much to do with the length and gloss of the coat. Fish I have found is good for the coat, and a mixed diet generally, with not too much vegetables to scour them. But your sheet-anchors, after all, are the brush and the comb. The comb must be fine, and not too close in the teeth, and it should be used gently, after which brush the coat briskly all over with a long-haired soft hair-brush—a baby’s brush in fact. The comb is not only a gentle stimulant to the skin, but it prevents matting, while the brush removes dust, and gives a nice glitter to the pelage. Both together act as a charm.
Fifthly. In cats other than white you will find that certain kinds of food strengthen the colours of the pelage. I am convinced, for instance, that boiled bullock’s lights do, and so does sheep’s blood. This fact is perhaps worth knowing. I am making experiments with other foods and some condiments, but am not yet in a position to state results.
Sixthly. Breeding for colour. No matter what colour your parent cats are, you will occasionally find waifs and strays in a litter that you will wonder to find of a different colour. But do not be discouraged; stick only to the true colours, and you will find in time that such anomalies will become few and far between. Be careful to avoid the possibility of any litter of kittens having more than one father.
Seventhly. In young cats, which you are breeding to take prizes with, begin to look out for symptoms of the queen’s getting gay, any time after six months, and on the first signs lock her up for a week, or until she becomes herself again. Do not think of breeding from a cat you mean for the show-bench until she is at least eighteen months old, else you will spoil her for size.
Some people fancy that to manage cats properly, and guide their breeding to the Tom you desire them to, is very difficult. I have not found it so. There is a little trouble, certainly, but you are amply rewarded, when you find on the birth of the kittens that you have been successful. The only thing you’ve got to do, is to watch the queen well, and lock her up for a night or two with her own lord in an outhouse. Then afterwards keep her prisoner by herself for ten days. The danger is quite past then.
Eighthly. About a week before any important show, be more than usually careful with the grooming, etc, of your cats, and feed them up a bit; give them an extra allowance of milk and cream, and boiled rice and sugar, and occasionally mutton and mutton-broth, but take great care not to induce diarrhoea.
Ninthly. Send them to the show in a basket lined with flannel and a cushion, and pretty collar or ribbon to match the colour of the coat. Let the colour of the cushion be also effective, and in keeping with pussy’s jacket.
As to cat-shows themselves, I have nothing but good to say. All prosperity to their promoters and patrons! They are in general, indeed almost invariably, well managed, and the cats are carefully caged, properly tended and fed, and no lady need apprehend the slightest danger to her feline favourite, in being sent to any of our great shows. It is seldom, if ever, that a cat is lost, the baskets containing the pussies never being opened, until inside the building, and then only with the greatest care. Indeed, one needs to be pretty cautious in handling a strange cat. Your well-bred beauties, in particular, make it a rule to stand no nonsense.
The cats are fed morning and night, and regularly supplied with the best and sweetest milk which the town can afford. Indeed, altogether, the poor things appear quite as happy as they are at their own firesides. If it is a four-day show, they soon come to know and welcome with gloved hand, the girl attendants every time they pass. There is no head-splitting noise and din as there is in a dog-show. Peace and quiet and serenity reign everywhere in a cat-show.
At nearly all the shows—at all events at all thegreatshows—Mr Sillet, the well-known naturalist of Southampton, has the arrangement of the pens or cages for the pussies. And very well he does his work too. Every cage is supplied with a box for sand at the back, and in the fore part with a beautiful soft cushion. The boxes are emptied daily, and disinfectants are also used, so that everything is sweet and clean. The entries at some of our national shows, such as the Crystal Palace and Birmingham, number between three and four hundred, and every year I trust the numbers will be increased.
You see then, reader, that no danger can accrue from sending your feline favourite to a show, and I may tell you also that if she is anything like good at all, she is almost sure of finding herself placed. Cat-shows are only in their infancy, and anyone whochancesto have a good cat, may nowadays take prizes. In future years, there will be no chance work about the matter at all, and those only who study the breeding and rearing of cats in a scientific and sensible manner will be the winners.
When you send your entry form up to the secretary, be careful you have placed your pussy in the right class, not only as to breed but as to sex, whether male, female, or gelded. As to breed, you must attend to the colour and also to the length of the coat.
There are classes for all kinds of cats, and a class for anomalies besides.
I am often sorry, when judging at shows, to have to disqualify many a beautiful specimen of the feline race, because it has been carelessly entered in a wrong class. If people only will read with some degree of attention the description of each class, given in the schedules, they need never make this mistake.
To such clever and energetic managers of shows as Mr Wilson, of the Crystal Palace, who seems to have adopted the motto of the Cameron clan, “Whatever a man dares he can do,” or sensible Mr Chaplin, of Birmingham, or Mr Brown, of Edinburgh, or Mr Martin, of Glasgow, I have positively nothing to suggest. Let anyone who wants to get up a cat-show take a lesson out of the books of either.
To amateur managers I may say this: Be very tender and gentle with the feline property entrusted to your care; remember not only that cats are extremely nervous and sensitive creatures, but also that numbers of them have a value in the eyes of their owners far above money and above price.
Feed with Spratt’s Patent Cat Food. This ought to be used at all shows; it has the advantage of being cleanly, handy, and wholesome. A small allowance of boiled lights may be added.
Use chloride of lime, not too much of it, as a disinfectant.
Fill the utility boxes with plain garden mould or sand, butnever put charcoal in it. That soils the fur, and doesn’t give a white cat the chance of looking well.
Never put sawdust in a cat’s cage. It gets into the milk and spoils it, and if they lick it it will make them ill.
Do not receive a cat that is suffering from illness of any sort.
If a cat should appear to be ill any time during the exhibition, have her carefully removed and sent home.
Finally, if possible, have beautifully ornamented prize cards, and send them home neat and clean to the successful exhibitors. These cards are greatly valued, and generally framed and hung in a conspicuous place.
No one, except the initiated, can have any idea what an important little creature a cat becomes that has once taken a prize. She is then more than ever the valued pet of her owners, and an object of interest even to the neighbours.
Chapter Nineteen.On Cruelty to Cats.“He prayeth well, who loveth well,Both man, and bird, and beast;He prayeth best, who loveth best,All things both great and small,For the dear God who loveth us,He made and loveth all.”Coleridge.I am fond of cats, and am never happier than when I am writing about them; nevertheless, it is with feelings the very reverse of pleasant that I commence the present chapter. Were I to consult my own comfort, I should avoid the subject of cruelty to cats, and it is only with the hope, that I may be the means of doing some little good to poor harmless pussy, that I approach the matter at all.I am not a sentimentalist by any means, yet I abominate wanton cruelty. I am fond of animals, yet not maudlinly so. I am not a vegetarian; and, although I neither believe that all animals were made for man’s use, nor that man was made for theirs (as, you remember, was the opinion of the pampered goose), still I think we are right to kill and to use them as food. So I am fond of fishing, and fond too of shooting, and I can see nothing in the Bible against either practice. The very reverse, indeed, and everywhere in nature we observe that God permits one animal to prey upon another; and can the Lord Himself do wrong?Yet, albeit I love sport and shooting, I do not think I am cruel. All my animals love me. My fishes know me, and come to be fed; my birds flutter their wings with affectionate excitement when I approach their cage; my white rats run to me when I call; my cat certainly never rushes up the chimney when I enter the room; and when I am dead I know my dogs will miss me.Now, what I particularly object to is wanton and unnecessary cruelty. If we have to, and must, put the lower animals to death, in order that we—the higher animals—may live, we ought to do so as humanely as possible; and never, on any account, should we torture animals for mere sport. Hence I object to cock-fighting, pigeon or sparrow-shooting, and ratting—all mean and cowardly employments, and quite unfitted for men above the rank of the commonest navvy. I see no harm in deer-stalking in Scotland, where the deer are as wild as the hare or coney; but I do see very great cruelty in what is called stag-hunting in England. The stag in England is a domesticated animal, and I do not see that there is greater pluck or courage needed in hunting it, than there would be in chasing a decent old Alderney cow. I had travelled pretty nearly all over the world, and had shot in Africa, India, and Greenland, before I witnessed the first English stag-hunt. If my sympathies had not been all with the poor stag, I should have been highly amused indeed. The first stag wouldn’t move at all; he looked upon the matter as too good a joke. “No, beggar me,” he seemed to say, “if I’ll budge an inch, to please anybody!” And he didn’t. Yet this stag-hunting, they will tell you, seriously, keeps up the national courage. Believe me, reader, English courage requires no such keeping up, and it will be a poor day for this country when it does. Besides, it is only gentlemen (?) who hunt; and, well as our army is officered, it is, after all, the men who do the fighting; and it has always struck me that