That's the fascination and mystery of cats—their independence and their inscrutability. Furthermore, they have utterly no morals, and they are perfectly unabashed about it. If a dog does something he knows to be wrong, he hangs his head and his tail and crawls around on his stomach and presents a ridiculous spectacle of contrition and self-abasement, till you let him know he is forgiven. Then he probably jumps into your lap, and licks your glasses off your nose, and sticks his paw in among the cigars in your vest-pocket. The only safe way to forgive a dog is from the top of a high ladder.
But a cat doesn't care whether you forgive her or not. She feels no compunction and shows no gratitude. She will walk off with a porter-house steak or present the household with a family of war-kittens with equal nonchalance and aplomb—we always make a point of using French words when discussing these matrimonial irregularities, such is our delicacy.
Of course, Mike wasn't that kind of a cat—to present the household, that is. He might figure as the injured husband or the co-respondent in these regrettable affairs, but never as the fair, frail one. Though, as a matter of fact, the family at first was under the impression that he was a tabby.
Mike was an under-sized and very quiet black kitten, with a pair of the worst bow legs we have ever seen on anyone but Harry Lauder. His back legs were straight enough, but he looked as if he had been run over by a motor lorry in front, or brought up with his head under a low beam. They gave him a curious resemblance to a somewhat battered prize-fighter—whence the war-like title, "Mike."
It has never been clearly established in the family who was responsible for bringing Mike into its bosom and its milk-pitcher, so to speak. Mike arrived, that's all—probably he liked the air of cultured serenity about the house and walked in. With a promptness which is a strong tribute to his fascination of manner, even at this early age, he won our landlady's heart, and was formally adopted under the name of Yvonne.
Personally, we were always opposed to Yvonne as savoring too much of coquetry or hauteur. We wanted something simple and homely like Mary Elizabeth or Emma Jane. But Yvonne it was, and Yvonne it remained till it became generally apparent that the name didn't fit Mike's gender or his mode of life.
We would like to devote a great deal of space to telling the reader what a cute little rascal Mike was in his Yvonnehood, so to speak, and how we loved to come down in the morning and find him sitting in our Toasted Pine Flakes, or stuck in the cream-jug—he used to come right up from the cellar to be with us.
We would like to tell all this, so that our unmarried lady-readers could write in to us about their own cats and their cunning ways, and all we girls could have a perfectly lovely time together—they might even bring the cats down. But tempus fugit—these French phrases will break in—and we must on to the mournful and disheartening story of Mike's adult life, with the sad light it throws on the impotence of pure and beautiful surroundings to correct a naturally evil character.
The beginning of Mike's downfall was staying out o' nights. While still a kitten Mike had been accustomed to take an evening stroll, but his notion of bedtime grew hazier and hazier. He became distinctly less and less retiring. Finally Mike had to be stalked like a chamois every evening and dragged by the tail off some perilous peak of fence.
It was then that we got a brilliant idea, one of those flashes, you know. We reminded our landlady that Mike always came running when he heard anyone whet the carving knife on the steel, knowing that it was a musical prelude to dainty tidbits of meat.