i flatter myself that my head is not remarkable for size and beauty alone. i am a cat of mind, and i made it up at once as to the course of conduct to pursue.
i am also a cat with some powers of observation, and i have observed that two things go a long way with men—flattery and persistence. also that the difficulty of coaxing them is not in direct proportion to their size—rather the reverse. another thing that i have observed is, that if you want to be well-treated, or have a favour to ask, it is a great thing to have a good coat on your back in good order.
how many a human being has sleeked the rich softness of my magnificent tiger skin, and then said, in perfect good faith, "how toots enjoys being stroked!"
"how you enjoy the feel of my fur, you mean," i am tempted to say. but i do not say it. it doesn't do to disturb the self-complacency of people who have the control of the milk-jug.
having made up my mind to coax the gentleman into adopting me, i devoted myself entirely to him for the evening, and ignored the rest of the party, as serenely as a cat knows how. again and again did he put me down with firm, but not ungentle hands, saying—"go down, toots," and pick stray hairs in a fidgety manner off his dress-trousers; and again and again did i return to his shoulder (where he couldn't see the hairs) and purr in his ear, and rub my long whiskers against his short ones.
but it was not till he was comfortably established in an arm-chair by the drawing-room fire, round which the rest of the family were also seated, that the charm began to work.
"how devoted toots is to you!" purred the ladies, after an ineffectual effort on my part to share the arm-chair.
"you're a very foolish toots," said the gentleman. (i was back on his shoulder by this time.)
"toots, you've deserted me," said my young mistress. "i'm quite jealous," she added.
"toots, you brute!" cried the gentleman, seizing me in both hands. "where's your good taste, and your gratitude? go to your mistress, sir," and he threw me into her lap. but i sprang back to his shoulder with one leap.
"it's really most extraordinary," said one lady.
"and toots never goes to strangers as a rule," added my mistress.
everybody is proud of being exceptionally favoured. it was this last stroke, i am convinced, that rubbed him the right way. a gratified blandness pervaded his countenance. he made no further attempts to dislodge me, and i settled myself into the angles of his shoulder and affected to go to sleep.
"what are you going to do with him?" he asked, crossing one long leg over the other with a convulsive abruptness very trying to my balance, and to the strength of the arm-chair.
both the ladies began to mew. they were so sorry to leave me behind, but it was quite impossible to take me. they couldn't bear to think of my being unhappy, and didn't know where in the world to find me a home.
"i wish you would take him!" said my mistress.
i listened breathlessly for the gentleman's reply.
"pets are not in the least in my line," he said. "i am a bachelor, you know, of very tidy habits. i dislike trouble, and have a rooted objection to encumbrances."
"we hear you have a pet mouse, though," said my mistress. he laughed awkwardly.
"my dear young lady, i never said that my practice always squared with my principles. helpless and troublesome creatures have sometimes an insinuating way with them, which forms an additional reason for avoiding them, especially if one is weak-minded. and——"
"and you have a pet mouse?"
he sat suddenly upright with another jerk, which nearly shot me into the fire-place, and said,
"i'll tell you about it, for upon my word i wish you could see the little beggar. it was one afternoon when i came in from riding, that i found a mouse sitting on the fender. i could only see his back, with the tail twitching, and i noticed that a piece had been bitten out of his left ear. the little wretch must have heard me quite well, but he sat on as if the place belonged to him.
"'you're pretty cool!' i said; and being rather the reverse myself, i threw the queen's regulations at him, and he disappeared. but it bothered me, for i hate mice in one's quarters. you never know what mischief they mayn't be doing. you put valuable papers carefully away, and the next time you go to the cupboard, they are reduced to shreds. the little brutes take the lining of your slippers to line their nests. they keep you awake at night—in short, they're detestable. but i am not fond of killing things myself, though i've a sort of a conscience about knowing how it's done. i don't like leaving necessary executions to servants. as to mice, you know—poisoning is out of the question, on sanitary grounds. 'catch-'em-alive' traps are like a policeman who catches a pickpocket—all the trouble of the prosecution is to come; and as to the traps with springs and spikes—my man set one in my bedroom once, and in the middle of the night the mouse was caught. for nearly an hour i doubt if i was much the happier of the two. every moment i thought the poor wretch would stop screaming, for i had ordered the trap in the belief that death was instantaneous. at last i jumped up, and put the whole concern into my tub and held it under water. the poor beast was dead in six seconds. a catch-'em-alive trap and a tub of water is the most merciful death, i fancy; but i am rather in favour of letting one animal kill another. it seems more natural, and fairer. they have a run for their lives, so to speak."
"and who did you get to kill your mouse?"