good beef and mutton, together with a determination to do their duty, are the mainstays on which our soldiers depend in the day of battle.A great deal, I think, of the cruelty which is inflicted on the poor cat, is done through ignorance of pussy’s nature and constitution; done unwittingly, and with no real intention of doing the animal an injury.It is very cruel indeed to starve the creature, with the idea that you will induce her to catch more mice. When a cat is hungry the system is weak, the mind is dull, and the nerves so far from being well-strung that she will do anything sooner than hunt. A well-filled stomach gives pussy patience, and that is much wanted for mouse-killing; besides, you must not forget that cats kill mice as much for the sport as anything else.Another very common form of cruelty is that of turning the cat out every night. Cats need their comforts, and enjoy them too, more than any other domestic animal we possess. Leaving her out at night not only exposes her to colds, inflammations, and various diseases, but it leads her to contract bad habits; and she eventually gets trapped or killed, and no wonder; is she not, through your carelessness, a nuisance to the whole neighbourhood?It is cruel not to feed your cats with regularity. They expect it, and need it; and, if they do not get it, what else can you expect but that your cat will become a thief?What is called “wandering” cats is extremely cruel. A man has no further use for his cat, so he “wanders” her. I assure you it would be far more humane to drown her at once. How would you, yourself, like to be wandered—to be taken abroad somewhere, and placed down in the centre of savages; hungry and cold, and longing and pining for the home you left behind you; and in danger every moment of being cruelly slain? Don’t you think that speedy dissolution were more to be desired than such a life?It is cruel, when your cat has kittens, to permit more to live than you can find decent homes for. It is a shame to a poor little kit, after it has opened its eyes to the wonders all around it, and begun to get happy and funny. Always keep one or two kittens for sake of the mother, and try, if possible, to find some one to take them. But the worst form of unintentional cruelty is that of leaving your poor favourite at home, when you go to the seaside, or to summer quarters. Often and often, on the return of the family, the unhappy cat is found lying in the empty hall, dead or dying, and wasted away to a mere handful of bones and skin—this in itself testifying to the sufferings she must have undergone for the want of food and water. Such grosscarelessness ought to be made penal. I do not know whether the Society has ever yet prosecuted anyone for thus cruelly starving a cat, but I should think it would have little difficulty in obtaining a conviction.I come now to mention some cases of intentional and specific cruelty, and shall be as brief as possible.Some men, both young and old, think that a cat is a fit subject for torture and cruelty of all kinds; hence they never miss the chance of shying a stone after pussy’s retreating figure. Cases, too, are continually cropping up in the police courts, of men having tortured cats to the death with dogs.Cat skins are considered of some value by the furriers. At a sale not long since in London, there were some three thousand cat skins. Where think you, reader, do these come from? That is a question unfortunately only too easily answered. In almost all large cities there exists a gang of ruffians—you cannot call them by a milder name—who eke out a sort of livelihood by stealing cats by every available means and method. But worse than this remains to be told; it is darkly whispered, and I have some reason to believe it may be but too true, that many of those poor cats areskinned alive, in the belief that the living skin thus procured retains the gloss.In Greenland I have seen young seals flayed alive by the score. That was a sickening sight enough, but skinning alive a poor harmless cat must be many times worse. I wish I could say that it was only the lowest class of ruffians that ill-treat poor cats to the death, but—and I know this for certain—there are men who pass as gentlemen, who night after night set traps for cats that stray into their gardens, and kill them in the cruellest manner; and some of these fellows, too, keep neither poultry, pigeons, nor rabbits, and haven’t a flower in their gardens worthy of the name, onlythey hate cats. I know one gentleman (?) who thus traps and kills cats because he has a passion for fur rugs, which he thus indulges on the cheap.Little boys, and those too, sometimes the sons of respectable parents who ought to have taught them better, are often dreadfully cruel to cats, stoning them wherever found, and setting dogs to worry them to death.A lady, a friend of mine, once attracted by the heartrending cries of a cat, found two young fiends, with a pretty pussy tied in an apron, gouging its eyes out with a nail!A common form of cruelty to cats, in some rural districts of England, is that of tying two of them together by the tails and hanging them over a rope or pole to fight to the death.Such cases as that of cutting cats’ tails off for wanton mischief, burning or boiling cats alive, though not unknown, I am happy to say are very rare.Now, considering how very useful an animal a cat is, I think it is high time the law interfered to protect her from violence and ill-usage.I should like to see a tax imposed upon all cats, and a home for lost cats, precisely on the same principles as the home for lost and starving dogs, only with this difference, that there should be no reward offered for bringing a cat to the home. Remember this, that a stranger or starving cat will come to anyone who says a kind word to it, so policemen would have no difficulty in catching them.The revenue from the imposition of even a small tax would be very large, and it would not only help to clear the country of a whole army corps of thieving, prowling, homeless cats, but give to the cats of respectable people a greater value in the eyes of the law, and a greater chance of taking their walks abroad without being molested.We have a law to protect even our wild birds, why not one for the protection of my friend the harmless, useful cat?In conclusion, let me assure lovers and owners of cats, that, as the law stands at present, the only way to keep their favourites alive, and free from danger, is to be kind to them, feed them well and teach them, as far as possible, to keep to the house at night.We think that men who kill, and trap, and injure our cats are exceedingly cruel. And so they are, and I hope they will in time learn to be a shade more merciful. At the same time, don’t forget that the temptation to take revenge upon a cat for vines destroyed, beautiful flowerbeds torn up, favourite rabbits murdered in their hutches, and valuable pigeons torn and eaten in their dovecots, is a very great temptation indeed. You see, reader, there are two sides to every question.Pray think of the matter.
“He prayeth well, who loveth well,Both man, and bird, and beast;He prayeth best, who loveth best,All things both great and small,For the dear God who loveth us,He made and loveth all.”Coleridge.
“He prayeth well, who loveth well,Both man, and bird, and beast;He prayeth best, who loveth best,All things both great and small,For the dear God who loveth us,He made and loveth all.”Coleridge.
I am fond of cats, and am never happier than when I am writing about them; nevertheless, it is with feelings the very reverse of pleasant that I commence the present chapter. Were I to consult my own comfort, I should avoid the subject of cruelty to cats, and it is only with the hope, that I may be the means of doing some little good to poor harmless pussy, that I approach the matter at all.
I am not a sentimentalist by any means, yet I abominate wanton cruelty. I am fond of animals, yet not maudlinly so. I am not a vegetarian; and, although I neither believe that all animals were made for man’s use, nor that man was made for theirs (as, you remember, was the opinion of the pampered goose), still I think we are right to kill and to use them as food. So I am fond of fishing, and fond too of shooting, and I can see nothing in the Bible against either practice. The very reverse, indeed, and everywhere in nature we observe that God permits one animal to prey upon another; and can the Lord Himself do wrong?
Yet, albeit I love sport and shooting, I do not think I am cruel. All my animals love me. My fishes know me, and come to be fed; my birds flutter their wings with affectionate excitement when I approach their cage; my white rats run to me when I call; my cat certainly never rushes up the chimney when I enter the room; and when I am dead I know my dogs will miss me.
Now, what I particularly object to is wanton and unnecessary cruelty. If we have to, and must, put the lower animals to death, in order that we—the higher animals—may live, we ought to do so as humanely as possible; and never, on any account, should we torture animals for mere sport. Hence I object to cock-fighting, pigeon or sparrow-shooting, and ratting—all mean and cowardly employments, and quite unfitted for men above the rank of the commonest navvy. I see no harm in deer-stalking in Scotland, where the deer are as wild as the hare or coney; but I do see very great cruelty in what is called stag-hunting in England. The stag in England is a domesticated animal, and I do not see that there is greater pluck or courage needed in hunting it, than there would be in chasing a decent old Alderney cow. I had travelled pretty nearly all over the world, and had shot in Africa, India, and Greenland, before I witnessed the first English stag-hunt. If my sympathies had not been all with the poor stag, I should have been highly amused indeed. The first stag wouldn’t move at all; he looked upon the matter as too good a joke. “No, beggar me,” he seemed to say, “if I’ll budge an inch, to please anybody!” And he didn’t. Yet this stag-hunting, they will tell you, seriously, keeps up the national courage. Believe me, reader, English courage requires no such keeping up, and it will be a poor day for this country when it does. Besides, it is only gentlemen (?) who hunt; and, well as our army is officered, it is, after all, the men who do the fighting; and it has always struck me that good beef and mutton, together with a determination to do their duty, are the mainstays on which our soldiers depend in the day of battle.
