Chapter Twenty Two.
The Dunghill Cat.
I’m the dunghill cat—that is what I am. Nobody owns me, and I owe allegiance to nobody. Nobody feeds me; nobody puts a saucer on the ground and says, “Here, pussy, there’s a drop of milk for you, my pet.” Nobody ever gave me a bit of fish in my life, and nobody, so far as I can remember, ever called me pet names or spoke kindly to me. Not that I care, you know, but I merely mention it, that’s all. But don’t you despise me because I am only a poor dunghill cat. It isn’t my fault but my misfortune, as you shall presently hear. Circumstances over which I had no control have rendered me what I am; but I am come of respectable parents for all that. To be sure I could not swear to my father, not knowing exactly who he was, and the mum herself being at times a little hazy on the point. But my mother, madam, came from Egypt, and was descended from a long line of noble ancestors in that beautiful land, where, they tell me, there is bread enough for all, and where a poor cat is honoured and respected, as she always ought to be. And the mum told me that her original ancestors came over with the Conqueror—Cambyses, you know—so that is good enough, surely. Yes, madam, without meaning the slightest offence, I may just remind you that when your forebears were dressed in pig-skins, and not much of that; when they wore flint-headed spears, and stalked about the hills with painted faces, doing attitudes and saying “Ugh!” when astonished, my progenitors dwelt in palaces, loved and respected by all, and were considered the equals of prince, or priest, or peer—what do you think of that? But I’m not proud; I’m only the poor dunghill cat, that all the dogs chase, that all the little boys stone, and Bridget shakes the broom at. Bridget never can catch me, though—ha, ha! Won’t I eat her canary, first chance—you see if I don’t.
My earliest recollection is of being carried by the back of my neck, by something or somebody that I afterwards discovered was my mother. I was taken into a beautiful house, and deposited carefully on a rug in the corner of a cupboard. Then my mother began licking me all over with her tongue, when suddenly said a voice close alongside of me, “I declare that pussy has been and gone and got another kitten—as if one cat of the kind wasn’t enough about the house. Sarah, go and put it where you put all the others.”
I don’t know who the others were, or where they were put; but I know what Sarah did with me. She took me up with the hot tongs, mother screamed and so did I, till I couldn’t scream any more because the black water was all around me. Then followed a period of agony, and then a blank, and the next thing I recollect is finding myself lying, wet and cold, in my mother’s arms, and she all wet and cold as well as me.
“My dear chee-ild,” said my mamma, “this has been a sad morning; but you’re safe ne-ow, although the building is humble and your pallet is straw. Shade of Cambyses!” continued the old lady, rubbing a paw over her right ear, “why ever did I leave the land of Egypt?”
When I got a little older I began to look around me. I thought our new home was one of the jolliest places that could be, despite all the flowery accounts my mother used to give me of the land of her birth, with its marble halls and gorgeous tesselated pavements. It was a large, roomy loft in an old, old mill, and I used to run about the floor and chase the great spiders before I was big and brave enough to attack a wild mouse, or the great, untamable rats that used to frighten me so when mother was out, by standing on their hind legs and making dreadful faces at me. But didn’t they scamper off when mother came back!
One day mother brought me a live mouse. How brave I suddenly felt. You should have seen how I sprung on it, and heard how I growled. Had anyone, even the immortal Cambyses himself, attempted to rescue that wild mouse from my clutches, he should have died on the spot. How pleased my mother looked! I think I see her yet, with her old-fashioned face and her odd, old-world ways. Very much respected my mother was, I assure you. I’ve seen no less than seven well-dressed feline swells talking and singing to her all at once, and she didn’t know which of them to speak to first. Met a violent end, did my mother. Verdict—“Killed by the carrier’s collie.”
After I had slain and eaten one mouse, I felt every inch a Tom. I declined to lie any more in my mother’s arms. No more milk for me; blood, and only blood, was my motto, and I meant it, too. When I was a well-grown cat of nine months old my mother introduced me to her mistress’s house, and I became, for a time, a house-cat. I cannot say, however, that I liked the change. The lady of the dwelling was, they told me, exceedingly good and pious, went twice to church on Sunday, and read prayers morning and evening; but, sad to say, she never had studied feline economy. “If cats can’t find mice to eat,” she used to say, “they ought to starve.”