The Cat

by Violet Hunt

'Oh, you beast—darling, I mean! Right on the top of my best white wuffy hat! Come out of it at once, angel—pet! And here is another on my ermine boa! And another on my best painted crèpe de chine blouse! Oh, this is too much, Petronilla, my lamb—'

And she took us all out quite gently, not hurting us half so much as mother did in bumping us along the floor, and put us back into our bed of fresh hay, that we have to lie in so as to make us smell sweet. Auntie May always says that very young infant kittens are like babies, and need beautiful accessories, such as blue bows, and green hay, and white powder puffs.

They fastened the wardrobe door very tight and strictly forbade Mary to touch us, and for many days after this we just lay still and ate—ate—ate! Mother, however greedy we were, never pushed us away. She was like a soft hill of wool that we had leave to lie up against and browse upon. Every now and then she spread out her paws, which were like silver streaks, wide and square, all over us, not heavily, so as to weigh us down, but lightly, like a sort of lattice that kept the cold draughts off us, and that we might fancy to be a wall or a hedge between us and the world if we liked.

It was the great advantage of mother's being a pet cat that she and her family lived in the house, not in a cattery, as they are called. Mother knew very well what a cattery was like—she had been in one before a man bought her and gave her to Auntie May as a present. She cost three guineas, she said. It was a very nice cattery, as catteries go—she admits that—and she will always look upon it with affection as being her first home, but still there was a lot of difference between it and Auntie May's house. A cattery has generally hard trodden-in earth for a floor, without a carpet, except for a few unhemmed bits spread here and there. There's generally an old chair—wooden—to scrape your claws on: now velvet, such as is kept here, mother says, is much more interesting and efficacious. The bed is inside, under cover—I grant you that—but only made out of a few old packing cases, and there is generally a horrid smelly oil-lamp to warm the whole place. Now Auntie May had us in her own bedroom for the first week of our lives, and when she did move us, it was only into her study. She was an authoress and had to have a study; at least her father, who was a distinguished painter and R.A., and adores his daughter, thought she had as much right as he to have a studio—same word as study. 'She sells her books, and I don't sell my pictures!' he said. (I call her Auntie May because Rosamond does, and because it sounds more respectful, and mother said I ought.) Her study was quite nicely furnished and full of bureaus and manuscript cupboards and high things to perch on. Mother says it is advisable when choosing a perch to get as high as possible, because of the draughts that run along the floors of even the best rooms.

Mother told us many things as we lay there, but I can't say I took much notice of them till my eyes opened. It was just a nice sleepy sound she made that sent us off to bye-bye one after another. I suppose she slept herself, but I never remember being awake when she wasn't. She was a very good mother; she hardly ever left us. Of course she got out of the bed to eat her meals; she detested crumbs in the bed, and so on. If she went away she always came back with a kind sort of speech—Rosamond called it a mew—something like 'Here we are again!' or 'Well, how goes it, infants?' and then lay down right on the top of us. Rosamond used to scold her and pull her off us, thinking she would hurt us; she didn't know that we were always able to ooze away from under mother quite easily when once she had turned round three times and got settled.

Till my eyes opened I did not know how many brothers and sisters I had, except for mother's telling me. I fought them all without having the slightest idea of the sort of thing I was fighting. I knew it had claws, though. I knew that Fred B. Nicholson, as they called him afterwards, after Auntie May's American cousin, was a regular bully from the beginning, always putting himself forward, and shoving us away from the best places. After all, eating is everything in those first days, and mother was singularly weak where Fred was concerned, and let him batter us as much as he liked, and never took our side against him. She only said 'First come, first served!' and 'Heaven helps those that help themselves!' and certainly he did grow a great strong boy.

Perhaps that was the reason why his eyes opened first!

Rosamond gave us a great deal of attention when her own lessons were over, and before, and hung over us till she got all the blood to her head, she said. She called herself cat-maid. One day when she was leaning over our bed, she suddenly jumped up and screamed:

'Oh, Auntie May, one of them—I don't even know which, but I think it is Fred B. Nicholson—has got a tiny, tiny slit where his eyes ought to be! Do you suppose he can see?'

I felt the first grief of my life. I knew there was no slit where my eyes ought to be, and I felt sure it was, as Rosamond guessed, that horrid boy Fred, who always got first in everything. Next day the slit in his face was bigger. That evening they said with certainty, 'Yes, Fred can see!' In the daylight Rosamond discovered that his eyes were blue. By that time I saw what looked like a streak of light, and guessed that my eyes were going to open soon, and wondered if they would be blue too! I asked mother, and she laughed at Rosamond and at me, saying that all kittens' eyes are blue at first. Even Rosamond ought to have known that. The question was, would they be green or orange afterwards?