While the Father was showing Benito the garden, and explaining to him about the plants, the cats which, as usual, had followed him, employed the time in roaming around among the bushes, searching intently for anything alive which might make fair game. They scattered in all directions, one after a humming-bird, another chasing a butterfly; the third wandered off lazily to a big patch of catnip for a sniff of its delightful aroma; while the fourth began to career to and fro after a dragon-fly, in the wildest fashion. The priest and Benito had moved off to an asparagus bed, to consult about the best treatment to give it, for the plants were slowly dying, and the Father was in a quandary. The dragon-fly alighted to rest on his broad-brimmed hat. All unconscious of its presence, he talked on with Benito, expounding his theory of the proper treatment for the asparagus, when, suddenly, as he bent over a plant to look at it more closely, with a blow that almost knocked him down, his hat went flying from his head, and fell to the ground several yards away, while at his feet dropped the venturesome Inez. She was up in an instant, looking for her prey, but it was out of sight.
With an exclamation rather stronger than was quite proper in one of his cloth, the Father turned to the cat.
“What is the meaning of this business, Inez? Really, you are getting to be insufferable. I cannot allow you to come out with me if you carry on in this way.” Benito had run to pick up his hat, and offered it to him, his eyes dancing with merriment, and the corners of his mouth twitching. The Father took it, and noting the gleam in his eyes, smiled himself. “These cats of mine will be the death of me some day, I expect,” he said, laughing. “Go along, Inez, and remember to show a little more respect for your master another time.”
These saints of Father Uria were given the run of the entire mission, and were known to all its inhabitants. Although every one was kind to them, the cats were dignified and distant toward all but the Father and Benito, after the latter had lived there a few months. It had gradually become one of Benito’s duties to keep an eye on them; shut them up when the Father did not wish them around; and when, as occasionally happened, they ran away, to search for them. Usually they would return of their own accord the second day, if not found the night before; but the Father could not sleep unless he knew his precious animals were housed safely, and an effort was always made to find the truants before night set in.
From the time Benito and Maria made San Buenaventura their home, Fortune again turned her face toward them. Benito, with steady employment as the Father’s gardener and trusted servant, was prosperous and happy; while Maria once more had her chickens, although the demand for her poultry and eggs was smaller than she had found in her former home in Mexico. She seldom missed her old associates, busy as she was, and content with her simple tasks the whole day long. What a quiet, peaceful life was that at the California missions in the old days! Perhaps, reader, you think humdrum would be the more appropriate adjective to use than peaceful or even quiet. And to one like our Father Uria, thousands of miles from his early home, cut off from all the pleasures and advantages of ordinary social intercourse, it was, as we have seen, more, much more, than humdrum. But for Maria, the life at the mission was not unlike that they had been accustomed to in their former Mexican home. California was Mexico in those days, and the life greatly similar.
About two years after Benito’s arrival at San Buenaventura, a dreadful misfortune befell Father Uria, in the death of his largest and finest cat—San Francisco. This saint had always manifested a most singular and inveterate propensity, to hunt tarantulas. More than once he had been discovered when just on the point of beginning a battle with one of those monsters, and had been stopped in the nick of time. With almost constant watchfulness, the Father had succeeded in preserving the life of his cat for many years; but the reader has already guessed what the end was to be. After an absence of three whole days, during which the Father was almost distracted, Benito found the saint dead on the plain, fully a mile from the mission. On one paw, which was slightly swollen, a minute wound was discovered, supposed to have been the bite of the venomous spider, although the Father could not tell positively. Poor Father Uria was inconsolable, and from that day his health, which had been deserting him for many months, yet so gradually as to be hardly perceptible, took a sudden change for the worse, and with the long years of toil he had lived, soon made great inroads on his strength. Less than a year after this dire event, he became so feeble that, at his own request, he was relieved. The last thing he did before leaving San Buenaventura was to give his three remaining friends into the charge of Benito, who promised to care for them faithfully, so long as they lived. Much the Father would have liked to take them with him, but he was growing too feeble to care for them; and once retired from his position as head of the mission, he would not have enough power and authority to be able to treat them as such old and dear friends should be treated. We shall not attempt to depict the sorrowful parting between the Father and his cats—it would need the master hand of a Dickens to keep the comic element in the pathetic scene within due bounds. The Father, poor old man, felt no further interest in life, broken down in health and obliged to give up his companions, his only comfort being the thought that his remaining days were few, and would soon pass.
He removed to Mission Santa Barbara, and there, some months later, at the close of the year 1834, he died, worn out in the cause of his Master.
Note.—This story of Father Uria and his oddities is not wholly fanciful. In an early book on California occurs the following: “At dinner the fare was sumptuous, and I was much amused at the eccentricities of the old Padre (Father Uria), who kept constantly annoying four large cats, his daily companions; or with a long stick thumped upon the heads of his Indian boys, and seemed delighted thus to gratify his singular propensities.” Alfred Robinson: Life in California, New York, 1846, Chap. IV, page 50.