Views and Opinions

by Ouida

He feels, and feels intensely, the similarity of sentiment between himself and all other forms of sentient life. He is not ashamed to perceive and acknowledge that the emotions of the animal are absolutely the same in substance as our own, and differ from ours only in degree. Could this knowledge become universal it would go far to make cruelty impossible in man, but as yet it has only been realised and admitted by the higher minds of a very few, such as his own, as Tennyson’s, as Wordsworth’s, as Browning’s, as Lecomte de Lisle’s, as Sully Prudhomme’s; it requires humility and sympathy in the human breast of no common kind; it is the absolute antithesis of the vanity and egotism of what is called the scientific mind, although more truly scientific, that is, more logical, than the bombast and self-worship of the biologist and physiologist.

Loti sees and feels that the little African cat from Senegal, which he brought to his own Breton home, is moved by the same feelings as himself, and in a more pathetic because a more helpless way, and he has remorse for a momentary unkindness to her as though she were living still.

‘It was one day when, with the obstinacy of her race, she had jumped where she had been twenty times forbidden to go, and had broken a vase to which I was much attached. I gave her a slap at first; then, my anger not satiated, I pursued her and kicked her with my foot. The slap had only surprised her, but the kick told her that it was war between us; and then she fled as fast as four legs would take her, her tail like a feather in the wind. When safe under a piece of furniture she turned round and cast at me a look of reproach and distress, believing herself lost, betrayed, and assassinated by one beloved, into whose hands she had entrusted her fate; and as my look at her remained hostile and unkind, she gave vent to the great cry of a creature at bay. Then all my wrath ceased in one instant: I called her, I caressed her, I soothed her, taking her on my knees all breathless and terrified. Oh, that last cry of despair from an animal, whether from the poor ox tied to the slaughter-place, or of the miserable rat held in the teeth of a bull-dog—that last cry which hopes nothing, which appeals to no one, which is like a supreme protestation thrown in the face of Nature, an appeal to some unknown pity floating in the air. Now all which remains of my little cat, whom I remember so living and so droll, are a few bones in a hole at the foot of a tree. And her flesh, her little person, her affection for me, her infinite terror that day she was scolded, her great joy, her anguish and reproach—all, in a word, which moved and lived, and had their being around these bones—all have become but a little dust!’

‘What a spiritual mystery, a mystery of the soul, that constant affection of an animal, and its long gratitude!’ he says in another place; and when, meaning to act mercifully, he gives chloroform to a poor, sick, stray cat, he is haunted by the fear that he has done wrong to end for it that poor little atom of joyless, friendless life, which was all that it could call its own.

This is its story,—

‘An old, mange-eaten cat, driven away from its home, no doubt by its owner, for its age and infirmities, had established itself in the street on the doorstep of our house, where a little warmth from a November sun came to comfort it. It is a habit of certain people who call their selfishness sensibility to send out to be purposely lost, the creatures which they will not take care of any longer, and do not desire to see suffer. All the day he had sat there, piteously huddled in a corner of a window, looking so unhappy and so humble! An object of disgust to all the passers-by, threatened by children, by dogs, by continual dangers, every hour more ill and feeble, eating Heaven knows what rubbish, got with difficulty out of the gutter, he dragged out his existence, prolonging it as best he might, trying to retard the moment of his death. His poor head was covered with scabs and sores, and had scarcely any fur left on it, but his eyes remained pretty, and seemed full of thought. He had certainly felt, in all the frightful bitterness of his lot, that last degradation of all, the inability to make his toilette, to polish his coat, to wash and comb himself as all cats love to do so carefully. It hurt me so to see this poor lost animal that, after having sent him food into the street, I approached him and spoke to him gently. (Animals soon understand kind words, and are consoled by them.) Having been so often hunted and driven away, he was at first frightened at seeing me near him; his first look was timid, suspicious, at once a reproach and a prayer! Then soon comprehending that I was there from sympathy, and astonished at so much happiness, he addressed me in his own way: ‘Trr! Trr! Trr!’ getting up out of politeness, trying, despite his mangy state, to arch his back in the hope that I should stroke him. But the pity I felt for him, though great, could not go as far as that. The joy of being caressed he was never to know again. But in compensation it occurred to me that it would be kind to end his life of pain by giving him a gentle, dreamful death. An hour later, Sylvester, my servant, who had bought some chloroform, drew him gently into our stable, and induced him to lie down on some warm hay in an osier basket which was destined to be his mortuary chamber. Our preparations did not disturb him: we had rolled a card into a cone-shaped form, as we had seen the ambulance surgeon do; he had looked at us with a contented look, thinking he had at last found a lodging and people who had pity on him, new owners who would shelter him.

‘Despite the horror of his disease, I stooped over him and stroked him, and, always caressing him, I induced him to lie still, and to bury his little nose in the cone of cardboard; he, a little surprised at first, and sniffing the strange, potent odour with alarm, ended however in doing what I wished with such docility that I hesitated to continue my work. The annihilation of a thinking creature is, equally with annihilation of man, a cruel and responsible thing, and contains the same revolting mystery. And death, besides, carries in itself so much majesty that it is capable of giving grandeur in an instant to the most tiny and finite creatures, as soon as its shadow descends on them. Once he raised his poor head to look at me fixedly; our eyes met, his with an expressive interrogation, an intense anxiety, asked me, “What is it that you do? You whom I know so little, but to whom I trusted—what is it that you do to me?” And I still hesitated; but his throat inclined downwards, and his face rested on my hand, which I did not withdraw; stupefaction had begun to steal over him, and I hoped that he would not look at me again.

‘And yet, yes, once again! Cats, as the village people here say, have their lives united to their bodies. In one last struggle for life his eyes met mine; across his mortal semi-sleep he seemed now to perceive and understand: “Ah! it was to kill me, then? Well, I let you do it! It is too late—I sleep!”

‘In truth, I feared I had done ill. In this world, where we know nothing surely of anything, it is not even allowed us to let pity take this shape. His last look, infinitely sad, even whilst glazing in death, continued to pursue me with reproach. “Why,” it said, “why interfere with my fate? Without you I should have dragged my life on a little longer, had a few more little thoughts. I had still strength to jump up on a window-sill, where the dogs could not reach me; where I was not too cold in the morning, especially if the sun shone there. I still passed some bearable hours watching the movement in the street, seeing other cats come and go, having consciousness of what was doing round me, whilst now there is nothing for me but to rot away for ever into something which will have no memory. Now I am no more!” Truly, I should have recollected that the feeblest and poorest things prefer to linger on under the most miserable conditions, prefer no matter what suffering to the terror of being nothing, of being no more.’

And he cannot forgive himself an act which was meant out of kindness, but in which the regard of the dying animal makes him see almost a crime. This tenderness for every breathing thing, this sentiment of the infinite, intense pity and mystery which accompany all forms of death is ever present with him, and nothing in its hour of dissolution is too small or too fragile, or too mean or too miserable, in his sight not to arouse this in him.