CHAPTER III.
[See [Note C], Addenda.]
PUSSY’S LOVE OF CHILDREN.
The cat is more than any other creature the pet of our early years. Almost the first animal we notice, when we are old enough to notice anything, is pussy, with her beautiful markings, her well-pleased, homely face, sleek and shining fur, and soft paws, which she never ungloves in the presence of childhood. Children and cats, especially young ones, have so very much in common. Both are innocent, sinless, and easily pleased, and both are full of fun and frolic. Children will often play with a kitten until they kill the poor thing. In the country, pussy’s place may easily be supplied by some other toy; but to a poor little gutter-child the loss is simply irreparable, and she will nurse her dead kitten in the mud for a week. The way children use poor patient pussy is at times anything but commendable; and while deprecating the conduct of parents in allowing them to treat the cat so, we cannot but admire pussy’s extreme forbearance and uncomplaining good nature, under what must be considered very trying circumstances. It is nothing to see Miss Puss or Master Tom dressed up in a shawl and neatly fitting cap, and lugged about as a doll, carried by the tail over the child’s shoulder, or worn as a comforter round his neck. Yet pussy seems to know that there is no harm meant, and that the children really love her dearly; so she never attempts to scratch, far less to bite. All experience goes to prove, too, that it is generally the child that uses her the worst, to whom pussy is most attached.
The ‘dead playmate’ is a picture you will often see in real life. I saw one not a month ago. A pretty little child, with round, wondering eyes, swollen with recent tears, sitting in the corner of a field in the summer sunshine. On her lap lay—among a handful of daisies and corn-poppies—a wee dead kitten: life had but lately left it. When I spoke to her, her grief burst out afresh.
“O sir, my pussy’s deadëd, my pretty pussy’s deadëd!”
There would be no more games of romps in the garden, no more scampering together through the green fields after the butterfly, no more making pussy a doll. She would go lonely to bed to-night and cry herself asleep, for pretty pussy was “deadëd.”
In the adjacent street to where I now live, is a fine large red-tabby Tom. He is a famous mouser, a noted hunter, and a gentleman every inch. He was faithful in love and dauntless in war. When I tried to stroke him, he gave me a look and a growl of such unmistakable meaning, that I mechanically put my hands in my pockets and whistled. He makes no friends with strangers. Yet Tom has a little mistress, not much over three years old, whom he dearly loves, and from whom he is seldom absent. He lies down on his side, and allows little Alice to lift him, although she can hardly totter along with her burden, which she carries as often by the tail as any way else. She sleeps beside him on the hearth-rug, Tom winding his arms lovingly around her neck, and little Alice declares that pussy “carries his kisses on his nose.”
Wee Elsie S——, though only six years old, has completely tamed—as far as she herself is concerned—what might almost be called a wild cat, it having been bred and brought up in the woods. This cat has only two good qualities, namely, his great skill in vermin-killing, and his fondness for little Elsie. Neither the child’s father, mother, nor the servants, dare put a finger on this wild brindled Tom; but as soon as Elsie comes down in the morning, and puss is let in, with a fond cry he rushes towards her, singing and caressing her with evident satisfaction. He then does duty as a doll all day, or follows the child wherever she goes, and sleeps with her when she sleeps.