CAT TALES.
FAITHFUL GRIMALKIN.
Many years ago, when my parents lived in old Connecticut, my mother had a pet cat, a pretty graceful creature, frisky and arch and gay, though clad in sober gray. She was a favorite with all the large household, but especially attached herself to my mother, following her about everywhere,—“up stairs, down stairs, and in my lady’s chamber,” accompanying her in her walks, hiding behind every bush, and prancing out upon her in a surprising, not to say startling, manner.
At last she grew out of kittenhood, laid aside, in a measure, kittenish things, and became the happiest, fondest, proudest feline mamma ever beheld. She caressed and gloated over her little, blind, toddling, mewing, miniature tigers in a perfect ecstasy of maternal delight. Just at this interesting period of pussy’s life our family moved from the old place to a house in the country, about a mile away. My mother was ill, and was carried very carefully on a bed from one sick-room to another. In the hurry, trouble, and confusion of that time, poor pussy, who lodged with her family in an attic, was quite forgotten. But early in the morning of the first day in the new house,—a pleasant summer morning, when all the doors and windows were open,—as my mother lay on her bed, in a parlor on the first floor, she saw her cat walk into the hall and look eagerly around. The moment the faithful creature caught sight of her beloved mistress, she came bounding into the room, across it, and on to the bed, where she purred and mewed in a delighted, yet reproachful way, quite hysterical, licking my mother’s hand and rubbing up against her cheek in a manner that said more plainly than words, “Ah! my dear madam, didst thou think to leave thy faithful Grimalkin behind? Where thou goest, I will go.”
She was taken into the kitchen and treated to a cup of new milk; but after a few moments given to rest and refreshment she disappeared. Yet she went only to come again in the course of an hour, lugging one of her kittens, which she deposited on the bed, commended to my mother’s care, and straightway departed. In an almost incredibly short time she came bounding in with a second kitten. She continued her journeys till the whole litter had been safely transported, over hill and dale, ditches and stone-walls, through perils of unfriendly dogs and mischievous boys, and the family flitting was complete.
After this, our noble puss was loved and respected more than ever. She dwelt long in the land, and her kits grew up, I believe, to be worthy of such a mother.
OBEDIENT THOMAS.
Now I want to give you an instance of filial respect and submission in a young cat. When we first came to Washington, nearly two years ago, I took to petting a handsome cat belonging to the relatives with whom we then lived. I fed and caressed her, and she became very fond of me, always running to meet me when I entered the garden which she haunted, or the barn in which she lodged. She was rather wild in her ways, and so stole a nest, in which she finally hid away some kittens, that she afterwards reared to be wilder than herself. These somehow disappeared, all but one, which, when he was about half grown, I undertook to tame. It was a difficult, tedious job; but I persevered, and at last found him a more affectionate, docile pet than ever his mother had been. She had seemed fond of him in his wild, unregenerate days, but as soon as he became domesticated, and I began to show a partiality for him, she grew very severe with him, scratching his face and boxing his ears whenever she saw me caressing him. I soon noticed that when she was near he was shy, pretending not to be on intimate terms with me; while, if she was out of the way, I had only to call his name, to have him come galloping up from the furthest part of the long garden, to rub against me, to lick my hand, and show every feline fondness and delight. Now we live at another house, and I seldom see my pets, mother and son; but they are loving and constant still, proving that the poet Coleridge didn’t know every thing when he talked about “the little short memories” of cats.
Master Thomas has grown large and strong, and is accounted a gallant young fellow by all the young pussies in the neighborhood. But while toward cats of his own sex he is fierce and combative, he is just as meek and deferential to his mother as he was in his tender kittenhood. The other day I encountered him in the old garden, and was surprised to find how stalwart he had become. I stooped to caress him, and he seemed as susceptible to gentle overtures as ever, arched his back, switched his tail, and purred rapturously. Suddenly the mother cat stole out from behind a tree, and confronted us. “Good morning, madam,” I said, for I always talk to cats and dogs just as I talk to other people. “You have a fine son here; a handsome young fellow, that favors you, I think.” But she wasn’t to be softened by the compliment. She walked straight up to him, and boxed him first on one ear and then on the other, quite in the old motherly way. As for him he never thought of resenting the old lady’s act, or opposing her will, but drooped his lordly tail, and hastily retreated. Now that is what I call good family discipline.
