Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat, where have you been?
I've been to London to look at the Queen.
Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat, what did you there?
I frighten'd a little mouse under the chair.
The babies sat looking into the fire. A contented, amiable, affectionate cat was an animal they had never yet met. Where they lived, the poor cats were forced to be wild and spend their lives hunting in the fields and forests, because if they ever appeared within reach of a stone and a person to throw it, they were certain to have a bit of themselves broken or bruised. If a man with a gun met a cat he naturally shot it. If an old maid kept a cat, as old maids sometimes will, it was sure sooner or later to come home from an evening stroll with its ears cut off by the nearest farmer, who hoped by this means to make hunting in his fields, with the rain and dew getting into the exposed parts, a thing so disagreeable that the cat would never again indulge in it, and as for the next time it came home from an evening stroll, it would probably come in the character of a corpse.
The babies had themselves possessed kittens that they had loved and lost. Directly they were big enough they took to tree-climbing and bird-nesting, and finally stayed away altogether. It was in their blood,—the blood of ancient German cats, passed on through rows and rows of fathers and mothers who also had had stones thrown at them, and had climbed trees and eaten birds; and what is a poor cat to do? Rose, the black cat in the kitchen, had developed such strange and unpleasant habits of spitting and biting, and clawing, that it had been banished from the playroom. The servants only tolerated it because it killed the mice, and even they (I mean the servants, not the mice) never passed it without tweaking its tail. Think how dreadful it must be to go through life with a thing following you about behind that anyone can tweak who wants to! No wonder poor Rose's temper was so uncertain.
But what, thought the babies, must these cats of England be like,—these glorious cats of liberty and luxury of whom their mother so often talked? Fascinating pussies with cheerful faces, unclipped ears, and ribbons round their necks, creatures who were often more spoilt than anybody else in the house, who rubbed themselves, confident and purring, against the legs of strangers, who spent their days deliciously snoozing before the fire, who walked about with their untweaked tails straight up in the air in the excess of their contentment? The babies could hardly imagine such a happy state of things; but the mother showed them the cat pictures in English weekly papers from time to time, and there sure enough were just such cats as she had described, ribbons and all. They took a ribbon once to Rose, going up to him timidly, and offering, with polite and flattering speeches, to tie it round his neck; but he jumped off his chair and ran under a table, and, crouching down, glared at them out of the shadow with fiery eyeballs; so that they went away sorrowfully, for in his days of innocence they had loved him much.
This is the tune for Pussy Cat:
PUSSY CAT, PUSSY CAT.