A great deal, I think, of the cruelty which is inflicted on the poor cat, is done through ignorance of pussy’s nature and constitution; done unwittingly, and with no real intention of doing the animal an injury.
It is very cruel indeed to starve the creature, with the idea that you will induce her to catch more mice. When a cat is hungry the system is weak, the mind is dull, and the nerves so far from being well-strung that she will do anything sooner than hunt. A well-filled stomach gives pussy patience, and that is much wanted for mouse-killing; besides, you must not forget that cats kill mice as much for the sport as anything else.
Another very common form of cruelty is that of turning the cat out every night. Cats need their comforts, and enjoy them too, more than any other domestic animal we possess. Leaving her out at night not only exposes her to colds, inflammations, and various diseases, but it leads her to contract bad habits; and she eventually gets trapped or killed, and no wonder; is she not, through your carelessness, a nuisance to the whole neighbourhood?
It is cruel not to feed your cats with regularity. They expect it, and need it; and, if they do not get it, what else can you expect but that your cat will become a thief?
What is called “wandering” cats is extremely cruel. A man has no further use for his cat, so he “wanders” her. I assure you it would be far more humane to drown her at once. How would you, yourself, like to be wandered—to be taken abroad somewhere, and placed down in the centre of savages; hungry and cold, and longing and pining for the home you left behind you; and in danger every moment of being cruelly slain? Don’t you think that speedy dissolution were more to be desired than such a life?
It is cruel, when your cat has kittens, to permit more to live than you can find decent homes for. It is a shame to a poor little kit, after it has opened its eyes to the wonders all around it, and begun to get happy and funny. Always keep one or two kittens for sake of the mother, and try, if possible, to find some one to take them. But the worst form of unintentional cruelty is that of leaving your poor favourite at home, when you go to the seaside, or to summer quarters. Often and often, on the return of the family, the unhappy cat is found lying in the empty hall, dead or dying, and wasted away to a mere handful of bones and skin—this in itself testifying to the sufferings she must have undergone for the want of food and water. Such grosscarelessness ought to be made penal. I do not know whether the Society has ever yet prosecuted anyone for thus cruelly starving a cat, but I should think it would have little difficulty in obtaining a conviction.
I come now to mention some cases of intentional and specific cruelty, and shall be as brief as possible.
Some men, both young and old, think that a cat is a fit subject for torture and cruelty of all kinds; hence they never miss the chance of shying a stone after pussy’s retreating figure. Cases, too, are continually cropping up in the police courts, of men having tortured cats to the death with dogs.
Cat skins are considered of some value by the furriers. At a sale not long since in London, there were some three thousand cat skins. Where think you, reader, do these come from? That is a question unfortunately only too easily answered. In almost all large cities there exists a gang of ruffians—you cannot call them by a milder name—who eke out a sort of livelihood by stealing cats by every available means and method. But worse than this remains to be told; it is darkly whispered, and I have some reason to believe it may be but too true, that many of those poor cats areskinned alive, in the belief that the living skin thus procured retains the gloss.
In Greenland I have seen young seals flayed alive by the score. That was a sickening sight enough, but skinning alive a poor harmless cat must be many times worse. I wish I could say that it was only the lowest class of ruffians that ill-treat poor cats to the death, but—and I know this for certain—there are men who pass as gentlemen, who night after night set traps for cats that stray into their gardens, and kill them in the cruellest manner; and some of these fellows, too, keep neither poultry, pigeons, nor rabbits, and haven’t a flower in their gardens worthy of the name, onlythey hate cats. I know one gentleman (?) who thus traps and kills cats because he has a passion for fur rugs, which he thus indulges on the cheap.
Little boys, and those too, sometimes the sons of respectable parents who ought to have taught them better, are often dreadfully cruel to cats, stoning them wherever found, and setting dogs to worry them to death.
A lady, a friend of mine, once attracted by the heartrending cries of a cat, found two young fiends, with a pretty pussy tied in an apron, gouging its eyes out with a nail!
A common form of cruelty to cats, in some rural districts of England, is that of tying two of them together by the tails and hanging them over a rope or pole to fight to the death.
Such cases as that of cutting cats’ tails off for wanton mischief, burning or boiling cats alive, though not unknown, I am happy to say are very rare.
Now, considering how very useful an animal a cat is, I think it is high time the law interfered to protect her from violence and ill-usage.
I should like to see a tax imposed upon all cats, and a home for lost cats, precisely on the same principles as the home for lost and starving dogs, only with this difference, that there should be no reward offered for bringing a cat to the home. Remember this, that a stranger or starving cat will come to anyone who says a kind word to it, so policemen would have no difficulty in catching them.
The revenue from the imposition of even a small tax would be very large, and it would not only help to clear the country of a whole army corps of thieving, prowling, homeless cats, but give to the cats of respectable people a greater value in the eyes of the law, and a greater chance of taking their walks abroad without being molested.
We have a law to protect even our wild birds, why not one for the protection of my friend the harmless, useful cat?
In conclusion, let me assure lovers and owners of cats, that, as the law stands at present, the only way to keep their favourites alive, and free from danger, is to be kind to them, feed them well and teach them, as far as possible, to keep to the house at night.
We think that men who kill, and trap, and injure our cats are exceedingly cruel. And so they are, and I hope they will in time learn to be a shade more merciful. At the same time, don’t forget that the temptation to take revenge upon a cat for vines destroyed, beautiful flowerbeds torn up, favourite rabbits murdered in their hutches, and valuable pigeons torn and eaten in their dovecots, is a very great temptation indeed. You see, reader, there are two sides to every question.
Pray think of the matter.
Chapter Twenty.Pussy’s Tricks and Manners.When I was a boy, it used to be a positive pain to me to have to enter a large library and choose a book. I used to wander round and round the well-filled shelves like a butterfly floating over a clover-field. I didn’t know where to alight. I would fain have begun at the beginning, and read the lot—but that was impracticable. Hence my difficulty. I am in a somewhat similar fix now. I have so many original anecdotes of cat life and customs that I don’t know which to tell.If I had space at command you should have the whole lot, and I would arrange them into classes according to their character; as it is, I must be content to present the reader with some account of a few of pussy’s tricks and manners, deduced from these and from my own rather large experience of cat life.Every child knows how fond cats are of hunting and catching mice, but no cat of any respectability would think of confining her attentions to mice alone. The very presence of a cat about a house will usually suffice to keep these destructive pests at bay; and if one should pop out of its hole, it knows, or ought to know, what to expect. But seldom will a high-bred cat condescend to eat a mouse. She will play with it as long as hope keeps up its little heart; when that fails it, pussy turns it over once or twice to see whether it is really dead or only shamming, and then walks disdainfully away. The next higher game is rats, but these she seldom cares to eat, only she kills them on the spot. She knows that rats have teeth and can use them, so she doesn’t romp with them. I have known rats inflict such severe wounds upon a cat that they ultimately proved fatal.Cats delight to spend a day in the woods, bird-catching. They rob the nests, too, when they find any, and cases have occurred of a cat paying visits to nests day after day until the young were hatched, then eating them. (I once had a blackbird’s nest in the side of a bank at the roadside—a strange place for a blackbird to build. I often used to see a polecat close to, and I am convinced it knew of the nest, but it never robbed it until the young were hatched.)Nearly all cats who live in the country hunt over the hills and the woods, and a great plague, too, gamekeepers find them. There is no animal which a cat may meet in the covers that she is not a match for. Polecats and weasels have to own her sway, while rabbits and leverets fall an easy prey to her prowess.Most cats, who are well treated by their owners, have a habit of bringing everything home which they catch. I have often seen a cat come trotting homewards, carrying in its mouth a rabbit well-nigh as big as herself.Cats may therefore be called poachers; and it is curious, but true, that when a poor man owns a cat who poaches, and brings home the quarry, he usually winks at it.I have dozens of well-authenticated anecdotes of cats who are very expert at fishing. I have, myself, watched a cat by the banks of a stream, until I have seen him dive into the water, and emerge almost immediately with a large trout in his mouth. Cats who fish, generally belong to millers, or are bred and reared somewhere near a river. They not only catch fish of all sorts, but even water-rats; often springing many feet off the bank after prey of this kind, and even diving under to secure it. In Scotland cats often attack and destroy large quantities of salmon in small streams, in the spawning season.Cats are supposed to have an antipathy to water, and, as a rule, this is so. They are very cleanly animals, and it has often amused me to watch a pussy crossing a muddy street. How eagerly she looks out for the dry spots, how gingerly she picks her steps, and, when she does tread in a pool, with what an air of supreme disgust she stops and shakes the offending foot!Cats swim well, nevertheless. I have seen a cat take the water as coolly as an Irish spaniel, swim the river, hunt in the woods for some time, and then swim back again with a bird in her mouth. And, to save their kittens from drowning, almost any cat will swim a long distance.I have known a cat whose favourite fish was the eel, and he always managed to catch one somehow.Cats are very fanciful at times, and very self-opinionated. If a cat takes a fancy to a particular house, or part of the house, it is difficult to dislodge her.