"well, i know a youngster who has a terrier. they are a perfect pair. as like as two peas, and equally keen about sport—they would go twenty miles to chase a bluebottle round an attic, sooner than not hunt something. so i told him there was a mouse de trop in my rooms, and he promised to bring nipper next morning. i was going out hunting myself.
"the meet was early, and my man got breakfast at seven o'clock for me in my own quarters; and the first thing i saw when i came out of my bedroom was the mouse sitting on the edge of my indian silver sugar-basin. i knew him again by his ear. and there he sat all breakfast-time, twitching his tail, and nibbling little bits of sugar, and watching me with such a pair of eyes! have you ever seen a mouse's eyes close? upon my word, they are wonderfully beautiful, and it's uncommonly difficult to hurt a creature with fine eyes. i didn't touch it, and as i was going out i looked back, and the mouse was looking after me. i was a fool for looking back, for i can't stand a pitiful expression in man or beast, and it put an end to nipper's sport, and left me with a mouse in my quarters—a thing i hate. i didn't like to say i'd changed my mind about killing the mouse, but i wrote to nipper's master, and said i wouldn't trouble him to come up for such a trifling matter."
"so the mouse was safe?"
"well, i thought so. but the young fellow (who is very good-natured) wrote back to say it was no trouble whatever, and the letter lay on my mantel-piece till i came home and found that he and nipper had broken a chair-leg, and two china plates."
"did they kill the mouse?"
"well, no. but i nearly killed nipper in saving him; and the little rascal has lived with me ever since."
the ladies seemed highly delighted with this anecdote, but, for my own part, i felt feverish to the tips of my claws, as i thought of the miserable creature who had usurped the place i wished to fill, and who might be the means of my having to fall back after all on the deserted cats' fund. what bungling puss had had him under her paws, and allowed him to escape with a torn ear and the wariness of experience? let me but once catch sight of that twitching tail!——
at this moment the gentleman got up, stretched his long——
but i will not allude to them! it annoys me as much as the thought of that bungling cat, or of nipper's baulked attempt. he put up his hands and lifted me from his shoulder, and my heart sank as he said, "if i am to catch my train, i fear i must say good-bye."
i believe that, in this hopeless crisis, my fur as usual was in my favour. he rubbed his cheek against mine before putting me down, and then said, "and you've not told me, after all, where poor toots is really going."
"we have not found a home for him yet, i assure you," said my mistress. "our washerwoman wants him, and she is a most kind-hearted and respectable person, but she has got nine children, and——"
"nine children!" ejaculated my friend, "my poor toots, there will not be an inch of that magnificent tail of yours left at the end of a week. what cruelty to animals! upon my word, i'd almost rather take toots myself, than think of him with a washerwoman and nine children. eh, toots! would you like to come?"
i was on the carpet, rubbing against his—yes, long or short, they were his, and he was kind to me!—rubbing, i say, against his legs. i could get no impetus for a spring, but i scrambled straight up him as one would scramble up a tree (my grandmother was a bird-catcher of the first talent, and i inherit her claws), and uttered one pitiful mew.
the gentleman gave a short laugh, and took me into his arms.
"oh, how good of you! jones shall get a hamper," cried the ladies. but he shook his head.
"three of the fourteen parcels i've got to pick up at the station are hampers. i wouldn't have another on my mind for a fortune. if toots comes at all, he must come like a christian and look after himself."
i will not dwell on our departure. it was a sadly flurried one, for a cat of my temperament. the ladies saw us off, and as my young mistress covered me with farewell kisses, i felt an unquestionable pang of regret. but one has to repress one's affections, and consider one's prospects in life, if one does not want to come upon the deserted cats' fund!
my master put his hat on the back of his head on the steps, and knocked it off in shouting through a hole in the roof of the cab that we were to drive like the wind, as we were late. at the last moment several things were thrown in after us. a parcel of books he had lent the young lady, and a pair of boots he had left behind on some former occasion. the books were very neatly packed, and addressed, but the boots came "like christians, and looked after themselves." and through all, i clung fast, and blessed the inherited vigour of my grandmother's claws.
at the parcels office, i certainly risked nine lives among the fourteen parcels which were dragged and pitched, and turned over in every direction; but though he paid me no other attention, my master never forgot to put back a hand to help me when we moved on. eventually we found ourselves alone in a very comfortable carriage, and i suppose the fourteen packages were safe too, thanks to the desperate struggles of five porters, who went off clutching their paws as if they were satisfied with the result.
after incommoding me for some time by rustling newspapers, and making spasmodic struggles to find a posture that suited him, my master found one at last and fell asleep, and i crept up to the velvet collar of his great-coat and followed his example.
