Subject to Vanity

by Margaret Benson

I was very much shocked, picked up Pasht and shut her up in the schoolroom, when she instantly appeared on the window-sill and reproached me loudly. But of course I did not take it seriously, and thought that they would both get over it.

I must explain the position (unfortunate in this respect) of the rooms in which the cats and I live.

It has four large windows looking on the lawn and the laurel bushes—too high for a cat to jump down, but not too high for her to practise little wiles on the window-sill for the benefit of appreciative spectators below. Just on the left hand of the door is a long window, from which steps go down to the garden, and close by the steps is a large laurustinus, a most convenient place for ambushes and clandestine meetings. Opposite the schoolroom door, again, there is another door opening on to a back staircase, whence one gets into kitchens, whose windows also give on to the lawn, and are usually open. My bedroom is above the schoolroom.

On the evening when I had abruptly stopped Pasht’s flirtation, a noise arrested my attention as I was going to bed. It was the voice of a cat saying “wwoww.” You know what it means when a cat says that? He is paying compliments. The noise went on and on, round the schoolroom-end of the house, until I went to sleep, but I heard no answer from Pasht.

Pasht was hysterically affectionate when I saw her next morning; she said “a - - - ow,” and clung on to my dress, and climbed up on to my shoulder and refused to leave me, and walked about over my letters when the ink was wet, and flapped her tail into my mouth, and altogether played the fool, and pretended that she had forgotten her vulgar suitor of the night before and I heard no serenades outside.

But in the middle of the day I suddenly heard from my bedroom an extremely loud voice saying “wwaughwow,” and looking down saw Pasht standing on the window-sill of the schoolroom. I don’t know whether she said it or not, for as soon as she saw me she looked up and took to the more ordinary and ladylike expression of a general desire to go out in the sunshine. Several times in the day I heard it again, but as soon as I looked round, Pasht turned an innocent face to me and said “miaow.”

In the evening the gentleman began to woo again; I knew it was the suitor this time, as Pasht was safely shut up. I listened at the door of the schoolroom to hear if she was answering, but there was no sound. She is a regular flirt.

A party from the house went round the garden with croquet mallets, but with no result.

Next morning it became too clear that Pasht was encouraging her suitor; he rushed away from the laurestinus bush as I came out, and she was sitting on the window-sill. I took her out for a short time in the garden under strict supervision, but she would do nothing but flop into graceful attitudes on the lawn. I really had not thought it of her.