“In the year 1852,” a lady writes me, “my mother was living with a family in the Albany Road, Camberwell, who had a large tabby Tom cat. This cat had formed a strong attachment to a kitten who belonged to the lady next door. In 1853, the family removed to the Ashby Road, Lower Road, Islington, and the cat waspacked in a hamper, and sent with the furniture.“It was kept in confinement the first day and night, and let out the next morning. Tabby had his feet buttered, to keep him employed, as they said it was a good thing to keep him busy. The next day he had disappeared, no one knew whither, though search was made for him everywhere.“A few days after, the lady from Camberwell wrote to say that Tabby had put in an appearance there, and resumed the charge of his kitten. He was sent back by the carrier to his proper owner, and every means was tried to induce him to stop; but he returned the second time to the kitten, and so they let him remain, because they knew he would be well taken care of. The wonderment of this was:which bridge did he go over in passing through busy London?”It is really wonderful how a cat can often find its way, long distances across a country which he never before may have traversed.“A few days ago,” says another correspondent, “a lady who lives in Newport told me that, at one time, her house was quite overrun with mice; and, having procured the loan of a cat which was considered a good mouser, she tied it into a basket, and then placed it in a concealed part of the pony carriage. On her arrival at the ‘Cliff’ the prisoner was released; but even the prospect of a delicious feast of mice could not obliterate its thoughts of ‘home, sweet home;’ and, after about an hour’s stay, it set off, and, ere long, arrived at its former abode—distant three miles!”Some months ago, a half-bred Persian tabby, came to my place, and has since then stuck to it with all the persistency of Edgar Allan Poe’s raven. He is a cat that seems to have nothing to recommend him; if he would come into the house, and behave like a civilised being, I would never grudge him his daily dole. But he prefers to live a half-pagan existence, out among the bushes, and take his nap of a night in the coal-house; and Bridget says he is an awful thief, and that she can’t leave the kitchen-door open one moment for fear of him. I’ve often asked that cat to take his departure, but, as plain as cat can speak, that cat says “never more.”By way of experiment I have caught him several times—no easy task, I assure you—andsent him, securely packed in a hamper, distances of three, four, and five miles to friends who have set him free. And he always came back. His last journey was at Christmas-time—may Heaven forgive me this sin!—to the house of a parsonwhom I did not know, and I stuck some pheasants’ feathers too just under the lid. I don’t know what the parson thought, but Tom came back next day, not looking a single bit put out, and—I am willing to sell him to anyone who may have need of his services.I know a cat who caught two sparrows at once, and when retreating, a third sparrow pursued and attacked him. This one pussy also killed, with his paw. That was funny!Cats know certain days of the week, such as Sunday for instance, and they also know certain hours of each day. I don’t mean to say they look at the clock, but, if a favourite master or mistress is in the habit of coming home every day, say at 4 p.m., there you will often find that every day at 4 p.m. pussy will trot down the road to meet her and wait till she comes.Cats make good husbands, gentle fathers, and the most tender and loving of mothers. A cat will fight for her kittens, starve orstealfor them. Oh! I daresay you imagine that stealing wouldn’t be likely to lie very heavily on a cat’s conscience. Now listen to this—which the printer will kindly put in italics—all experience goes to prove that well-fed, properly cared-for cats, are not thieves, but the reverse.Cats have their kittens in queer places, at times. A lady’s best Sunday bonnet, or master’s wig, or a set of ermine furs, just suits pussy to a nicety. My cat once kittened in my cocked hat. It is a positive fact, madam, and so far from thinking she had done anything to offend me, she held up one of her brats for me to admire. But the queerest place for a cat to kitten in, that ever I knew, was a tree. The cat scrambled up the tree and brought forth her young in the nest of a wood-pigeon! I didn’t hear how the kittens got down again though, but I have every reason to believe the story. Probably, when the kittens opened their eyes they commenced playing with their mother’s tail, and went topsy-turvy to the ground. Well,facilis descensus Averni, and you know cats always fall on their feet. I knew a man who kicked his own cat out of his pigeon loft, three storeys high. He told me it didn’t seem to hurt her a bit, but rather increased her appetite.Whether cats have nine lives or not, they take a great deal of killing.I knew a cat that was drowned four times, and came home again as unconcernedly as if nothing very unusual had happened. However, drowning in the end seemed to get rather irksome to this pussy, and after the fourth immersion, he ran away to the woods, and didn’t come back to be drowned any more.Many cases I know of parties having started off with puss in a bag to drown her, and having stopped to talk to a friend on the way back found, on their return, the cat sitting by the fire drying herself! I have many instances of cats having been thrown from bridges and other high places, with the intention of killing them, but without fatal effect.Cats have been buried alive for days and recovered after being dug up. A cat of my acquaintance was sent to live at a mill. This seemed to please pussy very much. You see there were plenty of mice in the mill, and plenty of rats and fish in the mill-lead, so the cat made herself at home. But in course of time pussy became the mother of two kittens, and then the longing for her old home came back with a force too powerful to be resisted. She determined, therefore, to return to her former residence, and she did so, carrying her kittens one by one. The distance she had to travel was two miles, and the night she chose was a dark and stormy one.There were two cats who dwelt at the self-same house and had kittens at the self-same time. All the kittens were drowned with the exception of two, one being left with each mother. And now comes the curious part of the business. These two mother-cats came to an amicable understanding, that whenever the one was abroad the other should suckle and attend to both babies, and this treaty was carried out to the letter.Cats are not only fond of human beings, but often get greatly attached to other domestic animals, especially to the family dog. I know at this moment a cat whose constant companion is a Dandy Dinmont; and a rough one he is too, for, although he sleeps in pussy’s arms every night, he thinks nothing of pulling her all round the lawn by the tail at any time, the cat herself seeming to enjoy the fun!Rabbits and cats often associate together on the most friendly terms, even accompanying each other in long excursions, the cat on these occasions electing herself protector of her feebler friend against predatory dogs and other cats.A cat belonging to a friend of mine used to be constantly at war with the dog, until one day, with a blow of her ungloved paw, she blinded the poor animal in one eye. No mother could have been kinder to her child than pussy was to this dog, after she saw what she had done. That she bitterly repented the rash act is evident, for she watched beside him night and day, until he grew well again; and now, they are the fastest friends in the world, and the cat is the first to welcome the dog home when he returns from a walk.As a proof of how cruel it is to takealla cat’s kittens away from her, I may state that, thus bereaved, a cat will take to nursing even chickens, or she will suckle puppies, hedgehogs, or rats.It is a funny thing that many cats can’t bear music. Some will run out of the room if they hear a fiddle played, and others will growl and attack the musician.Cats can be easily taught to follow one in a country walk just like a dog, and on these occasions they come much better to the sound of whistling than to any other call.A well-bred cat will always teach its kittens habits of cleanliness, how to watch for and catch mice, and also how to catch minnows in a shallow stream.I have already said that cats, as a rule, when well treated, are not thieves, but the very reverse. But when a cat does take to thieving for a livelihood, she becomes quite a swell at it—shows how clever she is.Cats are considered in some parts of England to be of some value as an article of diet. I have never to my knowledge eaten cat, so I cannot give the reader any idea what they taste like.It is ridiculous to suppose, as some do, that a cat’s breath has any effect upon a baby either for good or for evil. Neither will a cat bring blood from a child’s temple by licking it with its rough tongue.An ugly old woman isn’t necessarily a witch because she keeps a black cat. Neither is a black cat a devil.They say that witches sail over the sea in riddles accompanied by their black cats, and that they have rather a jolly time of it upon the whole, having plenty to eat, and plenty to drink—flagons of wine, in fact. Don’t you believe it, reader.Cats are not afraid of snakes; but snakes, even the dreaded cobra, will invariably give pussy a wide berth.Cats are fond of fish, absurdly so, and if you offer them even the gold-fish, they won’t feel offended. It is only out of respect for the owner thereof that they don’t devour the canary. They prefer canary living, with the feathers on. It tickles their palates and makes them laugh.Chickens are dainties in a cat’scuisine; they also rather like a nice plump partridge, and won’t refuse to suck an egg when occasion offers.Cats are, as a rule, Good Templars; the proof of which rule is this: I had a Red Tabby Tom who would eat oatmeal and whisky until he couldn’t stand. The servants knew this failing, and encouraged him in his evil ways; so that half his time, instead of being as sober as a judge—as every decent, respectable cat ought—Tom was as drunk as a piper.It is funny to listen to a cat’s concert about two o’clock in the morning. Of course, if you are rather nervous, and want to go to sleep, it isn’t so funny. (N.B.—If cats were better treated, they would hold their concerts in daylight in the garden, instead of at midnight on the tiles. Mind you, there is something in that.)Altogether, cats are funny things, and the more you study them the funnier you find them. That’s so!
