PREFACE.
This story of Mammy Tittleback and her family was told to me last winter, at Christmas time, in Grandma Jameson's house, by Johnny and Rosy Chapman and their mother, and by Phil Wellington and his mother, and by Johnny and Katy Wells, and by Grandma Jameson herself, and by "Aunt Maggie" Jameson, Grandma Jameson's daughter, and by "Aunt Hannah," Grandma Jameson's sister, and by "Cousin Fanny," the postmistress who had the first sight of the postal card, and by Jerry, who had the worst of the whole business, bringing the box of cats from the railway-station up to the house.
I don't mean that each of these persons told me the whole story from beginning to end. I was not at Grandma Jameson's long enough for that; I was there only Christmas day and the day after. But I mean that all these people told me parts of the story, and every time the subject was mentioned somebody would remember something new about it, and the longer we talked about it the more funny things kept coming up to the very last, and I don't doubt that when I go there again next summer, Phil and Johnny will begin where they left off and tell me still more things as droll as these. The story about the little kittens swimming over the brook I did not hear until the morning I was coming away. Just as I was busy packing Phil came running up to my room, saying, "There's one more thing we forgot the cats did," and then he told me the story of the swimming. Then I said, "Tell me some more, Phil; I don't believe you've told me half yet."
"Well," he said, "you see, they were doing things all the time, and we didn't think much about 'em. That's the reason we can't remember," which remark of Phil's has a good lesson in it when you come to look at it closely. It would make a good text for a little sermon to preach to children that very often have to say, "I forgot," about something they ought to have done.
Things that we think very much about we never forget, any more than we do persons that we love very dearly and think very much of. So "I forgot" is not very much of an excuse for not having done a thing; it is only another way of saying "I didn't attend to it enough to make it stay in my mind," or, "I didn't care enough about it to remember it."
I heard the greater part of this story on Christmas night. Johnny and Rosy and Phil and Katy had a great frolic telling it. In the midst of it Johnny exclaimed, "Don't you want to see Mammy Tittleback?"
"Indeed I do," I replied. So he ran out to the barn and brought her in in his arms. Snowball was already there. She was lying on the hearth when Mammy Tittleback was brought in, and I began to praise her, saying what a beauty she was, and how handsome the yellow, black, and white colors in her fur were. Snowball got up, and began to walk about uneasily and to rub up against us, as if she wanted to be noticed also.
"Snowball's a nice cat too," said Phil, picking her up, "'most as good as Mammy Tittleback."
"Blacky's the nicest," said Rosy, who was rocking in her rocking-chair, and hugging Blacky up close to her face. "Blacky's the nicest of them all." Upon which everybody fell to telling what a tyrant Blacky had become; how she would be held in somebody's lap all the time, and that even Aunt Hannah had had to give up to Blacky. Even Aunt Hannah, whom nobody in the house, not even Grandma Jameson herself, ever thinks of going against in the smallest thing, because she is such a beautiful and venerable old lady,—even Aunt Hannah had had to give up to Blacky.
Aunt Hannah is over eighty years old but she is never idle. She never has time to hold cats in her lap; and, besides, I do not think she loves cats so well as the rest of her family do. As often as Blacky jumped up in her lap, Aunt Hannah would very gently set her on the floor; but in five minutes Blacky would be up again. At last, when she found Aunt Hannah really would not hold her in her lap, she took it in her head to lie in Aunt Hannah's work-basket, close by her side; and just as often as Aunt Hannah put her out of her lap she would spring into the work-basket, and curl herself up like a little puff-ball of fur among the spools. This was even worse to Aunt Hannah than to have her on her knees, and she would take her out of the work-basket less gently than she lifted her out of her lap, and set her on the floor. Then Blacky would jump right up on her lap again, and so they had it,—Aunt Hannah and Blacky,—first lap, and then work-basket, till poor Aunt Hannah got as nearly out of patience as a lovely old lady of the Society of Friends ever allows herself to be. She got so out of patience that she made a very nice, soft, round cushion stuffed with feathers, and kept it always at hand for Blacky to lie on. Then when Blacky jumped on her knees, she laid her on the cushion; instantly Blacky would spring into the work-basket, and when she took her out of that, right up in her lap again. On that cushion she would not lie. At last Aunt Hannah was heard to say, "I believe it is of no use, I'll have to give up to thee, little cat;" and now Blacky lies in Aunt Hannah's work-basket whenever she feels like lying there instead of in Rosy's little chair or in somebody's lap; and I dare say by the time I go to Burnet again, I shall find that Aunt Hannah has given up in the matter of the lap also, and is holding Blacky on her knees as many hours a day as anybody else in the house.
"Now Blacky lies in Aunt Hannah's work-basket whenever she feels like lying there."—[Page 96.]
There was a great deal of discussion among the children as to the places where the little kittens were living now, and as to which ones were given away, and which ones had run away.
I suppose when Jerry had a half-dozen kittens to give away all at once, he couldn't stop to select them very carefully, or to sort them out by name, or recollect where each one went.
"I know where Spitfire is," said Johnny; "I saw him yesterday."
"Where?" said Phil.
"I won't tell," said Johnny, "but I know."
"Juniper, he ran away. He'll take care of himself. He used to come back once in a while. We'd see him round the barn. Mousiewary, she comes sometimes now; I saw her the other day. She's real smart."
"Well, old Mammy Tittleback's the best of 'em all," said Phil, catching her up and trying to make her snuggle down in his lap. But Mammy Tittleback did not like to be held. She wriggled away, jumped down, and walked restlessly toward the kitchen door. Phil followed, opened the door, and let her go out. "She won't let you pet her," he said; "she's a real business cat, she always was. She likes to stay in the barn and hunt rats better than anything in the world, except when it's so cold she can't."
"She used to let me hold her sometimes in the summer," said Rosy.
"Oh, that was different. She had to be staying round then, doing nothing, to look after the kittens," replied Phil. "She wasn't wasting any time then being held, but she won't let you hold her now more 'n two or three minutes at a time. She jumps right down, and goes off as if she was sent for."
After the children had gone to bed, Mrs. Chapman told us a very droll part of the history of the cats' journey,—what might be called the sequel to it. The Democrats were not the only people in the village who took offence at the sight of the cats. There is a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Burnet, and some of the people who belonged to this society, when they heard of the affair, took it into their heads that Mr. Frank Wellington had done a very cruel thing in shutting so many cats up in a box together. It was a very good illustration of the way stories grow big in many times telling, the way the number of those cats went on growing bigger and bigger every time the story was told. At last they got it up as high as forty-five; and there really were some people in town who believed that forty-five cats had come from Mendon to Burnet in that box. "Jerry says they haven't ever had it lower than twenty-five," said Mrs. Chapman. "It runs all the way from forty-five to twenty-five, but twenty-five is the lowest, and there was one man in the town who really did threaten pretty seriously to enter a complaint against Frank Wellington with the society, but I guess he was laughed out of it. It is almost a pity he didn't do it, it would have been such a joke all round."
This is all I have to tell you about Mammy Tittleback and her family now. When I go back to Burnet next summer, I hope I shall find her with six more little kittens, and Johnny and Rosy as happy with them as they were with Spitfire, Blacky, Coaley, Limbab, Lily, and Gregory Second.
THE END.
Transcriber's Note
Punctuation has been standardised.
Table of Contents has been added for the reader's convenience.
Page 7, changed "Limbat" to "Limbab" on Genealogical Tree
Page 7, changed "Lilly" to "Lily" on Genealogical Tree
Illustration following Page 96, changed "Blackie" to "Blacky" (Now Blacky lies)