Chapter Fourteen.
Cats Feeding the Sick.
“Ma conscience! mither, it kens its name?” Such was the exclamation of a little ragged and kilted urchin, in the remote Highlands of Argyllshire, as he heard me call my dog to give him a drink. The day was exceedingly warm, and we had had a long walk over the mountain, and had been kindly invited into a shepherd’s hut, and asked to partake of a draught of cool, sweet whey—the very best of summer beverages. Nero was having a “talkee-talkee” with some rabbits, and didn’t see his whey until I called his attention to it; hence the wondering urchin’s exclamation.
“Hoo shouldna he?” said the mother; “poor wise-lookin’ beast. Ise warrant he kens mair than that.”
The idea of even a child thinking it strange Theodore Nero (the Newfoundland champion) should know his name was so amusing that I gave the boy “twa bawbees” on the spot.
And just on a par with this boy’s ignorance, is the unbelieving ignorance of some people who doubt everything they cannot understand, however well authenticated. This doubting implies an assumption on their part that the knowledge they possess is the highest attainable, that their minds are, in fact, complete in themselves. It is people of this class—fools—who doubt the existence of even a Supreme Being. I read in a late number of the Live Stock Journal an account of a cat, which, seeing its master sick in bed, and unable to move, brought a mouse to him, and on her master pretending to eat it, the same day brought him a striped squirrel; and every day, until he got well, brought “game” of some sort and laid them on his bed.
I believe I, myself, was the first who ever dared to publish a case of the same kind. The story was this: A poor ploughman, who lived in a little hut at the foot of the Moffat Hills, in Scotland, fell sick of a long, lingering illness—and when the poor are ill they are poorer still; it is then the shoe pinches. This poor man had nothing in the house but meal and milk. The doctor said he must have wine. His wife pledged her marriage-gown to get it. The doctor said he must have meat. That was beyond their power to procure. But a merciful Providence had willed the man should live; and one day the little tortoiseshell cat, which was a great favourite with the poor ploughman, and had been very dull and wretched since his illness, brought in a rabbit—a thing, mind you, she had never done before—and placed it on the bed. She appeared to brighten up as she saw it skinned and cooked by the ploughman’s wife, and partaken of by her sick master. And next day she brought another, and so on, almost every day, a rabbit or a bird, until her master was well, after which she brought no more. I took very considerable pains to test the truth of this story, and went to some expense about it as well, and found it in every whit true as first related to me. (See “Cats,” by same Author. Dean and Sons, Publishers, 160a, Fleet Street.)
Since then I have had one or two cases precisely similar to the above, in which cats brought their “game-bag” to the bed of a sick master or mistress.
It is indisputable, then, that such things have been done over and over again. And now the question comes to be, how are we to account for it? In ancient times, these poor, affectionate pussies would doubtless have been condemned to death as being witches in feline form.
In our own day such cases are usually put down to a special interposition of Providence. Now, without doubting for a moment that there is a Divinity which shapes the end, we must remember that that Divinity works more by simple laws than miraculous means, and consequently endeavour to account for the occurrences in a natural way.
Cats, we know, after they have weaned their kittens, are in the habit of bringing them mice, etc, by way of food. This we do not think at all strange, and we put it down to that much-abused term—instinct. But the following anecdote shows, I think, something higher than mere instinct, and will help us to understand why the cat will bring food to a sick master or mistress.
A certain cat had kittens. They were all drowned except one, which, of course, became a great pet with pussy, who, after putting it through a course of milk, put it through a course of mice, according to the custom of country cats. The kitten grew up into a fine large Tom, and was big enough to thrash his mother, which I’m sorry to say the unfilial rascal sometimes did. But a day came when he had need of that mother’s love. Tom had his leg torn off in a trap, and was confined to his pallet of straw for several weeks, and never, one single day of his illness, did his mother miss bringing her wounded son either birds or mice, until he was able to run once more, though on three legs, to go and hunt them for himself. This cat is living still, I believe. It is quite evident that a cat’s affection for, and attachment to, a beloved master, are quite equal to their love for a grown-up son, and the same feelings which prompt her to minister to the latter when ill, and unable to move, would cause her to attend on the other.
Cats easily know when any one they love is sick or ailing. I returned home a few years ago, after an absence of some six months, very bad indeed. I thought I was a “gone coon,” as the Yanks say, and didn’t feel to have any more flesh on my ribs than there is on those telegraph wires. Well, my pet cat was rejoiced to see me, and hardly ever left my room. She would never leave me, it is true, but still there was something very strange in her behaviour. For she must have seen something strange in my appearance. Whether she took me for an impostor or not, I cannot say, but she always sat facing me whenever I was seated, seldom taking her eyes off my face, and her brows were lowered as if she were angry with me about something. What were pussy’s thoughts? I asked this question one day of my father’s housekeeper. “The cat kens ye’er no lang for this warld,” said Eppie; “gin I were you, I’d just mak’ my callin’ and election sure.” Calling and election! How I hated the old rook! Cats have an idea that when any one is ailing, it must be for want of food. Poor things! How often they suffer hunger and privations themselves, goodness only can tell! This idea is not confined to cats alone. Dogs, at least, I know possess the same notion. I could give many anecdotes to prove this, but as this book is presumably on cats, I must only give one.
An Inverness-shire student was returning from the south, and with him his faithful Scottish collie. In the Highlands there are generally two roads, the high and the low; the low road being the longest and of course the safest, and the high much shorter, but usually leading through some ugly bits of country, which are far from safe even by day, and much less by night. It was a beautiful night, quite clear and starry, with just the slightest crust of snow on the ground, barely enough to darken the heather. But such being the case, the student thought he could easily venture to cross by the hills, and thus save a mile or two. Early next morning, a woman at a neighbouring farm was surprised, while baking bannocks, by the entrance of a strange collie. The collie did not use much ceremony, but simply stole the largest bannock, and fled. This, of course, was not thought much of. The dog was hungry, and the morning cold, and he was welcome to the bannock, although it would have been more satisfactory for both sides had he asked for it. The same dog returned, however, in a few hours, and his behaviour was so strange that one of the family was induced to follow him. The dog led him a long way over the mountains, and at last brought up at the foot of a precipice, near a stream, where “something dark was lying.” This something dark was no other than the poor student, who had slipped his foot on the previous night, and tumbled over the rock. He was at first supposed to be dead, but soon revived, having merely fractured a thigh, and become insensible from the cold; but the strange part of the story is to come—the bannock, all untouched, reclined against the student’s cheek, placed there by the dog. (At page 83, volume three, “Annals of Sporting,” an instance of collie-dog sagacity very similar to this is given.)
Not only do cats know sickness in others, but they are acquainted in some way with the mystery of death. Observe a cat, for instance, that has played with a mouse until she has killed it. Just see the critical way she turns it over and over with her foot, and glares into its glazing eyes. She wants to make sure the wee thing is not shamming; but, being satisfied, mark her as she coolly stretches herself, or walks slowly away from her victim, as much as to say: “Well, I’ve had half an hour’s good fun, anyhow. Might have eaten it as long as it was alive, though; but I can’t bear a dead mouse. So it’s just as broad as it’s long.”