When I was a boy, it used to be a positive pain to me to have to enter a large library and choose a book. I used to wander round and round the well-filled shelves like a butterfly floating over a clover-field. I didn’t know where to alight. I would fain have begun at the beginning, and read the lot—but that was impracticable. Hence my difficulty. I am in a somewhat similar fix now. I have so many original anecdotes of cat life and customs that I don’t know which to tell.
If I had space at command you should have the whole lot, and I would arrange them into classes according to their character; as it is, I must be content to present the reader with some account of a few of pussy’s tricks and manners, deduced from these and from my own rather large experience of cat life.
Every child knows how fond cats are of hunting and catching mice, but no cat of any respectability would think of confining her attentions to mice alone. The very presence of a cat about a house will usually suffice to keep these destructive pests at bay; and if one should pop out of its hole, it knows, or ought to know, what to expect. But seldom will a high-bred cat condescend to eat a mouse. She will play with it as long as hope keeps up its little heart; when that fails it, pussy turns it over once or twice to see whether it is really dead or only shamming, and then walks disdainfully away. The next higher game is rats, but these she seldom cares to eat, only she kills them on the spot. She knows that rats have teeth and can use them, so she doesn’t romp with them. I have known rats inflict such severe wounds upon a cat that they ultimately proved fatal.
Cats delight to spend a day in the woods, bird-catching. They rob the nests, too, when they find any, and cases have occurred of a cat paying visits to nests day after day until the young were hatched, then eating them. (I once had a blackbird’s nest in the side of a bank at the roadside—a strange place for a blackbird to build. I often used to see a polecat close to, and I am convinced it knew of the nest, but it never robbed it until the young were hatched.)
Nearly all cats who live in the country hunt over the hills and the woods, and a great plague, too, gamekeepers find them. There is no animal which a cat may meet in the covers that she is not a match for. Polecats and weasels have to own her sway, while rabbits and leverets fall an easy prey to her prowess.
Most cats, who are well treated by their owners, have a habit of bringing everything home which they catch. I have often seen a cat come trotting homewards, carrying in its mouth a rabbit well-nigh as big as herself.
Cats may therefore be called poachers; and it is curious, but true, that when a poor man owns a cat who poaches, and brings home the quarry, he usually winks at it.
I have dozens of well-authenticated anecdotes of cats who are very expert at fishing. I have, myself, watched a cat by the banks of a stream, until I have seen him dive into the water, and emerge almost immediately with a large trout in his mouth. Cats who fish, generally belong to millers, or are bred and reared somewhere near a river. They not only catch fish of all sorts, but even water-rats; often springing many feet off the bank after prey of this kind, and even diving under to secure it. In Scotland cats often attack and destroy large quantities of salmon in small streams, in the spawning season.
Cats are supposed to have an antipathy to water, and, as a rule, this is so. They are very cleanly animals, and it has often amused me to watch a pussy crossing a muddy street. How eagerly she looks out for the dry spots, how gingerly she picks her steps, and, when she does tread in a pool, with what an air of supreme disgust she stops and shakes the offending foot!
Cats swim well, nevertheless. I have seen a cat take the water as coolly as an Irish spaniel, swim the river, hunt in the woods for some time, and then swim back again with a bird in her mouth. And, to save their kittens from drowning, almost any cat will swim a long distance.
I have known a cat whose favourite fish was the eel, and he always managed to catch one somehow.
Cats are very fanciful at times, and very self-opinionated. If a cat takes a fancy to a particular house, or part of the house, it is difficult to dislodge her.
“In the year 1852,” a lady writes me, “my mother was living with a family in the Albany Road, Camberwell, who had a large tabby Tom cat. This cat had formed a strong attachment to a kitten who belonged to the lady next door. In 1853, the family removed to the Ashby Road, Lower Road, Islington, and the cat waspacked in a hamper, and sent with the furniture.
“It was kept in confinement the first day and night, and let out the next morning. Tabby had his feet buttered, to keep him employed, as they said it was a good thing to keep him busy. The next day he had disappeared, no one knew whither, though search was made for him everywhere.
“A few days after, the lady from Camberwell wrote to say that Tabby had put in an appearance there, and resumed the charge of his kitten. He was sent back by the carrier to his proper owner, and every means was tried to induce him to stop; but he returned the second time to the kitten, and so they let him remain, because they knew he would be well taken care of. The wonderment of this was:which bridge did he go over in passing through busy London?”
It is really wonderful how a cat can often find its way, long distances across a country which he never before may have traversed.
“A few days ago,” says another correspondent, “a lady who lives in Newport told me that, at one time, her house was quite overrun with mice; and, having procured the loan of a cat which was considered a good mouser, she tied it into a basket, and then placed it in a concealed part of the pony carriage. On her arrival at the ‘Cliff’ the prisoner was released; but even the prospect of a delicious feast of mice could not obliterate its thoughts of ‘home, sweet home;’ and, after about an hour’s stay, it set off, and, ere long, arrived at its former abode—distant three miles!”
Some months ago, a half-bred Persian tabby, came to my place, and has since then stuck to it with all the persistency of Edgar Allan Poe’s raven. He is a cat that seems to have nothing to recommend him; if he would come into the house, and behave like a civilised being, I would never grudge him his daily dole. But he prefers to live a half-pagan existence, out among the bushes, and take his nap of a night in the coal-house; and Bridget says he is an awful thief, and that she can’t leave the kitchen-door open one moment for fear of him. I’ve often asked that cat to take his departure, but, as plain as cat can speak, that cat says “never more.”
By way of experiment I have caught him several times—no easy task, I assure you—andsent him, securely packed in a hamper, distances of three, four, and five miles to friends who have set him free. And he always came back. His last journey was at Christmas-time—may Heaven forgive me this sin!—to the house of a parsonwhom I did not know, and I stuck some pheasants’ feathers too just under the lid. I don’t know what the parson thought, but Tom came back next day, not looking a single bit put out, and—I am willing to sell him to anyone who may have need of his services.
I know a cat who caught two sparrows at once, and when retreating, a third sparrow pursued and attacked him. This one pussy also killed, with his paw. That was funny!
Cats know certain days of the week, such as Sunday for instance, and they also know certain hours of each day. I don’t mean to say they look at the clock, but, if a favourite master or mistress is in the habit of coming home every day, say at 4 p.m., there you will often find that every day at 4 p.m. pussy will trot down the road to meet her and wait till she comes.
Cats make good husbands, gentle fathers, and the most tender and loving of mothers. A cat will fight for her kittens, starve orstealfor them. Oh! I daresay you imagine that stealing wouldn’t be likely to lie very heavily on a cat’s conscience. Now listen to this—which the printer will kindly put in italics—all experience goes to prove that well-fed, properly cared-for cats, are not thieves, but the reverse.
Cats have their kittens in queer places, at times. A lady’s best Sunday bonnet, or master’s wig, or a set of ermine furs, just suits pussy to a nicety. My cat once kittened in my cocked hat. It is a positive fact, madam, and so far from thinking she had done anything to offend me, she held up one of her brats for me to admire. But the queerest place for a cat to kitten in, that ever I knew, was a tree. The cat scrambled up the tree and brought forth her young in the nest of a wood-pigeon! I didn’t hear how the kittens got down again though, but I have every reason to believe the story. Probably, when the kittens opened their eyes they commenced playing with their mother’s tail, and went topsy-turvy to the ground. Well,facilis descensus Averni, and you know cats always fall on their feet. I knew a man who kicked his own cat out of his pigeon loft, three storeys high. He told me it didn’t seem to hurt her a bit, but rather increased her appetite.
Whether cats have nine lives or not, they take a great deal of killing.
I knew a cat that was drowned four times, and came home again as unconcernedly as if nothing very unusual had happened. However, drowning in the end seemed to get rather irksome to this pussy, and after the fourth immersion, he ran away to the woods, and didn’t come back to be drowned any more.
