Dixie in her Home
So it was that the wild little barn cat became a house cat. She had come to live with busy people, and I fancy she thought that she was as busy as they. In the morning, as soon as she heard the steps of Somebody Else, she ran to the top of the stairs to be ready to come out the moment that the door was opened. The next thing to do was to go up to Lady’s room. The door was almost always closed, but Dixie sat down beside it and waited patiently until she heard some little sounds within. Then she rubbed on the door with the little pads on the bottom of her paw,—very softly, to be sure, but Lady always heard her and opened it. Once in a while Dixie went out of doors when she first came up from the cellar, and occasionally it happened that she could not get in again at once. That did not trouble her, for she had another way of reaching Lady’s room that she liked fully as well as going by the hall and the stairs. Not far from the front piazza there grew an apple-tree. Dixie could run up this tree, walk carefully out on a slender branch, and jump to the piazza roof. A little way beyond the farther end of the roof was one of the windows of Lady’s room. The blind nearest this roof was usually closed, and there was not room enough on the sill to hold even a kitten; but Dixie would go to the very edge of the roof and scratch. “Is that you, Dixie?” Lady would ask. “Meow,” Dixie would reply, and any one would know that this meant “Yes.” Then Lady would go into the little room that opened on the roof and let her in. So it was that every morning the kitten made sure that Lady was safe and sound, and came to purr to her while she was dressing.
After Lady and Dixie had both eaten breakfast, Lady took a few minutes for the morning paper. Of course it was a great help to her to have a small black cat lie on her lap; and I am sure I do not know how she could have set her room in order unless the same little cat had sat on the window-sill watching her. When Lady went to the study, Dixie always went with her to stay by her while she wrote. This study was an excellent place for a nap. Sometimes Dixie lay on top of the low bookcase, where Lady had put a cushion for her benefit; sometimes she stretched herself out on the carpet in the sunshine; and sometimes she had a comfortable little snooze on a corner of the big library table. If she did not care to sleep, there were various things that a kitten could do in the study to amuse herself. She could sit at the window and watch the birds in the apple-trees, or sometimes a dog hurrying home across lots. She could run over the typewriter keys if she chose, and even across the big table. Indeed, she soon learned that the surest way to make Lady pay attention to her was to walk slowly over the paper on which she was writing, or even to sit down upon it and begin to take a bath. Once she sat down upon a loose pile of books and papers, and a moment later books, papers, and Dixie slid to the floor together, with a great thump. She turned and gazed at them with surprise and wrath, but not the least bit of fear. She was afraid of sudden noises elsewhere, however. While a carpenter was at work in the kitchen, she utterly refused to eat her meals in the room unless Lady stood beside her. She seemed to feel convinced that Somebody Else was to blame for all that hammering, and for several days after it ceased she refused to have anything to do with her while in the kitchen, though she was friendly enough in other places. In Lady’s study she felt safe, and apparently she had come to the conclusion that in that room nothing could ever hurt kittens.
Whenever Dixie was in trouble she always ran to the study for comfort. One day she dashed into the room and sat down in front of Lady and gazed at her so earnestly and with such an air of wanting to tell something that Lady called to Somebody Else and asked if anything had happened to Dixie. “Sure, there has,” replied Somebody Else. “Now that the screens are in, the window-sill is not wide enough to hold her, and when she jumped from the railing to the window, she fell down. She wouldn’t stop for a bit of dinner, but ran upstairs as fast as ever she could go.” Once when Lady had been away for a month, she missed the kitten after the first greeting. Some time later she went to the study, and there sat Dixie in the dark, patiently waiting for her to appear.
In some ways Dixie was remarkably obedient. If she was in the street and Lady knocked on the window, she would come running home as promptly as the best of children. If she was upstairs and Lady called her to come down, you could hear on the instant the jump of a little cat—often from a down quilt on a bed or from some other forbidden place, I am sorry to say—to the floor; and in half a minute she was hurrying downstairs to see what was wanted. One morning Lady called, but Dixie did not come. Some ten minutes later she burst into the kitchen like a little football rush with a long “Meow-yow-yow-yow!” which sounded so angry and indignant that Somebody Else called Lady and declared that something had surely gone wrong with Dixie. When Lady went upstairs, she saw what had happened. The heavy door had blown to, and it was plain that the kitten had been working at it with her soft little paws until she had pushed it back far enough to let her squeeze through.
