Two hours afterward she is in her mistress’s boudoir alone. Oh! St. Anthony! Alone with the canary! Her eyes are drawn magnetically to the cage, her mouth opens of its own accord, her teeth water, and unconsciously she fires off a series of miniature mews, expressive of extreme desire. One little spring, and that beautiful bird would be hers. But again she won’t, she’ll only just look at it; and if a cat may look at a king, surely, she may at a canary. Reader, have you ever eaten a canary? A live canary, feathers and all? No! then I fear there is but little chance of your giving pussy half the credit due to her, for resisting that sore temptation and letting birdie live.
But, rats and rabbits! what has pussy done now? While canary-gazing, she has been standing on the escritoire, and inadvertently spilled all her mistress’s purple ink; and, to make matters worse, that young lady enters, in time to witness the accident and see puss making a face at the canary.
“Oh! you wicked, wicked, ungrateful cat!” Pussy flies and hides beneath the sofa. Those cruel, unjust words, how they rankle in her breast! “She will never never speak to her mistress again, nor to any one in the world, not even to Tom. She will die beneath that sofa.” So in doleful dumps she spends two whole hours. How very irksome! If her mistress would only speak now, she might come out, perhaps; but she only knits, knits. Suddenly, down rolls the ball of worsted. Hurrah! out pops puss like an animated arrow, and darts round and round the room after it like a mad thing. Her mistress smiles, and pussy is up on her lap in an instant, singing for joy because she is restored to favour.
Somehow, pussy in the afternoon accidentally finds herself in Farmer Hodge’s pigeon-loft. She has merely come to have a look at the pretty creatures, being fond of that sort of thing. Hark! though, a footstep on the ladder, and enter Farmer Hodge himself. Poor pussy’s intentions in the pigeon-loft have been vilely misconstrued by that rude man, and she herself kicked right out of the gable-door—a fall of twenty feet at least; however, she has the presence of mind to whirl round, and alights on her feet, and thus saves her neck. It is only a quarter of a mile to run home; so she is off, hotly pursued by the farmer and his horrid collie. There is one tree on the way, and she gains it just in time to save her back; and the ugly dog stops and barks up at her. A long way astern comes, puffing and blowing, the farmer himself, and when he arrives he will stone her. One minute to get her breath; then down, flop on the back of the collie, jumps pussy. Round and round the tree she rides him twice, then dismisses him howling. The dog runs back to his master, with a bloody nose and one eye seriously damaged, while pussy, scot free, regains the shelter of her home, just in time for dinner. “Now, my little lady,” says pussy’s mistress, about bed-time, “I see you are watching to get out, and indeed you mustn’t; so come with me.” A little deceit is absolutely necessary now, if pussy wants to gain her ends. After all, it is only policy; so pussy purring complacently accompanies her mistress to her bed-room. But having duly sung the young lady asleep, she quietly steals from her side and creeps to the window. Luckily, it is open. Fifteen feet is a tallish jump though; but she remembers that when Farmer Hodge gave her a hint to leave the pigeon-loft, she leaped twenty feet. She feels that hint on her rump even now; but here goes. She has done it, and is safe. Then what a delicious sense of freedom and prospective bliss! And, hark! yonder is Tom’s melodious voice in the distance, and pussy is off in the moonlight to meet him, and she “won’t go home till morning.”
Cats are very sensitive to kindness, and are never ungrateful for benefits received.
A certain labouring woman got a cat, to which she became greatly attached. When the time came round, for her absence for six weeks at harvest, in a distant part of the country, she took her cat, and the one kitten it was giving suck to, and gave it in charge of a brother who lived three miles from her own village. But here poor pussy wasn’t happy. The children beat and otherwise annoyed her; so she returned to her own home in the village, leaving the kitten behind her. Finding the house shut up, she sought shelter in a kindly neighbour’s house; and having established herself in her new home, she set out for the house where she had left the kitten. She did not attempt to remove it, however, but simply gave it suck and left again. Twice a day regularly, for three weeks, did this queer pussy trot those six long miles to suckle her kitten, until one day she found it drinking milk from a saucer. After this she never went back. On her mistress’s return from harvest, pussy again became her faithful companion; clearly showing that although she was grateful to the neighbour, she knew she did not belong to her. But every year pussy stayed all the harvest with her benefactress until the return of her mistress; and this habit she kept up all her life, fourteen years.
How do cats know certain days of the week, such as Saturday or Monday?
A shopkeeper, whom I knew, had a nice Tom tabby, which he kept night and day in his shop, to protect his wares from mice and rats. On Saturdays, Tom was allowed to accompany his master home, a distance of nearly a mile, and to remain at home until the following Monday. Pussy got used to this; and as the shop was always kept open until ten o’clock on Saturdays, Tom used regularly to leave the place and go home fully three hours before his master. On the Monday morning, he was always quite ready to accompany him back again. When this cat grew a few years older, he began to tire of night duties. He, no doubt, thought he had done enough when he had been on guard all day. So to get off the night shift, he used to leave the shop when his master made signs of putting up the shutters. He would wait at a convenient distance till his master came; but finding that he was invariably captured and carried back, he fell upon another plan: he took to leaving the shop an hour before closing time. His master used to meet him half-ways home, but never could put a finger on him.
This same cat had been rescued from an ugly death, when quite a kitten, by a son of his master. Tom was greatly attached to this boy. When the boy grew to be a man, and only visited the house once a year, Tom still knew him, and manifested great delight in seeing him.
Cats, however, do not show the joy they feel on meeting again with a long lost friend in so exuberant a manner as the dog.