Many cases I know of parties having started off with puss in a bag to drown her, and having stopped to talk to a friend on the way back found, on their return, the cat sitting by the fire drying herself! I have many instances of cats having been thrown from bridges and other high places, with the intention of killing them, but without fatal effect.
Cats have been buried alive for days and recovered after being dug up. A cat of my acquaintance was sent to live at a mill. This seemed to please pussy very much. You see there were plenty of mice in the mill, and plenty of rats and fish in the mill-lead, so the cat made herself at home. But in course of time pussy became the mother of two kittens, and then the longing for her old home came back with a force too powerful to be resisted. She determined, therefore, to return to her former residence, and she did so, carrying her kittens one by one. The distance she had to travel was two miles, and the night she chose was a dark and stormy one.
There were two cats who dwelt at the self-same house and had kittens at the self-same time. All the kittens were drowned with the exception of two, one being left with each mother. And now comes the curious part of the business. These two mother-cats came to an amicable understanding, that whenever the one was abroad the other should suckle and attend to both babies, and this treaty was carried out to the letter.
Cats are not only fond of human beings, but often get greatly attached to other domestic animals, especially to the family dog. I know at this moment a cat whose constant companion is a Dandy Dinmont; and a rough one he is too, for, although he sleeps in pussy’s arms every night, he thinks nothing of pulling her all round the lawn by the tail at any time, the cat herself seeming to enjoy the fun!
Rabbits and cats often associate together on the most friendly terms, even accompanying each other in long excursions, the cat on these occasions electing herself protector of her feebler friend against predatory dogs and other cats.
A cat belonging to a friend of mine used to be constantly at war with the dog, until one day, with a blow of her ungloved paw, she blinded the poor animal in one eye. No mother could have been kinder to her child than pussy was to this dog, after she saw what she had done. That she bitterly repented the rash act is evident, for she watched beside him night and day, until he grew well again; and now, they are the fastest friends in the world, and the cat is the first to welcome the dog home when he returns from a walk.
As a proof of how cruel it is to takealla cat’s kittens away from her, I may state that, thus bereaved, a cat will take to nursing even chickens, or she will suckle puppies, hedgehogs, or rats.
It is a funny thing that many cats can’t bear music. Some will run out of the room if they hear a fiddle played, and others will growl and attack the musician.
Cats can be easily taught to follow one in a country walk just like a dog, and on these occasions they come much better to the sound of whistling than to any other call.
A well-bred cat will always teach its kittens habits of cleanliness, how to watch for and catch mice, and also how to catch minnows in a shallow stream.
I have already said that cats, as a rule, when well treated, are not thieves, but the very reverse. But when a cat does take to thieving for a livelihood, she becomes quite a swell at it—shows how clever she is.
Cats are considered in some parts of England to be of some value as an article of diet. I have never to my knowledge eaten cat, so I cannot give the reader any idea what they taste like.
It is ridiculous to suppose, as some do, that a cat’s breath has any effect upon a baby either for good or for evil. Neither will a cat bring blood from a child’s temple by licking it with its rough tongue.
An ugly old woman isn’t necessarily a witch because she keeps a black cat. Neither is a black cat a devil.
They say that witches sail over the sea in riddles accompanied by their black cats, and that they have rather a jolly time of it upon the whole, having plenty to eat, and plenty to drink—flagons of wine, in fact. Don’t you believe it, reader.
Cats are not afraid of snakes; but snakes, even the dreaded cobra, will invariably give pussy a wide berth.
Cats are fond of fish, absurdly so, and if you offer them even the gold-fish, they won’t feel offended. It is only out of respect for the owner thereof that they don’t devour the canary. They prefer canary living, with the feathers on. It tickles their palates and makes them laugh.
Chickens are dainties in a cat’scuisine; they also rather like a nice plump partridge, and won’t refuse to suck an egg when occasion offers.
Cats are, as a rule, Good Templars; the proof of which rule is this: I had a Red Tabby Tom who would eat oatmeal and whisky until he couldn’t stand. The servants knew this failing, and encouraged him in his evil ways; so that half his time, instead of being as sober as a judge—as every decent, respectable cat ought—Tom was as drunk as a piper.
It is funny to listen to a cat’s concert about two o’clock in the morning. Of course, if you are rather nervous, and want to go to sleep, it isn’t so funny. (N.B.—If cats were better treated, they would hold their concerts in daylight in the garden, instead of at midnight on the tiles. Mind you, there is something in that.)
Altogether, cats are funny things, and the more you study them the funnier you find them. That’s so!
Chapter Twenty One.The Fireside Favourite.The lines of some cats fall in pleasant places. Mine have. I’m the fireside favourite, I’m the parlour pet. I’m thebeau idéal, so my mistress says, of what every decent, respectable, well-trained cat ought to be—and I looked in the glass and found it so. But pray don’t think that I am vain because I happen to know the usages of polite society, and the uses and abuses of the looking-glass. No cat, in my opinion, with any claim to the dignity of lady-puss, would think of washing her face unless in front of a plate-glass mirror. But I will not soon forget the day I first knew what a looking-glass meant. I was then only a cheeky little mite of a kitten, of a highly inquiring turn of mind. Well, one evening my young mistress was going to a ball, and before she went she spent about three hours in her dressing-room, doing something, and then she came down to the parlour, looking more like an angel than ever I had seen her. Oh, how she was dressed, to be sure! And she had little bunches of flowers stuck on all over her dress, and I wanted to play at “mousies” with them; but she wouldn’t wait, she just kissed me and bade me be a good kitten and not run up the curtains, and then off she went. Yes; I meant to be an awfully good little kitten—but first and foremost I meant to see the interior of that mysterious room. By good luck the door was ajar, so in I popped at once, and made direct for the table. Such a display of beautiful things I had never seen before. I didn’t know what they all meant then, but I do now, for, mind you, I will soon be twenty years of age. But I got great fun on that table. I tried the gold rings on my nose, and the earrings on my toes, and I knocked off the lid of a powder-box, and scattered the crimson contents all abroad. Then I had a fearful battle with a puff which I unearthed from another box. During the fight a bottle of ylang-ylang went down. I didn’t care a dump. Crash went a bottle of fragrant floriline next. I regarded it not. I fought the puff till it took refuge on the floor. Then I paused, wondering what I should do next, when behold! right in front of me and looking through a square of glass, and apparently wondering whatitshould do next, was the ugliest little wretch of a kitten ever you saw in your life—a long-nosed, blear-eyed, pingey-wingey thing. I marched up to it as brave as a button, and it had the audacity to come and meet me.“You ugly, deformed little beast,” I cried, “what do you want in my lady’s room?”“The same to you,” it seemed to say, “and many of them.”“For two pins,” I continued, “I would scratch your nasty little eyes out—yah—fuss-s!”“Yah—fuss-s!” replied the foe, lifting its left paw as I lifted my right.This was too much. I crept round the corner to give her a cuff. She wasn’t there! I came back, and there she was as brazen as ever. I tried this game on several times, but couldn’t catch her. “Then,” says I, “you’ll have it where you stand, and hang the pane of glass!”I struck straight from the shoulder, and with a will too. Down went the glass, and I found I had been fighting all the time with my own shadow. Funny, wasn’t it?When mistress came home there was such a row. But she was sensible, and didn’t beat me. She took me upstairs, and showed me what I had done, and looked so vexed that I was sorry too. “It is my own fault, though,” she said; “I ought to have shut the door.”She presented me with a looking-glass soon after this, and it is quite surprising how my opinion of that strange kitten in the mirror altered after that. I thought now I had never seen such a lovely thing, and I was never tired looking at it. No more I had. But first impressionsareso erroneous, you know.My dear mother is dead and gone years ago—of course, considering my age, you won’t marvel at that; and my young mistress is married long, long ago, and has a grown family, who are all as kind as kind can be to old Tom, as they facetiously call me. And so they were to my mother, who, I may tell you, was only three days in her last illness, and gave up the ghost on a file of old newspapers (than which nothing makes a better bed) and is buried under the old pear-tree.Dear me, how often I have wondered how other poor cats who have neither kind master nor mistress manage to live. But, the poor creatures, they aresoignorant—badly-bred, you know. Why, only the other day the young master brought home a poor little cat, he had found starving in the street. Well, I never in all my life saw such an ill-mannered, rude little wretch, for no sooner had it got itself stuffed with the best fare in the house, than it made a deliberate attempt to steal the canary. There was gratitude for you! Now, mind, I don’t say thatIshouldn’t like to eat the canary, but I never have taken our own birds—no—always the neighbours’. I did, just once, fly at our own canary’s cage when I was quite a