This city of Washington is a place where the wits of people are sharpened, if anywhere, and perhaps even cats and dogs become uncommonly clever and knowing here. Only yesterday I was told of a Washington cat which had just been found out in a wonderful trick. Observing that, when the door-bell rang, the one servant of the household was obliged to leave the kitchen, she managed to slyly ring the bell, by jumping up against the wire, and invariably, when her enemy, the cook, went to the door, she would slip into the kitchen, and help herself to whatever tempting article of food was within reach. At last some one watched, and caught her at her secret “wire-pulling.” Poor puss retired with a drooping tail and a most dejected aspect, evidently realizing that the game was up.
Another cat I know of was of so amiable and benevolent a disposition that she actually adopted into her own circle of infant kits a poor, forlorn little foundling of a rat. As her nursling he grew and thrived, seeming quite as tame as the others; and when a mischievous boy set a rat-terrier on him, and so finished him, cat and kittens really seemed to mourn for their foster son and brother.
KATRINA AND KATINKA.
Once on a time—no matter when—in a certain beautiful city—no matter where—there lived two lovely twin sisters, with the brightest eyes, and the cunningest little roly-poly figures, and the slenderest ears with the softest pink satin lining, and the spryest motions imaginable. They were brunettes in complexion, with white breasts and tail-tips, and they were kittens. Katrina and Katinka were their names, if I remember rightly,—maybe I don’t, but anyhow they might have had those names, which, to my thinking, are very pretty and appropriate for kittens.
Well, these same twin pussies were singularly fond of each other, and more singularly good to each other. They never called names, or scratched, or spat in each other’s pretty faces, or pulled each other’s little smellers, or quarrelled over their meals. They were so marvellously alike that it was always difficult to tell them apart; and when they slept, as they always did, hugged close in each other’s arms, you couldn’t have told to save you where one kitten left off and the other kitten began.
They not only slept, ate, and played together, but, as they grew older, took their strolls for health and recreation and their mouse-hunts in the same close and loving companionship. They were very curious and wide-awake little bodies, and liked to see all they could of the great, busy world; so every pleasant afternoon, when there was much driving and walking up and down the fine street on which they lived, they could be seen strolling down the long walk to the gate, always exactly side by side,—“neck and neck,” as the horse people say,—as even in their pace, and as perfectly matched in their action, as ever were a pair of trained ponies in Hyde Park. Reaching the gate, they would pause and stand quite still for a half-hour or so, gravely gazing through the palings at the passers,—pedestrians, equestrians, and drivers of fast horses,—like a pair of dear little brigadiers reviewing their brigades marching by. Then, with the air of having discharged a public duty to the entire satisfaction of the community, they would wheel exactly together, and again, precisely neck and neck and tail and tail, trot gently homeward.
So they lived on, in and for each other, almost as much united as if they had been a pair of small feline female Siamese twins, amiable, loving, and virtuous, and grew in knowledge and stature up to a comely young cathood. At last it happened that a very interesting event occurred to the twin sisters at precisely the same time,—they became happy mothers, were blessed with three or four fine kittens apiece. But alas! before the little strangers had got fairly to feel their legs, before they had got their eyes open, all save one mysteriously disappeared from each nest. It was one fatal morning when the twin sisters had slipped out of their happy attic apartment for a little air,—to take their “Constitutional” in a trot down the long gravel walk to see how the world would look to them now they were mothers,—that this kit-napping occurred. When they returned to their families, they found them strangely thinned out; but they were mothers for all that, and did not seem to fret much, or abate their maternal pride a jot.
You see the ruling power in the human household in which they were domesticated, and who was to them as a providence, had ordered a little hydropathy for their poor, feeble, sprawling, blind darlings,—beginning with what is called in water-cures “the heroic treatment,” a cold plunge; and it didn’t agree with them,—it never does with any but the healthy and hardy patients,—so it was they never came back. But under the blue waves they sleep well, though never a mew or a purr comes bubbling up to the surface to tell the spot where they lie on beds of tangled sea-grass. “Requies-cat in pace,” as old tombstones say.
