This was too much. I crept round the corner to give her a cuff. She wasn’t there! I came back, and there she was as brazen as ever. I tried this game on several times, but couldn’t catch her. “Then,” says I, “you’ll have it where you stand, and hang the pane of glass!”
I struck straight from the shoulder, and with a will too. Down went the glass, and I found I had been fighting all the time with my own shadow. Funny, wasn’t it?
When mistress came home there was such a row. But she was sensible, and didn’t beat me. She took me upstairs, and showed me what I had done, and looked so vexed that I was sorry too. “It is my own fault, though,” she said; “I ought to have shut the door.”
She presented me with a looking-glass soon after this, and it is quite surprising how my opinion of that strange kitten in the mirror altered after that. I thought now I had never seen such a lovely thing, and I was never tired looking at it. No more I had. But first impressions are so erroneous, you know.
My dear mother is dead and gone years ago—of course, considering my age, you won’t marvel at that; and my young mistress is married long, long ago, and has a grown family, who are all as kind as kind can be to old Tom, as they facetiously call me. And so they were to my mother, who, I may tell you, was only three days in her last illness, and gave up the ghost on a file of old newspapers (than which nothing makes a better bed) and is buried under the old pear-tree.
Dear me, how often I have wondered how other poor cats who have neither kind master nor mistress manage to live. But, the poor creatures, they are so ignorant—badly-bred, you know. Why, only the other day the young master brought home a poor little cat, he had found starving in the street. Well, I never in all my life saw such an ill-mannered, rude little wretch, for no sooner had it got itself stuffed with the best fare in the house, than it made a deliberate attempt to steal the canary. There was gratitude for you! Now, mind, I don’t say that I shouldn’t like to eat the canary, but I never have taken our own birds—no—always the neighbours’. I did, just once, fly at our own canary’s cage when I was quite a wee cat, and didn’t know any better. And what do you think my mistress did? Why, she took the bird out of the cage and popped me in; and there I was, all day long, a prisoner, with nothing for dinner but seeds and water, and the canary flying about the room and doing what it liked, even helping itself to my milk. I never forgot that.
Some cats, you know, are arrant thieves, and I don’t wonder at it, the way they are kicked and cuffed about, put out all night, and never offered food or water. I would steal myself if I were used like that, wouldn’t you, madam? But I have my two meals a day, regularly; and I have a nice double saucer, which stands beside my mirror, and one end contains nice milk and the other clean water, and I don’t know which I like the best. When I am downright thirsty, the water is so nice; but at times I am hungry and thirsty both, if you can understand me—then I drink the milk. At times I am allowed to sit on the table when my mistress is at breakfast, and I often put out my paw, ever so gently, and help myself to a morsel from her plate; but I wouldn’t do it when she isn’t looking. The other day I took a fancy to a nice smelt, and I just went and told my mistress and led her to the kitchen, and I got what I wanted at once.
I am never put out at night. I have always the softest and warmest of beds, and in winter, towards morning, when the fire goes out, I go upstairs and creep (singing loudly to let her know it is I) into my mistress’s arms.
If I want to go on the tiles any night, I have only to ask. A fellow does want to go on the tiles now and then, doesn’t he? Oh, it is a jolly thing, is a night on the tiles! One of these days I may give you my experience of life on the tiles, and then you’ll know all about it—in the meantime, madam, you may try it yourself. Let it be moonlight, and be cautious, you know, for, as you have only two feet, you will feel rather awkward at first.
Did I ever know what it was to be hungry? Yes, indeed, once I did; and I’m now going to tell you of the saddest experience in all my long life. You see it happened like this. It was autumn; I was then about five years of age, and a finer-looking Tom, I could see by my mirror, never trod on four legs. For some days I had observed an unusual bustle both upstairs and downstairs. The servants, especially, seemed all off their heads, and did nothing but open doors and shut them, and nail up things in large boxes, and drink beer and eat cold meat whenever they stood on end. What was up, I wondered? Went and asked my mistress. “Off to the seaside, pussy Tom,” said she; “and you’re going too, if you’re good.” I determined to be good, and not make faces at the canary. But one night I had been out rather late at a cat-concert, and, as usual, came home with the milk in the morning. In order to make sure of a good sleep I went upstairs to an unused attic, as was my wont, and fell asleep on an old pillow. How long I slept I shall never know, but it must have been far on in the day when I awoke, feeling hungry enough to eat a hunter. As I trotted downstairs the first thing that alarmed me was the unusual stillness. I mewed, and a thousand echoes seemed to mock me. The ticking of the old clock on the stairs had never sounded to me so loud and clear before. I went, one by one, into every room. Nothing in any of them but the stillness, apparently, of death and desolation. The blinds were all down, and I could even hear the mice nibbling behind the wainscot.