wee cat, and didn’t know any better. And what do you think my mistress did? Why, she took the bird out of the cage and popped me in; and there I was, all day long, a prisoner, with nothing for dinner but seeds and water, and the canary flying about the room and doing what it liked, even helping itself to my milk. I never forgot that.Some cats, you know, are arrant thieves, and I don’t wonder at it, the way they are kicked and cuffed about, put out all night, and never offered food or water. I would steal myself if I were used like that, wouldn’t you, madam? But I have my two meals a day, regularly; and I have a nice double saucer, which stands beside my mirror, and one end contains nice milk and the other clean water, and I don’t know which I like the best. When I am downright thirsty, the water is so nice; but at times I am hungry and thirsty both, if you can understand me—then I drink the milk. At times I am allowed to sit on the table when my mistress is at breakfast, and I often put out my paw, ever so gently, and help myself to a morsel from her plate; but I wouldn’t do it when she isn’t looking. The other day I took a fancy to a nice smelt, and I just went and told my mistress and led her to the kitchen, and I got what I wanted at once.I am never put out at night. I have always the softest and warmest of beds, and in winter, towards morning, when the fire goes out, I go upstairs and creep (singing loudly to let her know it is I) into my mistress’s arms.If I want to go on the tiles any night, I have only to ask. A fellow does want to go on the tiles now and then, doesn’t he? Oh, it is a jolly thing, is a night on the tiles! One of these days I may give you my experience of life on the tiles, and then you’ll know all about it—in the meantime, madam, you may try it yourself. Let it be moonlight, and be cautious, you know, for, as you have only two feet, you will feel rather awkward at first.Did I ever know what it was to be hungry? Yes, indeed, once I did; and I’m now going to tell you of the saddest experience in all my long life. You see it happened like this. It was autumn; I was then about five years of age, and a finer-looking Tom, I could see by my mirror, never trod on four legs. For some days I had observed an unusual bustle both upstairs and downstairs. The servants, especially, seemed all off their heads, and did nothing but open doors and shut them, and nail up things in large boxes, and drink beer and eat cold meat whenever they stood on end. What was up, I wondered? Went and asked my mistress. “Off to the seaside, pussy Tom,” said she; “and you’re going too, if you’re good.” I determined to be good, and not make faces at the canary. But one night I had been out rather late at a cat-concert, and, as usual, came home with the milk in the morning. In order to make sure of a good sleep I went upstairs to an unused attic, as was my wont, and fell asleep on an old pillow. How long I slept I shall never know, but it must have been far on in the day when I awoke, feeling hungry enough to eat a hunter. As I trotted downstairs the first thing that alarmed me was the unusual stillness. I mewed, and a thousand echoes seemed to mock me. The ticking of the old clock on the stairs had never sounded to me so loud and clear before. I went, one by one, into every room. Nothing in any of them but the stillness, apparently, of death and desolation. The blinds were all down, and I could even hear the mice nibbling behind the wainscot.My heart felt like a great cold lump of lead, as the sad truth flashed upon my mind—my kind mistress had gone, with all the family, and I was left, forgotten, deserted! My first endeavour was to find my way out. Had I succeeded, even then I would have found my mistress, for cats have an instinct you little wot of. But every door and window was fastened, and there wasn’t a hole left which a rat could have crept through.What nights and days of misery followed!—it makes me shudder to think of them even now.For the first few days I did not suffer much from hunger. There were crumbs left by the servants, and occasionally a mouse crept out from the kitchen fender, and I had that. But by the fifth day the crumbs had all gone, and with them the mice, too, had disappeared. They nibbled no more in the cupboard nor behind the wainscot; and as the clock had run down there wasn’t a sound in the old house by night or by day. I now began to suffer both from hunger and thirst. I spent my time either mewing piteously at the hall-door, or roaming purposelessly through the empty house, or watching, watching, faint and wearily, for the mice that never came. Perhaps the most bitter part of my sufferings just then was the thought that would keep obtruding itself on my mind, that for all the love with which I had loved my mistress, and the faithfulness with which I had served her, she had gone away, and left me to die all alone in the deserted house. Me, too, who would have laid down my life to please her had she only stayed near me.How slowly the time dragged on—how long and dreary the days, how terrible the nights! Perhaps it was when I was at my very worst, that I happened to be standing close by my empty saucer, and in front of my mirror. At that time I was almost too weak to walk, I tottered on my feet, and my head swam and moved from side to side when I tried to look at anything. Suddenly I started. Could that wild, attenuated image in the mirror be my reflection? How it glared upon me from its glassy eyes! And now I knew it could not be mine, but some dreadful thing sent to torture me. For as I gazed it uttered a yell—mournful, prolonged, unearthly—and dashed at me through and out from the mirror. For some time we seemed to writhe together in agony on the carpet. Then up again we started, the mirror-fiend and I. “Follow me fast!” it seemed to cry, and I was impelled to follow. Wherever it was, there was I. How it tore up and down the house, yelling as it went and tearing everything in its way! How it rushed half up the chimney, and was dashed back again by invisible hands! How it flung itself, half-blind and bleeding, at the Venetian blinds, and how madly it tried again to escape into the mirror and shivered the glass! Then mills began in my head—mills and machinery—and the roar of running waters. Then I found myself walking all alone in a green and beautiful meadow, with a blue sky overhead and birds and butterflies all about, a cool breeze fanning my brow, and, better than all,water, pure, and clear, and cool, meandering over brown smooth pebbles, beside which the minnows chased the sunbeams. And I drank—and slept.When I awoke, I found myself lying on the mat in the hall, and the sunlight shimmering in through the stained glass, and falling in patches of green and crimson on the floor. Very cold now, but quiet and sensible. There was a large hole in my side, and blood was all about, so I must have, in my delirium,torn the flesh, from my own ribs and devoured it. (Not overdrawn. A case of the kind actually occurred some years ago in the new town of Edinburgh.—The Author.)I knew now that death was come, and would set me free at last.Then the noise of wheels in my ears, and the sound of human voices; then a blank; and then someone pouring something down my throat; and I opened my eyes and beheld my dear young mistress. How she was weeping! The sight of her sorrow would have melted your heart. “Oh, pussy, pussy, do not die!” she was crying.Pussy didn’t die; but till this day I believe it was only to please my dear mistress I crept back again to life and love.I’m very old now, and my thoughts dwell mostly in the past, and I like a cheery fire and a drop of warm milk better than ever. But I have all my faculties and all my comforts. We have other cats in the house, but I never feel jealous, for my mistress, look you, loves me better than all the cats in the kingdom—fact—she told me so.
The lines of some cats fall in pleasant places. Mine have. I’m the fireside favourite, I’m the parlour pet. I’m thebeau idéal, so my mistress says, of what every decent, respectable, well-trained cat ought to be—and I looked in the glass and found it so. But pray don’t think that I am vain because I happen to know the usages of polite society, and the uses and abuses of the looking-glass. No cat, in my opinion, with any claim to the dignity of lady-puss, would think of washing her face unless in front of a plate-glass mirror. But I will not soon forget the day I first knew what a looking-glass meant. I was then only a cheeky little mite of a kitten, of a highly inquiring turn of mind. Well, one evening my young mistress was going to a ball, and before she went she spent about three hours in her dressing-room, doing something, and then she came down to the parlour, looking more like an angel than ever I had seen her. Oh, how she was dressed, to be sure! And she had little bunches of flowers stuck on all over her dress, and I wanted to play at “mousies” with them; but she wouldn’t wait, she just kissed me and bade me be a good kitten and not run up the curtains, and then off she went. Yes; I meant to be an awfully good little kitten—but first and foremost I meant to see the interior of that mysterious room. By good luck the door was ajar, so in I popped at once, and made direct for the table. Such a display of beautiful things I had never seen before. I didn’t know what they all meant then, but I do now, for, mind you, I will soon be twenty years of age. But I got great fun on that table. I tried the gold rings on my nose, and the earrings on my toes, and I knocked off the lid of a powder-box, and scattered the crimson contents all abroad. Then I had a fearful battle with a puff which I unearthed from another box. During the fight a bottle of ylang-ylang went down. I didn’t care a dump. Crash went a bottle of fragrant floriline next. I regarded it not. I fought the puff till it took refuge on the floor. Then I paused, wondering what I should do next, when behold! right in front of me and looking through a square of glass, and apparently wondering whatitshould do next, was the ugliest little wretch of a kitten ever you saw in your life—a long-nosed, blear-eyed, pingey-wingey thing. I marched up to it as brave as a button, and it had the audacity to come and meet me.
“You ugly, deformed little beast,” I cried, “what do you want in my lady’s room?”
