History of my pets

by Grace Greenwood

Once on a time—no matter when—in a certain beautiful city—no matter where—there lived two lovely twin sisters, with the brightest eyes, and the cunningest little roly-poly figures, and the slenderest ears with the softest pink satin lining, and the spryest motions imaginable. They were brunettes in complexion, with white breasts and tail-tips, and they were kittens. Katrina and Katinka were their names, if I remember rightly,—maybe I don’t, but anyhow they might have had those names, which, to my thinking, are very pretty and appropriate for kittens.

Well, these same twin pussies were singularly fond of each other, and more singularly good to each other. They never called names, or scratched, or spat in each other’s pretty faces, or pulled each other’s little smellers, or quarrelled over their meals. They were so marvellously alike that it was always difficult to tell them apart; and when they slept, as they always did, hugged close in each other’s arms, you couldn’t have told to save you where one kitten left off and the other kitten began.

They not only slept, ate, and played together, but, as they grew older, took their strolls for health and recreation and their mouse-hunts in the same close and loving companionship. They were very curious and wide-awake little bodies, and liked to see all they could of the great, busy world; so every pleasant afternoon, when there was much driving and walking up and down the fine street on which they lived, they could be seen strolling down the long walk to the gate, always exactly side by side,—“neck and neck,” as the horse people say,—as even in their pace, and as perfectly matched in their action, as ever were a pair of trained ponies in Hyde Park. Reaching the gate, they would pause and stand quite still for a half-hour or so, gravely gazing through the palings at the passers,—pedestrians, equestrians, and drivers of fast horses,—like a pair of dear little brigadiers reviewing their brigades marching by. Then, with the air of having discharged a public duty to the entire satisfaction of the community, they would wheel exactly together, and again, precisely neck and neck and tail and tail, trot gently homeward.

So they lived on, in and for each other, almost as much united as if they had been a pair of small feline female Siamese twins, amiable, loving, and virtuous, and grew in knowledge and stature up to a comely young cathood. At last it happened that a very interesting event occurred to the twin sisters at precisely the same time,—they became happy mothers, were blessed with three or four fine kittens apiece. But alas! before the little strangers had got fairly to feel their legs, before they had got their eyes open, all save one mysteriously disappeared from each nest. It was one fatal morning when the twin sisters had slipped out of their happy attic apartment for a little air,—to take their “Constitutional” in a trot down the long gravel walk to see how the world would look to them now they were mothers,—that this kit-napping occurred. When they returned to their families, they found them strangely thinned out; but they were mothers for all that, and did not seem to fret much, or abate their maternal pride a jot.

You see the ruling power in the human household in which they were domesticated, and who was to them as a providence, had ordered a little hydropathy for their poor, feeble, sprawling, blind darlings,—beginning with what is called in water-cures “the heroic treatment,” a cold plunge; and it didn’t agree with them,—it never does with any but the healthy and hardy patients,—so it was they never came back. But under the blue waves they sleep well, though never a mew or a purr comes bubbling up to the surface to tell the spot where they lie on beds of tangled sea-grass. “Requies-cat in pace,” as old tombstones say.

The next mournful event in this true family history was the untimely death of Katrina’s one darling. This had proved to be but a frail flower of kittenhood; very pretty she was,—“too sweet to live,” people said. Her constitution was defective, her nervous system was extremely delicate. Before she was a week old she had something alarmingly like a fit of catalepsy. Suddenly, while imbibing nourishment, with her fond mother purring over her, and two or three children looking on in smiling sympathy, she gave a piteous wild mew, rolled over on her back, and stuck up her four little legs and laid out her little tail stiff as a poker! On the ninth day of her little life she opened her blinking blue eyes on this great wonderful world, in which she had as good a right to be as you or I; but she didn’t seem to like the looks of things, for she soon closed those small eyes again, and never opened them more. Life was evidently too hard a conundrum for her poor, weak little brain, and she gave it up.

Of course Katrina was greatly afflicted, but she did not abandon herself utterly to grief. Had not her sister a kitten left? and had not they two always had every thing in common? So as soon as the sympathetic children had buried her dead out of her sight under a lilac-bush, she went straightway to Katinka, and, with her full consent, began to divide with her the duties and joys of maternity. All three just cuddled down together in one nest; from mamma or auntie Master Catkin took nourishment, just as it suited his whim or convenience, and, as you might suppose, he grew and thrived astonishingly. So equal and perfect was this partnership in the kitten, that it was impossible for a stranger to tell which of the two cats was the real mother. One day all three were brought down to the parlor to amuse some visitors. Both mammas seemed equally nervous about having the baby kitten handled, and presently one of them caught it by the neck,—the cat’s usual, immemorial way of transporting her young,—and started with it for the attic; when, to the surprise and immense amusement of all present, the other caught hold of the tail, and so the two bore it away in triumph.

After this I am afraid the children gave the little kitten rather more travelling than he liked. It was such fun to see the two anxious cats following him, mewing, and at the first chance catching him up, and lugging him home in that absurd manner. Generally the real certain true mother seized on the head, but sometimes she was magnanimous enough to yield the post of honor to the aunt, and take to the tail herself.

So things went on for a few weeks, and then there happened to this estimable cat-family another sad event,—for this is a tragedy I am writing, though you may not have suspected it,—Katinka died! What of has never yet been decided; physicians differed about it, and the coroner could not make it out. But this much is certain, Katinka died. The grief of Katrina was and is very affecting to behold. She mopes, she mews, and her slender tail, which she used to carry erect with such a jaunty air, droops dolefully. She takes no longer the “Constitutional” trot down the walk to the front gate. Life seems to have grown dull and wearisome to her, and the pleasures of mouse-hunting and tree-climbing appear to have lost their zest. If she remembers at all the halcyon period when much of her precious time was spent in a dizzy round of gayety, in a swift pursuit of a ball of cotton, or a futile pursuit of her own tail, it is in sad wonder that she could ever have been so merry and thoughtless. She grows thin, neglects her toilet, and often refuses food; but when the children offer her catnip, she turns languidly away. If she were acquainted with Shakespeare, she would doubtless say,—“Canst thou minister to a mind diseased?” “Throw physic to Bose and Jowler,—I’ll none of it!”

Friendly cat-neighbors call in occasionally, but they cannot console her. All the petting of the household fails thus far to make her cheery and playful as once she was. She is fed on the very “milk of human kindness,” but grief has licked the cream off.