Subject to Vanity

by Margaret Benson

After this she became acquainted with a Gordon setter, and the obstinate curliness of Di’s hair gave Persis as much occupation as those black spots on Don’s back which never would come off. But she was jealous of none of these, she knew herself to be—as a cat—so infinitely superior to them. She was jealous of nobody and nothing until her kittens came.

There are certain great facts in life which nothing can prepare you for. No amount of reasoning, no previous imagination, will make you in the least able to calculate your feelings. Such must be the moment to very many when they realise that they will die; such is often the moment when people or creatures realise that there exists a little helpless living thing, theirs peculiarly, and yet not themselves. The change that her child can work in a grumbling, egotistical woman is incomprehensible,—could not have been argued by any logic; but far more surprising the event must be to a creature who does not know what is going to happen, cannot guess that her feelings will be moved in a totally new way, and could not realise beforehand that such an event might happen to her as it had to others. I tried to prepare Persis once; I gave her a stuffed kitten on a penwiper to play with. She looked at it with some interest, licked it a little, shook it, and left it; treated it much as a rather careless child treats her doll, but more amiably than she treated other animals. Nor could she dream that little bits of fur,—much like that to the outward eye,—endued with just enough life to tremble on their little weak legs, and utter tiny, plaintive shrieks, should rouse her to such a passionate emotion as to make her forget her own pressing bodily wants.

We know very little more than she did about it, we know just the bare fact that it always will be so, but why it should be so we know no more than she. Who understands the miracle by which an utterly selfish creature, whose natural instinct is to hate all other animals, and, indeed, only to tolerate human beings because it can make use of them, should be made to know and feel, in a short ten minutes’ space perhaps, an overpowering, passionate, protective love?

One morning Persis did not feel very well, in sign whereof she showed a decided intention to occupy my bed. She was sent down to an empty bedroom while a hamper of hay was being prepared for her; but when her invalid couch was ready she was nowhere to be found; a search discovered finally that she had put herself to bed in the room already, under the counterpane. Still, she was thinking of nobody but herself. Later in the morning I visited her,—when three little helpless, shapeless, furry things were moving about her, and Persis was not thinking of herself at all. One would not have believed an animal’s expression could change so much; the overwhelming surprise, the intense affection, were in her face as clearly as they could be in an human face; for the time her egotism had gone, she was not a cat, she was a mother. Formerly she had been shy of people, frightened of men; now, as one after another came in to see her kittens, she showed no fear, and, what was even more curious, no anger; she merely purred in pride and entire confidence.

They were wonderful kittens—two quite blue, one like its mother; their eyes were shut, their ears were flattened down over their faces,—they were little bodies which breathed and fed and grew.

But they did grow, and their ears stood up and their eyes opened,—dark and light blue,—and their heads got steadier, and in a month they were little square solid kittens, who with much difficulty could get out of the box in which they were placed. Getting out was a process which involved the fullest exercise of all mental and physical powers; for first they had to advance to the side, then one tiny paw and then another was put over the side, and the adventurer was for the time hung up by his shoulders. Then he worked himself on by the help of much kicking behind and clawing against the box, until the part outside was just heavier than the part inside, and with a scramble, and by the help of the centre of gravity, the whole kitten tumbled on to the floor. It was a grand triumph of mind over matter. And still Persis beamed on them, and on the world in general.

But as they grew began the first little rift within the lute. It was difficult to help it. I put it to you—could one carry three kittens and a cat about, like Henry III. of France, to exhibit to visitors. If it was a choice between exhibiting kittens and cat, visitors would surely prefer to see the kittens; and so it came to pass that the children were carried into the drawing-room and handed round, while in the empty schoolroom the “old” cat sat alone. It was only a couple of months since she had been shown to visitors herself. Sometimes I took her too, but that was not a great success, for everybody liked the kittens best.

And now the kittens began to be steady on their legs, and able to run and play, and their horizon was no longer bounded by licking and feeding and warming; and when they once began to play, their mother seemed rather large and rather old to play with them. Persis did not care to play with me or cheek me any more, but she liked to gambol with the kittens. So she played mouse in front of Pasht, but Pasht would rather play with her brother and ran off the other way; and she pretended to be a tiger lying in ambush to wait for Marjara, but Marjara wished to tie herself up in a soft heap with Ganem and bite his ears, so the Old Cat stopped in her gambols and looked at them.

Ganem was given away; and as he had been rather a favourite playfellow, and the least favourite child of his mother, the family got on more happily after that. Then I went away, and saw them no more for some two months. When I came back, the Old Cat and Pasht were sent for.