THE CAT CAME BACK
By Virginia West
Leonard Raymond was temperamentally a naturalist. Had circumstances not compelled him to make a living he would no doubt have been an Audubon, or a Gray. He spent his spare moments studying the habits of the living things about town, English sparrows, pigeons, stray cats, homeless dogs, and so forth. Old man Peterkin, whose wife kept the boarding-house at which Raymond was getting his meals, who did nothing but collect the board bills, grow fat, and hold the position of church deacon, had told him that the crows in the cupola of the Eutaw Place synagogue had been nesting there for eleven years. Raymond did not know whether to regard that as an interesting item about crows, or as evidence against Mr. Peterkin’s veracity. However, Mr. Peterkin and the crows have nothing to do with this story.
In the backyard of the Linden Avenue house in which he lived with his married sister Raymond raised flowers, and on Sundays and holidays he would often go to the country to study the wild flowers and the birds.
One summer evening he sat in the backyard among the flowers. He was hot and lonesome, the thermometer being close to ninety, the family being out of town, and no vacation for himself in sight. To-morrow, he reflected, he would return to his post of teller in the bank, and hand out more money than he would ever own in a lifetime; the day after he would do the same thing——
His melancholy reflections were broken in upon by what seemed to be a ball of fire on top of the tall board fence. In an instant it disappeared, and he saw the long black form of a cat slide down the fence, and light in the yard. The beast went to a garbage can in the corner of the yard, sniffed about it, observed that the lid was on, and then, turning the gleaming ball upon Raymond, sprang up the fence and disappeared.
The same thing happened the next evening. On the third evening when the cat appeared Raymond advanced cautiously, and tried to be friendly. The cat hesitated, but when the man’s hand was almost on him he streaked up, and over the fence.
The following evening when Raymond walked uptown from the bank, as he approached Richmond market he thought of the cat, and stopping at a stall bought a small portion of meat.
The meat was put on the ground near the fence on which at the regular time the cat appeared. The eye gleamed. Raymond was wondering why both eyes did not gleam when the cat seemed to fall straight down upon the meat. Raymond sat as still as a stone, and heard the meat crunching between the cat’s jaws. The animal was licking its chops when he advanced—it met him halfway, and while Raymond rubbed his fur, the cat purred. Sitting down upon a bench, the cat leaped into his lap, curled up, and settled down for a nap. Then it was that he found about the cat’s neck a small chain with a tag on it.
When he went into the house the cat followed him, and by the gas light he read on the tag a Madison Avenue address. Also he observed that the cat had but one eye, and forthwith he christened him Cyclops. He wondered why a person who thought enough of the cat to provide him with a chain and tag should have left him to search for his victuals in alleys and backyards like an ordinary stray.
Cyclops stuck by Raymond like a twin brother. And every evening when Raymond came from business he stopped in Richmond market and bought meat for Cyclops. One day the man in the stall asked him if he were a family man.
One Sunday morning Raymond strolled across Eutaw Place and up to the Madison Avenue address. The house was closed for the summer, but the policeman on the post told him who lived there.
Summer was nearly at an end when Raymond happened to see in the paper that the people at the Madison Avenue house had returned to town. Now, Raymond was an honest man—had he been anything else he would not have been allowed to handle the bank’s money, so on Saturday evening with Cyclops under his arm, he sadly went up Madison Avenue to return the cat to his lawful owner. Boys on the street made personal remarks about the man and the cat, and Cyclops’ great eye turned green with wrath as he glared at them.
A coloured woman of the Mammy type answered his ring. She looked and gasped. Before Raymond could explain she thrust her head into the hall and shouted in strident tones:
“Come heah, Miss ’Liza! Bress de Lawd ef heah ain’t yo’ cat!”
In a moment appeared the prettiest girl that Raymond’s eyes had ever rested upon. She had blue eyes and a mass of golden hair. Though comparatively young, and quite in the eligible class, Raymond was not a lady’s man. With much embarrassment he told the history of the cat.
While she held Cyclops to her bosom, the girl explained that she had left him with a friend to keep for her during the summer, and he had run away. She had given him up for lost.
“Dat cat know whut he doin’,” snickered the Mammy, who was standing back in the hall. “Dat cat kin see further’n you kin ef he ain’t got but one eye.”
Raymond went off catless. All the way home he was thinking of a way by which he might call on the beautiful Miss ’Liza. Sunday afternoon he went out to the country, to the woods, the flowers, the birds, and his soul was full of poetry and his mind of thoughts of the girl.
That evening old Cyclops was back on the fence! His great eye had a gleam of mischievousness. Down the fence he slid, and straight to Raymond, who decided that he must take the cat back to his owner immediately.
While Cyclops prowled about the parlour with tail erect, rubbing against every article of furniture, Raymond talked to Miss ’Liza.
Every evening Cyclops returned to Raymond, and every evening he as promptly took him home. Thus time passed from autumn into early winter.
One evening sitting before the little wood fire in her parlour, Raymond said to Miss ’Liza: “I don’t see but one way to keep our cat in one place!”
Then Miss ’Liza blushed, and said she didn’t see but one way either!
Then he kissed her!
And old Cyclops rubbed against both of them and purred to beat the band.