Subject to Vanity

by Margaret Benson

Her manners mostly were charming, and with gracefulness like a well-born lady she would stretch one hand from her basket to greet one coming into the room. She was very affectionate; she would put her arms round my neck in a way I have never known any other cat do, not even her children. Like most other Persian cats, she would kiss me and lick my hand. She had, I will confess, one rude trick: when she was in a larky condition in the twilight, if she caught my eye, she would run, with her head turned round and the side of her face on the ground, all about the room, ending up by coming quite close to me, and jumping and clawing in the air. The position was ludicrous, her head twisted round, and her eyes fixed on mine so that she could not see what was in front of her, and ran sometimes into legs of tables and chairs; her nerves, too, in such a tense condition that if one startled her she would jump high into the air, and then flee into a corner. She always reminded one of the way in which a cockney street-boy makes faces if you catch his eye.

She was not always amiable, the one defect in her character was that she was liable to “strange fits of passion,” and would pass from play to anger on occasion without the slightest warning.

She is the fiercest cat towards other animals that I have ever seen. While she was yet a tiny kitten, I brought up a large semi-Persian Tom cat to paint. The tiny kitten chased this big creature round and round the room; if he got under a chair, she got on it, and reached down a little menacing white paw to slap his face. He submitted meekly, until, in order to see what would happen at close quarters, I brought her quite near to him. She spit and swore at him, but thus brought to bay he knocked her over with a sounding box on each ear, and she fled under the table, where, with a tiny drop of blood on her face, she bemoaned herself and appealed for sympathy, the picture of a helpless, injured child. As for the other cat, once roused he went on growling and spitting all morning.

The only small quadruped I ever knew Persis not want to fight was a rabbit. Some children on the place had a tame rabbit which was very fond of cats. One day she met him out of doors. He saw her and came running to play with her; she looked with a horrified face for a moment then turned and fled; she must have thought him a deformed sort of cat; much as if children met a human being with huge pendent ears and an uncouth way of walking who wanted to come and play with them.

Persis was very musical. If one whistled to her she would come from any part of the room, creep up as near to one’s face as she could, purr loudly, lick one’s face in growing rapture; then, if the whistling continued, she got over-excited, and had to manifest excessive pleasure by biting. I am determined to tell a story which no one will believe, but which is none the less true, that three or four times she has been found standing on the music-stool and making dabs at the keys with her forepaws; she, of course, had discovered before that a piano would make a sound if walked on, and she not unfrequently practised in that manner, but these three or four times I looked up, being surprised at hearing the same note repeated, and found her standing as I have said. However, no one need believe that, and it is their own loss if they do not; and anyhow, now it is a matter of ancient history, for Persis lost all care for the æsthetic part of life when she had a family to bring up.

While she was still an independent lady she used to sleep in my room, chiefly on my bed. It was a difficult matter to arrange at first, because I did not want the kitten to sleep on my face, which was her constant aspiration. Consequently, when I put out the light and settled to sleep, placing her firmly at the end of the bed, a loud purr was heard, and a little dark form proceeded to march up, stamping her paws on the counterpane and drawing them out in rapturous expectation of a pleasant evening.

Finally we compromised: she was allowed to sleep half-way up, embracing my arm if she liked. But I was rather glad when this habit was broken, because she began not to leave me enough room. One of my brothers thought he would try her in his room one night, but he had broken rest; for first she made defiant runs at him from the end of the bed, then in the middle of the night he was waked up by a pitiful howling, of which he took no notice. Two hours later he was waked again by louder howling, and then discovered that the cat had got out of one of his windows, walked on a narrow moulding round to a shut window, and did not dare to go back again. She was so overjoyed at being taken in that she fell into the bath. After that she came on his bed.

But I am wandering from the point of my story. Before Persis’ kittens came she had some friends, but no rivals. She treated her friends in a rather severe manner at first. One of them was a fox-terrier, called Don. The first time she was introduced to him she nearly jumped out of her skin with swearing and spitting. When he went out of the room, she went round to all the places where he had been and spit at them afresh. She has a fine scent; if new people have been in the room she always goes round and smells the places where they have been. She smells every new dress I have. The meek Don, who could kill a strange cat as soon as look at it, submitted wonderfully to her whims; and when she flew at him, beside herself with passion because he was enjoying the coffee sugar at the bottom of a cup merely picked the cup up in his teeth and trotted off. But she soon got accustomed to him. And then, distressed at his appearance, tried to lick the black spots off his back; used stealthily to wash the inside of his ears, ready always to rain a shower of blows on his nose with the tips of her paws if he so much as turned round. Then she began to worship in a manner not common to cats; with the sincerest flattery, she used to lie at his feet in the same position that he was lying in; if, for instance, he was lying with his legs stretched straight out below him, she would lie with her back touching the tips of his toes and her legs stretched out in the same way—an unnatural position for a cat.

Now her daughter, the image of Persis, will lie in the same way at Don’s feet; but I have never heard of any other cat doing it.