The Great Small Cat, and Others: Seven Tales

by May E. Southworth

He looked as if the open road and the chase had afforded him more than a sumptuous living, for although well weathered by his tramp life, he was as chipper as ever and his muscles hard with a healthy well-fed leanness. Evidently, if we wanted this little savage at all we must accept him as a proposition and law unto himself. And we did want him, feeling sure that he was of the right sort, with merely a dash of mystery and adventure about him. He was made more than welcome, and his toes surreptitiously buttered according to ancient superstition, a process said to keep cats from roaming. He graciously settled into the old ways, accepting our love and forgiveness as freely as it was given, and this time was good enough to stay with us for several months.

As week succeeded week and he was still a contented member of our household, showing no signs of going his own way, we felt certain the talisman had worked and grew to be fairly sure of him. We really believed that the fleshpots of servitude had opened his eyes to the folly of his former disreputable ways, and that in pure physical content he would now settle down into the easy berth offered him and the tameness of domesticity.

But it seems that this was only the "gentlemanly part," for the time being having a holiday, and that our assurance was a creation of our own desire and doomed to disappointment. The time came all too surely when he began to show a decided weariness of walls and a diminished appetite for things cooked, perking his ears with a curious, listening look in his dark eyes, as of constant, waiting expectation, listening to something calling from afar. The roaming strain in his blood ever ran true on its glorious course, and it was not long before his days were empty and life too unbearably dull under the ease of our, perhaps too lavish, hospitality. Much to our chagrin he plainly showed that he was weary to death of having to account for days, and being locked up nights.

We recognized the signs and knew that this was one of his periods of utter revolt, when all clogging connection with civilization would prove too galling in comparison with the joys of the open, and knowing the nature of the sledge hammer that was pounding in his breast, stood by and watched the struggle with amused interest. We were certain that we had given him the sense of the restfulness of a settled home with its comforts, and were also sure of having gained his gentlemanly gratitude and affection. But "you never can tell," and so we waited and wondered in curious uncertainty as to the outcome.

Summer passed, and it was not until the leaves were smitten with frost and falling scarlet and gold in the autumn woods that Jiminy Christmas' vagabond blood tantalized him into faring forth. The free way in which the cheery chipmunks and the squirrels were scampering among the naked tree-tops, rattling the dry branches and sending a rain of nuts on his great playground, set the wheels of discontent to buzzing so fiercely in his roving nature that it actually hurt him to stay within bounds. We felt that if he were able to resist the merciless torment this time, he would indeed be a warrior worthy of laurel.

In the end the lure of life in the open won; or was it the old militant alley and chummy gutters? But whichever it was, the summons proved too enticing, and so one evening, half-apologetically, as if dragging himself away from an almost overpowering temptation to stay, he rubbed his "Aufwiedersehen" about our feet. We watched him fade like a ghost into the surreptitious joy of the blue gloaming, carrying his tail with an air of regret and shame, but resolutely, and quickening his pace with every step, never to be seen again until all hope had long been given up.

As the months and finally more than a year passed and no prodigal returned, we feared that he had shaken the dust from his paws and the memory of our home from his mind, forever, and gone the final way of all such vagabonds. We were honestly puzzled over this wild independent streak in his nature, and naturally rather indignant over his lack of appreciation. Still, his next appearance was anxiously waited for and there was never a day that we did not look and hope that out of the mysterious everywhere, somehow, someway, this ungrateful cat would come back to the warm spots in our hearts, and the empty spot on our hearth that were waiting for him.

One lovely morning, in the early spring, on going out on the back porch for a breath of the fresh morning world and a general survey of things blossoming, little did we dream of seeing our renegade. Yet there he was, sitting modestly on the very edge of the farthest corner, as if claiming nothing, nor asserting anything, but actually there, come back to us from the mysterious absence of a whole year.

"And is it you?" was the rather scornful welcome he received.

Naturally the feeble irony of this greeting was lost on him and he gave us a smiling "good-morning," with a "lovely day today" sort of expression, and our pleasure at renewing the acquaintance was as great as the surprise he had given us. We could scarcely believe our eyes, but by this time we were getting used to this cat's "dropping in on us" how and when he liked. He was quite self-possessed, making what we considered a polite apology but no unusual fuss, ignoring this huge blank in his record and pretending it was but yesterday that he had stepped out to "look at things." His superb air of having no recollection and being so stolidly calm over it, and having no consciousness of anything to account for, was exasperatingly characteristic. But with all this, there seemed to be at first a questioning, wistful look in his wide-open eyes as they met ours. Not that he was at all humble; it was rather as if he were trying to fathom the depth of his depravity in our estimation: a guilty, uncertain, uneasy, self-conviction, as if feeling his way back into our goodness and esteem.