The next mournful event in this true family history was the untimely death of Katrina’s one darling. This had proved to be but a frail flower of kittenhood; very pretty she was,—“too sweet to live,” people said. Her constitution was defective, her nervous system was extremely delicate. Before she was a week old she had something alarmingly like a fit of catalepsy. Suddenly, while imbibing nourishment, with her fond mother purring over her, and two or three children looking on in smiling sympathy, she gave a piteous wild mew, rolled over on her back, and stuck up her four little legs and laid out her little tail stiff as a poker! On the ninth day of her little life she opened her blinking blue eyes on this great wonderful world, in which she had as good a right to be as you or I; but she didn’t seem to like the looks of things, for she soon closed those small eyes again, and never opened them more. Life was evidently too hard a conundrum for her poor, weak little brain, and she gave it up.
Of course Katrina was greatly afflicted, but she did not abandon herself utterly to grief. Had not her sister a kitten left? and had not they two always had every thing in common? So as soon as the sympathetic children had buried her dead out of her sight under a lilac-bush, she went straightway to Katinka, and, with her full consent, began to divide with her the duties and joys of maternity. All three just cuddled down together in one nest; from mamma or auntie Master Catkin took nourishment, just as it suited his whim or convenience, and, as you might suppose, he grew and thrived astonishingly. So equal and perfect was this partnership in the kitten, that it was impossible for a stranger to tell which of the two cats was the real mother. One day all three were brought down to the parlor to amuse some visitors. Both mammas seemed equally nervous about having the baby kitten handled, and presently one of them caught it by the neck,—the cat’s usual, immemorial way of transporting her young,—and started with it for the attic; when, to the surprise and immense amusement of all present, the other caught hold of the tail, and so the two bore it away in triumph.
After this I am afraid the children gave the little kitten rather more travelling than he liked. It was such fun to see the two anxious cats following him, mewing, and at the first chance catching him up, and lugging him home in that absurd manner. Generally the real certain true mother seized on the head, but sometimes she was magnanimous enough to yield the post of honor to the aunt, and take to the tail herself.
So things went on for a few weeks, and then there happened to this estimable cat-family another sad event,—for this is a tragedy I am writing, though you may not have suspected it,—Katinka died! What of has never yet been decided; physicians differed about it, and the coroner could not make it out. But this much is certain, Katinka died. The grief of Katrina was and is very affecting to behold. She mopes, she mews, and her slender tail, which she used to carry erect with such a jaunty air, droops dolefully. She takes no longer the “Constitutional” trot down the walk to the front gate. Life seems to have grown dull and wearisome to her, and the pleasures of mouse-hunting and tree-climbing appear to have lost their zest. If she remembers at all the halcyon period when much of her precious time was spent in a dizzy round of gayety, in a swift pursuit of a ball of cotton, or a futile pursuit of her own tail, it is in sad wonder that she could ever have been so merry and thoughtless. She grows thin, neglects her toilet, and often refuses food; but when the children offer her catnip, she turns languidly away. If she were acquainted with Shakespeare, she would doubtless say,—“Canst thou minister to a mind diseased?” “Throw physic to Bose and Jowler,—I’ll none of it!”
Friendly cat-neighbors call in occasionally, but they cannot console her. All the petting of the household fails thus far to make her cheery and playful as once she was. She is fed on the very “milk of human kindness,” but grief has licked the cream off.
She seems to find her only consolation in her care and affection for the motherless catkin, and in his fondness for her. I am sorry to say that he does not show a very deep sense of his loss; perhaps he is too young to realize it. His good aunt seems sufficient for all his needs, and he thrives finely, is fat and jolly, and full of all kittenish pranks and mischievous tricks. Poor Katrina will have a time with him, I fear, as he is sadly petted and indulged. Such a lazy rascal as he is too,—don’t earn the salt of his porridge, that is, if he took it salted,—and, though quite old enough to “go on the war path,” has never yet killed his mouse, or brought home a rat’s scalp, or a ground-squirrel’s brush, or as much as a feather from a tomtit’s wing. Ah! of all the darlings in the world, an aunty’s darling is the likeliest to be spoiled.
This is all I know about this curious cat-family. I hope, dear children, that my true story may not sadden you, for I really wish you, one and all, the merriest of merry Christmases, and the happiest of happy New Years.
All I can say in the way of a moral to my little story is: How beautiful is love! even when shown in the fortunes and sorrows of cats and kittens, how beautiful is love!