From that time to this, all my personal relations with cats have ended in grief. One engaging kitten after another grew into romantic or adventurous youth only to meet disaster. Perhaps our most heart-rending experience was with Triptolemus, taken from his mother in such tender infancy that we could not teach him to lap milk or even suck it from the finger. Finally he solved the problem himself by tumbling into the saucer and, when he was lifted out, licking his feet with relish. For days he insisted on the saucer promenade, taking nourishment only by applying his wayward little tongue to each foot in turn. From a roly-poly innocent, wondering at the world out of the roundest of blue eyes, he grew, with the astonishing speed of kittenhood, into a profligate young ruffian, limping home from one disreputable fight after another with torn ears and gashed neck and thighs. One wound deepened into a festering, offensive sore, beyond the cure of our domestic surgery, and as veterinaries and animal hospitals were then foreign to our experience, a brother, in my absence, was bidden take the cat down to the river and drown him. Very slowly the executioner, a stout bag in his hand, made his way to the water's edge, Trip careering about his feet and playing with the fatal string. The bag was weighted with stones and the cat was ordered to enter the open mouth. Trip sniffed at it suspiciously, did not like the game, but looked up trustfully into the familiar face and obeyed. The boy who flung that bag out into the current and came running home as if nine reproachful little ghosts were at his heels could never be brought to drown a cat again.
Later on, there was a graceful mite, Argon, whom I can still see jumping after moths in the moonlight; but before the moth-season was over, there came a night whose darkness never rendered him up. Strayed or stolen, killed, chased, enchanted, it was not for us to know.
Years after, our home rejoiced for a few brief weeks in the charms of Frisky Fuzzy, a peculiarly affectionate, confiding kitty, who met a cruel death by the teeth of the rector's terrier. This young priest was a holy man in general, but he had no regard for the sixth commandment as broken by his dog. All the neighborhood was aroused, for one beloved puss after another had been left torn and bleeding by that hypocritical little brute, who always kept an eye out for fresh victims as he trotted sedately at his master's heels, making pastoral calls. When at last vengeance found him out and the dog lay poisoned on the parsonage steps, the rector's grief was so sincere that my anger melted in sympathy. There had been a coolness between us since Frisky Fuzzy's fate, but on the next occasion when we met at a neutral tea-table, I attempted a reconciliation.
"Perhaps your dog and my cat have made up our quarrel in heaven," I began, passing him the sugar.
"I don't believe your cat went to heaven," he retorted, passing me the lemon.
Our last attempt at a home kitten was with a little sprite of so perverse and irreverent a temper that the most liberal theology could hardly hold out to us the hope of finding her again in any Paradise where pious pussies congregate. This impish being was foisted upon us by an old friend whose persuasive powers, as I had long known, were irresistible. In tones that were dulcet even by way of the telephone she invited me to shelter her wild young puss, Polly, during the summer, while she closed her own house and, bearing Billy in a basket, sought the repose of an ocean isle.
"Why don't you carry Polly with you, too?"
"There isn't room in the basket and, besides, I'm sure that two cats would be against the rules of the railroad."
"But Polly takes to the trees whenever I try to pat her. She would run away."
"Oh, I can arrange that for you very nicely. I'll let you have a kitten of hers and then she'll be perfectly contented."