AÏDA AND SAADI
AÏDA AND SAADI
The contented purr of "Home Sweet Home" on the hearth, by a resident kitten, was the one touch of coziness lacking in our newly acquired country bungalow.
Seeing an exhibition of thoroughbreds advertised, with many for sale, a trip was made for the sole purpose of filling this pleasant need in our comfortable chimney corner, and so making our little ménage complete. On arriving at the crowded display rooms, where each cat's family ancestors were found carefully recorded, the problem of selecting the correct kitten, among so bewildering a collection of purple pedigrees, was a rather serious one. They all looked so fuzzy, chubby and attractive that we wanted them all, and it was impossible to decide on just one. After long and careful consideration, two babies were finally selected for their special beauty and daintiness, as the ones most likely to blend harmoniously with the crackle of our cheerful fire, and the singing of the evening tea urn in our bungalow.
The homeward journey, with the tiny princesses carried carefully and almost awesomely, was one of suppressed, but anticipated triumph, in being the fortunate possessors of something worth while in cats and something that would doubtless become real blessings under the careful training and wise discipline we were already planning.
On reaching home and joyously throwing back the cover of the padded traveling basket, we found the expected excitement painfully lacking; there was no eager bounding of the released little captives as would be most natural in ordinary kittens, and which we had expected twofold in these extraordinary ones, not even a friendly mew—just an awkward silence, with two of the most pathetic, tired looking bunches of royalty staring up from the basket, with frightened eyes.
We gently lifted the scared, chrysanthemum-like blossoms of fur from the basket and silently but proudly placed them on the floor in order to display their blue-blooded points, that all might be properly awed. But even then, in spite of their beauty, which all acknowledged, they failed to make any sort of pleasant impression, but lay just as they had been placed, crouching almost flat in shrinking terror of their new surroundings. As they cowered there in cringing, pathetic helplessness, they looked like almost anything but kittens to be proud of, and the audience smiled incredulously, while I as their sponsor in momentary chagrin and contrition, wondered if, perhaps, in pride, I had not been too ambitious in making a selection of such royal daintiness. For, might it not be that the solemnity of such a long line of lineage would result in their being a terrible disappointment as mere kittens, and what we had planned on having was nice, fat, cheery, comfy playfellows. The poor small mites of big pedigree were certainly woefully depressing under the present strain, and at this rather inopportune moment it was cheerfully suggested that I might possibly have done better in my investment, and perhaps realized a greater profit, with the homemade "just cat" variety. But I ignored these sarcastic insinuations and would not be disheartened, for my treasures were of the renowned Persian species and I was still hopeful that the purity of the blood which circulated in their veins would yet prove its worth. Even to the skeptical, they showed that they were unmistakably the real article by an elegance of finish throughout, and that they were of the purest breeding, for their coats were unusually long, with soft, full, fluffy scruffs and little tufts of hair growing out of their thin pink ears and between their darling chubby toes.
At first it did seem as if, with their advent, a rather serious and unnecessary responsibility had been thrust upon an inexperienced household, for the risk in rearing these tender thoroughbreds was perhaps too great to assume without the aid of a natural parent. Fortunately for us, the melancholy period of their abrupt and rather shocking orphanage soon passed, and under our loving care the memory of mother gradually faded away. They grew and throve like plain ordinary kittens and soon began to frolic and take on the gladness of life, in spite of the deprivation of a real mother's cuddling and nursing.