[Pathological]
Very much do I love cats; and I suppose that I could write a large book about the different cats which I have kept, in various climes and times, on both sides of the world. But this is not a Book of Cats; and I am writing about Tama for merely psychological reasons. She has been uttering, in her sleep beside my chair, a peculiar cry that touched me in a particular way. It is the cry that a cat makes only for her kittens,—a soft trilling coo,—a pure caress of tone. And I perceive that her attitude, as she lies there on her side, is the attitude of a cat holding something,—something freshly caught: the forepaws are stretched out as to grasp, and the pearly talons are playing.
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We call her Tama ("Jewel")—not because of her beauty, though she is beautiful, but because Tama is a female name accorded by custom to pet cats. She was a very small tortoise-shell kitten when she was first brought to me as a gift worth accepting,—a cat-of-three-colours (miké-neko) being somewhat uncommon in Japan. In certain parts of the country such a cat is believed to be a luck-bringer, and gifted with power to frighten away goblins as well as rats. Tama is now two years old. I think that she has foreign blood in her veins: she is more graceful and more slender than the ordinary Japanese cat; and she has a remarkably long tail, which, from a Japanese point of view, is her only defect. Perhaps one of her ancestors came to Japan in some Dutch or Spanish ship during the time of Iyéyasu. But, from whatever ancestors descended, Tama is quite a Japanese cat in her habits;—for example, she eats rice!
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The first time that she had kittens, she proved herself an excellent mother,—devoting all her strength and intelligence to the care of her little ones, until, by dint of nursing them and moiling for them, she became piteously and ludicrously thin. She taught them how to keep clean,—how to play and jump and wrestle,—how to hunt. At first, of course, she gave them only her long tail to play with; but later she found them other toys. She brought them not only rats and mice, but also frogs, lizards, a bat, and one day a small lamprey, which she must have managed to catch in a neighbouring rice-field. After dark I used to leave open for her a small window at the head of the stairs leading to my study,—in order that she might go out to hunt by way of the kitchen roof. And one night she brought in, through that window, a big straw sandal for her kittens to play with. She found it in the field; and she must have carried it over a wooden fence ten feet high, up the house wall to the roof of the kitchen, and thence through the bars of the little window to the stairway. There she and her kittens played boisterously with it till morning; and they dirtied the stairway, for that sandal was muddy. Never was cat more fortunate in her first maternal experience than Tama.