“The same to you,” it seemed to say, “and many of them.”
“For two pins,” I continued, “I would scratch your nasty little eyes out—yah—fuss-s!”
“Yah—fuss-s!” replied the foe, lifting its left paw as I lifted my right.
This was too much. I crept round the corner to give her a cuff. She wasn’t there! I came back, and there she was as brazen as ever. I tried this game on several times, but couldn’t catch her. “Then,” says I, “you’ll have it where you stand, and hang the pane of glass!”
I struck straight from the shoulder, and with a will too. Down went the glass, and I found I had been fighting all the time with my own shadow. Funny, wasn’t it?
When mistress came home there was such a row. But she was sensible, and didn’t beat me. She took me upstairs, and showed me what I had done, and looked so vexed that I was sorry too. “It is my own fault, though,” she said; “I ought to have shut the door.”
She presented me with a looking-glass soon after this, and it is quite surprising how my opinion of that strange kitten in the mirror altered after that. I thought now I had never seen such a lovely thing, and I was never tired looking at it. No more I had. But first impressionsareso erroneous, you know.
My dear mother is dead and gone years ago—of course, considering my age, you won’t marvel at that; and my young mistress is married long, long ago, and has a grown family, who are all as kind as kind can be to old Tom, as they facetiously call me. And so they were to my mother, who, I may tell you, was only three days in her last illness, and gave up the ghost on a file of old newspapers (than which nothing makes a better bed) and is buried under the old pear-tree.
Dear me, how often I have wondered how other poor cats who have neither kind master nor mistress manage to live. But, the poor creatures, they aresoignorant—badly-bred, you know. Why, only the other day the young master brought home a poor little cat, he had found starving in the street. Well, I never in all my life saw such an ill-mannered, rude little wretch, for no sooner had it got itself stuffed with the best fare in the house, than it made a deliberate attempt to steal the canary. There was gratitude for you! Now, mind, I don’t say thatIshouldn’t like to eat the canary, but I never have taken our own birds—no—always the neighbours’. I did, just once, fly at our own canary’s cage when I was quite a wee cat, and didn’t know any better. And what do you think my mistress did? Why, she took the bird out of the cage and popped me in; and there I was, all day long, a prisoner, with nothing for dinner but seeds and water, and the canary flying about the room and doing what it liked, even helping itself to my milk. I never forgot that.
Some cats, you know, are arrant thieves, and I don’t wonder at it, the way they are kicked and cuffed about, put out all night, and never offered food or water. I would steal myself if I were used like that, wouldn’t you, madam? But I have my two meals a day, regularly; and I have a nice double saucer, which stands beside my mirror, and one end contains nice milk and the other clean water, and I don’t know which I like the best. When I am downright thirsty, the water is so nice; but at times I am hungry and thirsty both, if you can understand me—then I drink the milk. At times I am allowed to sit on the table when my mistress is at breakfast, and I often put out my paw, ever so gently, and help myself to a morsel from her plate; but I wouldn’t do it when she isn’t looking. The other day I took a fancy to a nice smelt, and I just went and told my mistress and led her to the kitchen, and I got what I wanted at once.
I am never put out at night. I have always the softest and warmest of beds, and in winter, towards morning, when the fire goes out, I go upstairs and creep (singing loudly to let her know it is I) into my mistress’s arms.
If I want to go on the tiles any night, I have only to ask. A fellow does want to go on the tiles now and then, doesn’t he? Oh, it is a jolly thing, is a night on the tiles! One of these days I may give you my experience of life on the tiles, and then you’ll know all about it—in the meantime, madam, you may try it yourself. Let it be moonlight, and be cautious, you know, for, as you have only two feet, you will feel rather awkward at first.
Did I ever know what it was to be hungry? Yes, indeed, once I did; and I’m now going to tell you of the saddest experience in all my long life. You see it happened like this. It was autumn; I was then about five years of age, and a finer-looking Tom, I could see by my mirror, never trod on four legs. For some days I had observed an unusual bustle both upstairs and downstairs. The servants, especially, seemed all off their heads, and did nothing but open doors and shut them, and nail up things in large boxes, and drink beer and eat cold meat whenever they stood on end. What was up, I wondered? Went and asked my mistress. “Off to the seaside, pussy Tom,” said she; “and you’re going too, if you’re good.” I determined to be good, and not make faces at the canary. But one night I had been out rather late at a cat-concert, and, as usual, came home with the milk in the morning. In order to make sure of a good sleep I went upstairs to an unused attic, as was my wont, and fell asleep on an old pillow. How long I slept I shall never know, but it must have been far on in the day when I awoke, feeling hungry enough to eat a hunter. As I trotted downstairs the first thing that alarmed me was the unusual stillness. I mewed, and a thousand echoes seemed to mock me. The ticking of the old clock on the stairs had never sounded to me so loud and clear before. I went, one by one, into every room. Nothing in any of them but the stillness, apparently, of death and desolation. The blinds were all down, and I could even hear the mice nibbling behind the wainscot.
My heart felt like a great cold lump of lead, as the sad truth flashed upon my mind—my kind mistress had gone, with all the family, and I was left, forgotten, deserted! My first endeavour was to find my way out. Had I succeeded, even then I would have found my mistress, for cats have an instinct you little wot of. But every door and window was fastened, and there wasn’t a hole left which a rat could have crept through.
What nights and days of misery followed!—it makes me shudder to think of them even now.
For the first few days I did not suffer much from hunger. There were crumbs left by the servants, and occasionally a mouse crept out from the kitchen fender, and I had that. But by the fifth day the crumbs had all gone, and with them the mice, too, had disappeared. They nibbled no more in the cupboard nor behind the wainscot; and as the clock had run down there wasn’t a sound in the old house by night or by day. I now began to suffer both from hunger and thirst. I spent my time either mewing piteously at the hall-door, or roaming purposelessly through the empty house, or watching, watching, faint and wearily, for the mice that never came. Perhaps the most bitter part of my sufferings just then was the thought that would keep obtruding itself on my mind, that for all the love with which I had loved my mistress, and the faithfulness with which I had served her, she had gone away, and left me to die all alone in the deserted house. Me, too, who would have laid down my life to please her had she only stayed near me.
How slowly the time dragged on—how long and dreary the days, how terrible the nights! Perhaps it was when I was at my very worst, that I happened to be standing close by my empty saucer, and in front of my mirror. At that time I was almost too weak to walk, I tottered on my feet, and my head swam and moved from side to side when I tried to look at anything. Suddenly I started. Could that wild, attenuated image in the mirror be my reflection? How it glared upon me from its glassy eyes! And now I knew it could not be mine, but some dreadful thing sent to torture me. For as I gazed it uttered a yell—mournful, prolonged, unearthly—and dashed at me through and out from the mirror. For some time we seemed to writhe together in agony on the carpet. Then up again we started, the mirror-fiend and I. “Follow me fast!” it seemed to cry, and I was impelled to follow. Wherever it was, there was I. How it tore up and down the house, yelling as it went and tearing everything in its way! How it rushed half up the chimney, and was dashed back again by invisible hands! How it flung itself, half-blind and bleeding, at the Venetian blinds, and how madly it tried again to escape into the mirror and shivered the glass! Then mills began in my head—mills and machinery—and the roar of running waters. Then I found myself walking all alone in a green and beautiful meadow, with a blue sky overhead and birds and butterflies all about, a cool breeze fanning my brow, and, better than all,water, pure, and clear, and cool, meandering over brown smooth pebbles, beside which the minnows chased the sunbeams. And I drank—and slept.
When I awoke, I found myself lying on the mat in the hall, and the sunlight shimmering in through the stained glass, and falling in patches of green and crimson on the floor. Very cold now, but quiet and sensible. There was a large hole in my side, and blood was all about, so I must have, in my delirium,torn the flesh, from my own ribs and devoured it. (Not overdrawn. A case of the kind actually occurred some years ago in the new town of Edinburgh.—The Author.)
I knew now that death was come, and would set me free at last.
Then the noise of wheels in my ears, and the sound of human voices; then a blank; and then someone pouring something down my throat; and I opened my eyes and beheld my dear young mistress. How she was weeping! The sight of her sorrow would have melted your heart. “Oh, pussy, pussy, do not die!” she was crying.
Pussy didn’t die; but till this day I believe it was only to please my dear mistress I crept back again to life and love.
I’m very old now, and my thoughts dwell mostly in the past, and I like a cheery fire and a drop of warm milk better than ever. But I have all my faculties and all my comforts. We have other cats in the house, but I never feel jealous, for my mistress, look you, loves me better than all the cats in the kingdom—fact—she told me so.