Part of Dixie’s work was to drive away the stray cats and dogs that ventured on her lawn or under her apple-trees. Sometimes she herself played dog, and did her best to guard the house. One dark night there was a strange clanking sound in the back yard. Lady started for the door; but before she could reach it, the little cat had crouched all ready to make a spring as soon as the door should be opened. The noise proved to have been made by a hungry dog at a garbage can; and he ran away as fast as ever he could; but I think Dixie would have enjoyed chasing him.
Evidently Dixie felt that her first duty was to keep watch of Lady; and this was no easy matter when Lady was busy about the house. She hurried “upstairs and downstairs and in my lady’s chamber”; but wherever she went, a little black cat followed her like a shadow. This shadow behaved somewhat unlike other shadows, however, for it had a way of catching at the hem of her dress in the hope of a frolic, or suddenly dashing around corners at her to surprise her, in a fashion which no properly behaved shadow would ever dream of following.
Another of Dixie’s duties was to entertain the Mother. The Mother had always been afraid of cats, and she had never liked them, but she could not help liking Dixie. The kitten often went to her room and lay on a small high table in the sunshine while the Mother sat in her big easy-chair and talked to her. Dixie purred back, and they were very comfortable together, and the best of friends.
When callers came, Dixie was not altogether pleased. Sometimes she would turn her back on them, march straight upstairs, and not come down again until she heard the front door close; but generally she thought it better to keep pretty close watch of them. She was inclined to think that Lady paid them too much attention; therefore she would often jump into Lady’s lap and insist upon remaining there until they were ready to start for home.
Another one of Dixie’s responsibilities was the telephone, and she always ran to it at the first ring. Her care of it was a great convenience to Lady, for the telephone bell and the doorbell sounded so nearly alike that before Dixie came, she had often made mistakes, and had hurried to the telephone when the doorbell rang. Dixie never made a mistake, however, and when Lady saw her running to the telephone, she did not have to guess which bell had rung. The telephone was as much of a mystery to Dixie as it is to some other folk. She would jump up on the table to listen, and would put her head on one side with a puzzled look. One day she stretched out her soft little paw and touched Lady’s lips to see if she could not find out where those strange sounds came from. Once Lady asked the friend with whom she was talking to call “Dixie!” Then the kitten was puzzled indeed. She looked at the receiver from all sides and even tried to get her head into it. At last she left it and jumped down from the table; for most certainly she had come upon something that no kitten could understand.
Dixie in her Home continued
Dixie had her small troubles, and she did not always bear them like a good child in a story-book. At one time Lady thought she was having too much salmon, and she set down some bread and milk for her. This did not suit Dixie at all. She sniffed at it and walked away. Through the morning she went to it once in a while, plainly hoping that it had changed into salmon; and each time when she saw that it was still bread and milk, she gave a little growl and turned away as angrily as a cross child that does not like his breakfast. She thought Lady would yield, and it was not until almost supper-time that she concluded to eat that bread and milk. Another one of her trials was the swing door between the pantry and the dining-room. She did not like doors that went both ways and did not stay shut after they had been shut. Even when Lady or Somebody Else held the door open for her, she was afraid, and when she had screwed up her courage and run through it at full speed, she would turn and look at it over her shoulder as if there was no knowing what that thing might do yet, and she would not trust it behind her back for a moment.
Still another of her troubles was that neither in the attic, nor in the cellar, nor among the soft gray shadows of that beautiful old stone wall could she ever succeed in finding a mouse. I have no idea how many long nights she may have spent wandering about the cellar and watching beside every promising hole; but I do know that wherever in the house she might be, she never failed to hear the opening of the attic door. Then she would scamper upstairs as fast as her feet could carry her. She would examine every corner and every hole, and finally walk slowly downstairs with as nearly a look of anger and disgust as her happy face could be made to wear.
Dixie finally concluded that there were no mice in her house, but she still hoped she might find one in that of her next-door neighbor. The first time that his cellar door was left open, she slipped in, and there she stayed. He tried to coax her out, then to frighten her out, and then he told Lady. Lady went to the door and said, “Dixie, come right home,” and Dixie stepped down daintily from a pile of wood and went home. This was her last search for mice. The kind neighbor was sorry for her disappointment, and one day he brought her two that had been caught at his store. Dixie looked at them gravely. Then she stretched out her paw and touched one of them. It did not move, and she turned around and walked away scornfully and ungratefully. She did not care for dead mice; what she wanted was the fun of catching live ones.
