The Great Small Cat, and Others: Seven Tales

by May E. Southworth

These paternal young cowmen, having delivered their souls of this religious act of discipline, "pulled the stake" and let her go free. By the time the days of kittenhood had passed the "stray" had grown plump and her coat glossy, and although minus all signs of pedigree, she held her head high and had acquired a certain modest dignity, sufficient to deceive a layman and to insure the respect and good treatment due a lady. Evidently she had been careful to mind the warning and was conducting herself "decorus." In return for their hospitality she attended to her part of the ranch business by keeping the cabin and pantry strictly clear of all rats and mice. Occasionally she gave chase to the wild things good for cats, and at milking time, if she happened to "hang round," the men were sure to give her a fine dessert of warm milk. As the days and weeks went happily by for her, she unobtrusively arranged her life to suit the pleasant place she had fallen into, gaining an honest living by her skill, with a few luxuries thrown in at unexpected intervals by the men, who would forget her for days at a time, owing to her modest way of keeping in the background. If on some lean and hungry days, when hunting had not been so successful, she would sometimes wistfully sniff, with eager, yearning stomach and longing, though decently distant eyes, the bountiful, savory mess of the kitchen, or venture to rub too coaxingly near the bustling form juggling the pots and pans with energetic vehemence, she was soon made to understand that she had overstepped the bounds of her tolerance, in trespassing on the particular domain of one who just endured her unwelcome presence. Being feminine and an unusually sensible and peaceable cat, she soon developed a surprising acuteness in diplomacy and in warding off unnecessary trouble. After various mortifying experiences she found it best to be "only handy" at such times as the feasts were in progress, creeping most cautiously in, a-tiptoe on her soft noiseless pads, just to be there in case any tidbits should come her way.

All might have been well, and life a long holiday, leading her in pleasant ways to the end, had she not erred, and so innocently and blindly erred. Of course it was scandalous, if natural, and not to be tolerated for one moment by the already much overburdened landlady. The downfall came as a terribly stiff jolt to poor kitty, for her heart had swelled with guiltless pride over her sin and its achievement.

One sad Sunday morning she was discovered in her cosy corner, a very picture of innocent content over the beautiful surprise she had created for the family. There she lay with her eyes half-closed, softly beaming in rapture on six very small, newly born infants at her breasts. As she was "discovered" she looked up in her delirium of happiness with a hesitating, half-apologetic sort of smile, as one longing for, yet meeting, no response. Her anxiety was so exactly human that no one could mistake her meaning or her little weak smile of hesitating conciliation. But it froze in a flash when with frightened dismay she heard the hustling housewife's loud and angry denunciation of "the march that hussy had stolen on us," and the sentence of "immediate death" or "transportation" pronounced on "her and her brood," in stentorian and not-to-be-trifled-with tones.

These square men with square jaws were "all in a heap" over the size and caliber of the shock their pet had handed out to them. The smoldering spark of guardianship that had been fanned to a warm, comfortable flame in their breasts was not so easily extinguished, but they realized that all pleading and diplomacy with the outraged Authority would be in vain this time. No pet on the ranch had ever, in an unobtrusive way, gained so firm a hold on their stout hearts and "their pile of hope was busted well" by this rude interruption to the tremendous bid they had made on the bad-tempered woman's favor. Not only did they hate to part with this shy, little, inoffensive protégée, but that she had failed to "make good" in the eyes of the one whom, in their fiercest rage they dared not oppose, and so had lost her home, was a sickening disappointment. As they braced themselves for the worst and stood there smiling indulgently down on the cat so snug in her bed, there was a long and rather anxious pause during which they all seemed tongue-tied, until at last one said in playful disgust:

"Humph! y'u've been plumb busy to-day, hav'n't y'u, old girl, and this time, like all females, handing out trouble for yereself with both hands."

They were both disgusted and "plenty sorrowful" over the terrible fiat, but it was a case, on their part, of "have to," and a bad case, too. Not that they were afraid, but they were "hobbled," all right, as well as "bridle wise," and frankly confessed that when it came to women, they were "a mite timid." But since there was a choice of evils, in sorrowfully bending to the inevitable they, of course, decided on "transportation." In indignation they considered places, finally determining to take the offending family across the river, far, far, away where they would never more be able to trespass on so reluctant a hospitality as the ranch cabin afforded. In wide-eyed wonderment and feverish anxiety, the crestfallen young mother followed every movement in the preparations that were being made for her journey. She, of course, could not understand, but watched with vastly puzzled eyes all this strange confusion about her bed, feeling that she was surely in some way responsible for this unusual excitement. In nervous haste she passionately licked the wee babies with tender, mothering tongue, and with soft caressing murmurs as if assuring them of safety and was about to do it all over again with utmost care in hopes of being able to disperse the gloom they had evidently created when she and the kits were lifted gently into a covered basket which the men had been carefully preparing for the conveyance. They knew of a place, "the furtherest ever," a real home ranch where the house-mother would be really glad of this family. It was far enough away so that the exile could never return, and besides, what made it an absolutely safe asylum in the judgment of these men was that it was across a deep flowing river, which meant that there could be no "stampede" back. Even for the most homesick of kitties and one who "sure had spunk," it would be madness to attempt to return across that.

These big men, big physically and big in tenderness and sympathy, usually "took the bit in their mouths and got whatever they went for," and with pretty smart directness, too. But they were shy, their nerve forsaking them entirely, when it came to tackling a woman on her own stamping ground, and that woman the very capable provider of their "three square per." Why she had taken this obstinate caprice and unreasonable dislike they did not try to conjecture. It was beyond male understanding and they lovingly alluded to her as the "one and original Chinese puzzle." They said "women is queer" with that long-suffering tolerance which the male human accords the vagaries of the female.

The rangeman is nothing if he lacks that one remarkably comfortable trait of adaptability, and so, although they were not "stuck on the job" of removing the cat, they were forced by virtue of their very large necessity not to get into a "mix-up," by reason of the woman's crabbed temper and strange antagonism.

So two volunteer martyrs, boiling, seething volcanoes inside, shamedly and reluctantly took up the basket, holding it as gingerly as if it were a case of eggs instead of a case of a mother and her harvest of shame, and dismally started for the ferry. After crossing the river they "pulled their freight" on the trail a mile farther back inland, which led upwards into a wide broad meadow and to the home of a friendly ranch-boss. The buxom wife welcomed their unexpected arrival and the "family" with open arms, telling them that she had long been wanting a younger breed of cats to take the place of "old Tom," now getting lazy and "no 'count," and that she felt flattered that these faithful friends had selected this ranch as the home for their pet. The men fixed a nice warm bed in the sanctuary of a vacant manger in one of the corrals, counted out the infants and found them all O. K., and then tried to coax the cat to nestle down and mother them. But she would not, merely crouching over them instead, in an anxious sort of way with her ears perked inquiringly forward, in an attitude of miserable bewilderment.

The outcome of her "happy surprise" had been a crushing blow, but one which would wake within her such a marvelous spirit of determination and endurance as to render her distinguished among cats. The second "happy surprise" she was to unfold for their entertainment was one little anticipated and one that would take the breath from even these hardened men.