Dixie Kitten

by Eva March Tappan

It took Dixie the whole forenoon to look at everything around the house and smell of it. Moreover, in the course of the morning she had a caller. It was not exactly a friendly call, for this Next-Door Cat had been in the habit of coming to see the People who used to live in the house, and she was not pleased to see another cat making herself at home there. She came through the little barberry hedge and said “Meow!” in a surprised and aggrieved fashion. I suppose it meant, “Who are you and what are you here for?” but Dixie did not deign to answer. She jumped upon the piazza railing and looked straight at the Next-Door Cat. The Next-Door Cat ran up the nearest apple-tree and looked straight at her. After a while, the Next-Door Cat said “Meow-ow-ow!” and came down from the apple-tree. She gave one more look over her shoulder at Dixie, but Dixie was opening and shutting her mouth as fast as ever she could, as if she meant to devour everything in sight. The Next-Door Cat marched straight to the gap in the low barberry hedge and went home. This was Dixie’s first caller.

Dixie in her Home

So it was that the wild little barn cat became a house cat. She had come to live with busy people, and I fancy she thought that she was as busy as they. In the morning, as soon as she heard the steps of Somebody Else, she ran to the top of the stairs to be ready to come out the moment that the door was opened. The next thing to do was to go up to Lady’s room. The door was almost always closed, but Dixie sat down beside it and waited patiently until she heard some little sounds within. Then she rubbed on the door with the little pads on the bottom of her paw,—very softly, to be sure, but Lady always heard her and opened it. Once in a while Dixie went out of doors when she first came up from the cellar, and occasionally it happened that she could not get in again at once. That did not trouble her, for she had another way of reaching Lady’s room that she liked fully as well as going by the hall and the stairs. Not far from the front piazza there grew an apple-tree. Dixie could run up this tree, walk carefully out on a slender branch, and jump to the piazza roof. A little way beyond the farther end of the roof was one of the windows of Lady’s room. The blind nearest this roof was usually closed, and there was not room enough on the sill to hold even a kitten; but Dixie would go to the very edge of the roof and scratch. “Is that you, Dixie?” Lady would ask. “Meow,” Dixie would reply, and any one would know that this meant “Yes.” Then Lady would go into the little room that opened on the roof and let her in. So it was that every morning the kitten made sure that Lady was safe and sound, and came to purr to her while she was dressing.

After Lady and Dixie had both eaten breakfast, Lady took a few minutes for the morning paper. Of course it was a great help to her to have a small black cat lie on her lap; and I am sure I do not know how she could have set her room in order unless the same little cat had sat on the window-sill watching her. When Lady went to the study, Dixie always went with her to stay by her while she wrote. This study was an excellent place for a nap. Sometimes Dixie lay on top of the low bookcase, where Lady had put a cushion for her benefit; sometimes she stretched herself out on the carpet in the sunshine; and sometimes she had a comfortable little snooze on a corner of the big library table. If she did not care to sleep, there were various things that a kitten could do in the study to amuse herself. She could sit at the window and watch the birds in the apple-trees, or sometimes a dog hurrying home across lots. She could run over the typewriter keys if she chose, and even across the big table. Indeed, she soon learned that the surest way to make Lady pay attention to her was to walk slowly over the paper on which she was writing, or even to sit down upon it and begin to take a bath. Once she sat down upon a loose pile of books and papers, and a moment later books, papers, and Dixie slid to the floor together, with a great thump. She turned and gazed at them with surprise and wrath, but not the least bit of fear. She was afraid of sudden noises elsewhere, however. While a carpenter was at work in the kitchen, she utterly refused to eat her meals in the room unless Lady stood beside her. She seemed to feel convinced that Somebody Else was to blame for all that hammering, and for several days after it ceased she refused to have anything to do with her while in the kitchen, though she was friendly enough in other places. In Lady’s study she felt safe, and apparently she had come to the conclusion that in that room nothing could ever hurt kittens.

Whenever Dixie was in trouble she always ran to the study for comfort. One day she dashed into the room and sat down in front of Lady and gazed at her so earnestly and with such an air of wanting to tell something that Lady called to Somebody Else and asked if anything had happened to Dixie. “Sure, there has,” replied Somebody Else. “Now that the screens are in, the window-sill is not wide enough to hold her, and when she jumped from the railing to the window, she fell down. She wouldn’t stop for a bit of dinner, but ran upstairs as fast as ever she could go.” Once when Lady had been away for a month, she missed the kitten after the first greeting. Some time later she went to the study, and there sat Dixie in the dark, patiently waiting for her to appear.

In some ways Dixie was remarkably obedient. If she was in the street and Lady knocked on the window, she would come running home as promptly as the best of children. If she was upstairs and Lady called her to come down, you could hear on the instant the jump of a little cat—often from a down quilt on a bed or from some other forbidden place, I am sorry to say—to the floor; and in half a minute she was hurrying downstairs to see what was wanted. One morning Lady called, but Dixie did not come. Some ten minutes later she burst into the kitchen like a little football rush with a long “Meow-yow-yow-yow!” which sounded so angry and indignant that Somebody Else called Lady and declared that something had surely gone wrong with Dixie. When Lady went upstairs, she saw what had happened. The heavy door had blown to, and it was plain that the kitten had been working at it with her soft little paws until she had pushed it back far enough to let her squeeze through.

Part of Dixie’s work was to drive away the stray cats and dogs that ventured on her lawn or under her apple-trees. Sometimes she herself played dog, and did her best to guard the house. One dark night there was a strange clanking sound in the back yard. Lady started for the door; but before she could reach it, the little cat had crouched all ready to make a spring as soon as the door should be opened. The noise proved to have been made by a hungry dog at a garbage can; and he ran away as fast as ever he could; but I think Dixie would have enjoyed chasing him.

Evidently Dixie felt that her first duty was to keep watch of Lady; and this was no easy matter when Lady was busy about the house. She hurried “upstairs and downstairs and in my lady’s chamber”; but wherever she went, a little black cat followed her like a shadow. This shadow behaved somewhat unlike other shadows, however, for it had a way of catching at the hem of her dress in the hope of a frolic, or suddenly dashing around corners at her to surprise her, in a fashion which no properly behaved shadow would ever dream of following.