But of all the troubles that came to the petted cat, the very worst of all was her getting angry with Lady. There was a certain cushion that Dixie thought was specially her own, and one sad and sorry day Lady needed to open the box on which it lay, and put her off. Then Dixie was angry. Lady pointed her finger at her and said “Shame!” and told her she was a naughty cat. A cat cannot bear to be scolded. Dixie stood looking straight into Lady’s face. She growled and she spit, and was in as furious a little temper as one could imagine. Suddenly she seemed to remember that it was Lady, her own best friend, toward whom she was behaving so badly. She stopped growling, turned away for a moment, and then came running up to Lady, purring and rubbing against her feet, and trying in every pretty little way that she knew to make her understand what a penitent cat she was.
Most cats become more sedate as they grow older, but Dixie became more playful. When she was a barn cat, she never played, and she would gaze with the utmost gravity and a dignified air of indifference and surprise if any one tried to tempt her to run for a ball. Now, however, she was always ready for a game. She played with everything,—with a table leg, a corner of a rug, or the hem of Lady’s dress. She played with the dry leaves on the ground. When it snowed, she played with the snowflakes. Sometimes she caught them in her paw and held them up to examine them more closely. Then when she found that they had disappeared, her look of amazement was comical enough. She would run out of doors in the rain and play with the drops or with the tiny streams of water running off the sidewalk. She did not mind getting wet in the least, and sometimes she would sit a long while on a piazza post in a pouring rain. The moment she came into the house, however, she set to work to dry herself. With only her little tongue to use as a towel, this was rather a slow business, and two or three times Lady wiped her fur with a cloth. Dixie was somewhat surprised, but she did not object. Evidently she soon discovered how much trouble this saved her, and whenever she was wet, she would go to the drawer where her own particular towel was kept and wait till Somebody Else wiped her dry. One day she was so thoroughly drenched that she felt in need of comfort as much as towel, and she ran to the study to show herself to Lady. She stood in the doorway a moment, then walked up to Lady with a long and much aggrieved “Meow-ow-ow-ow!” which meant, as any one might know, “Lady, isn’t this a shame? Did you ever see a little cat so wet before?”
Dixie’s notions of what was proper and what was not proper were decidedly original. Things to eat she never touched unless they were given to her, but things to play with were free plunder. One unlucky day Lady gave her an empty spool, and after this all spools were her province. Unfortunately, she preferred those that had thread on them. She liked thimbles, too, and she would jump up on the table where Lady’s work-basket stood, select a thimble or a spool to play with, and jump down with it in her mouth. If she had a spool full of thread, she was happy; but when Lady came into the room, she did not always sympathize with the kitten in her pleasure, for that thread was almost sure to be wound about everything in the room except the spool.
Indeed, Dixie kitten of the house was a very different little cat from Dixie kitten of the barn. She was as happy as the days were long. I might as well say, “As happy as the nights were long,” for she did not dread bedtime now, as in the times when she was sent out of the warm sitting-room to the barn. She never stayed out all night, and she was always willing to go to bed. Lady could have told a secret about this if she had chosen. It was that Dixie knew a nice little lunch was always waiting for her at the foot of the stairs. It is no wonder that she did not care to spend nights away from home. The Caller stood by one evening while Lady was preparing the lunch. “How you do spoil that cat!” she said laughingly. Lady replied thoughtfully, “Spoil her? I only make her happy, and I don’t believe it spoils either cats or people to be happy. What do you think about it, Dixie kitten?” and Dixie answered “Purr-r-r-r” contentedly.
Now when people wish to write the life of a person, they generally wait until he is dead—maybe because they are afraid he may contradict what they have said of him. Dixie is not dead by any means. She is sitting on the corner of the table this very minute, gazing straight at my paper; but this life of her is so true that it would not trouble me in the least if she should read every word of it.
Transcriber’s Note
On the assumption of printer error, the following amendment has been made:
Page [38]—made amended to make—“... I’m going to make you a bed, Dixie,” ...
The list of books by the same author has been moved to follow the title page.