My mother told me that this was something like asking a person to make bricks without straw. My mother was very learned.
Well, one evening—and I had been starving all day, and was dreadfully hungry and too faint to watch for mice—I happened to stroll into the pantry, and there I found such a nice, nice dish of cream. Luscious! But what a thrashing I got five minutes afterwards—I wasn’t hungry for a week. Then the hunger came on again worse than ever, and I stole again. I couldn’t help it, really. Then I was called a nasty, thieving brute, and got blamed many times when quite innocent. There is Briddy with the broom again. She hasn’t forgiven me for that herring yet, and I can swear it wouldn’t have kept for another day. Besides, what do I care if it was for Master Fred’s breakfast? Briddy had no business to be upstairs trying on missus’s Sunday bonnet, and the kitchen-door wide open. She thinks I don’t see all her capers, and her opening drawers, and keeking into cupboards, and examining this, that, and t’other, when her missus is out. But lying on the top of that wall I can see a great deal more than I trouble to tell of. But Briddy blamed me for eating those two new-laid eggs that the baker brought. She “just laid them down outside in the strawberry-basket, m’m, for one minute; and when she turned again, la, m’m, they was broke and eaten, they was!” She forgot to mention how the baker crumpled her cap, though; and she didn’t tell how she was all over flour, and had to brush herself from top to toe when the bell rang. But, mind you, it wasn’t me that stole the eggs. I would confess at once if it was; for what could a couple of paltry new-laid eggs add to the weight of crime I have been guilty of in my day? Why, nothing. But Dr Ricket’s jackdaw took the eggs, for I saw him hop on to the wall, and he gave a look down, first, with one side of his head, at Briddy and the baker, then, with the other side of his head, to the eggs; then down he went, and it was all over in a moment—I mean the eggs were. Just like Briddy, blaming me for that piece of cold pork. Mind you, I don’t say I wouldn’t have taken it had I got the chance, but I didn’t. “That beautiful piece of pork gone next, m’m; and I never can keep that cat out. And whatever shall I do, m’m?”
But I wonder why Briddy didn’t say a word about that visit she had from the policeman. Much of a lover he is, anyhow. I could see him through the window, and he never opened his mouth but to put something into it. His courtship was so un-Byronic, for he sat and he sat, and he chewed and chewed, and glowered and glowered at Briddy, till I wondered she didn’t spit in his face and turn him out. Ah, Briddy, you needn’t shake the broom, what would you do without me?
But to resume my story. One night I was shut up in a room by accident, and no one heard me call, for I did call, and, in the morning, the room wasn’t just as it ought to have been, and for this new offence I was condemned to die—taken away in a sack, and drowned.
Not dead? Bless you, no; it wasn’t likely I was going to remain at the bottom of a mill-dam, in an old guano-bag. I was up again before you could say mouse, and had swam on shore as cool as you like. It was a beautiful day in early autumn, the fields were all ablaze with golden grain, and the berries beginning to turn red and black in the hedgerows. I sat down on a sheaf of wheat and basked till dry in the warm sunshine. Then a young pheasant ran round the corner and cried, “Peet, peet, have you seen my mother anywhere?” I thought I never had tasted anything half so sweet in all my life. Then I felt a new Tom from top to toe. Go back and be a house-cat? No, perish the thought. And I never did.
I am now fifteen years of age, and as I look back to the days that are gone I cannot help exclaiming, “What a jolly life I’ve led.” I’ve been a Bohemian, a robber, a brigand, and a thief. “It is a sin, pussy,” you say; “why don’t you reform?” “’Cause I won’t,” I answer. Had I been differently brought up, better treated, better fed, and better understood, I mightn’t be what I am. I would then have been as honest and virtuous as one of good Mrs Peek’s cats. She knows how to treat a cat, and it is only a pity she isn’t an Egyptian, she might have married Cambyses.
Well, well, as I said before, I’m now fifteen years of age; I’ve seen many ups and downs in the world, but I suppose my day is wearing through, and I must soon be preparing for the happy hunting-fields on the other side of Jordan.
Now, madam, you know I’m only a cat, a common dunghill cat, and have only common dunghill notions, but here are my sentiments. Religion is a beautiful thing when brought to bear on everyday life, and not put off and on with your moiré antique. But never you go away to church and forget to give pussy her breakfast.
And have your prayer-book in one hand if you like of a morning, but have a nice bit of fish or a saucer of milk for pussy in the other, and the beauty of the one hand will be reflected from the other, as the stars are mirrored in the ocean’s wave.