All Auntie May said was, 'Oh!' but as she went out of the room she added, 'It is a pity he hates cats so, isn't it?'
The black cat's name was Charlie, but Auntie May never knew that, and she christened him Blackavice, because he had a black face. He was a really comfortable old thing, and the night after I came back we all listened to him, sitting on different high things in the room. We cats never like to be crowded up together unless we are sleeping, and then we prefer it because of the warmth.
He was only nine, and he had had a strange and varied life. He told us all in snippets, some things one evening and some another, and some things twice over. We never minded that, but listened to his yarns with the greatest attention. We liked him fairly well, but not well enough to lick him. One never knew where he had been, and there is a dustbin full of potato peelings and other things to every house in the square.
He had lived once, he said, in a family in London where the master kept him to catch mice, and the cook to put thefts on. He never knew what he hadn't done. When he saw a joint or a fish come in, handed over at the backdoor by the fishmonger or the butcher's boy, he used to say sadly to himself, 'Now, shall I be supposed to steal that?' And generally the cook's mother came in the afternoon of that day, and, sure enough, she got one of those soles or the end of that joint, and the mistress was told next morning, 'Ma'am, that awful Charlie again!' He tried to manage to be out of the way while the mistress was ordering dinner, because after saying this sort of thing the cook used to look round for him and broom him out to show how cross she was with him, and how she abhorred his crime. It was a most insecure life. Then once or twice he said he thought that he might as well have the good of the fish or meat he was accused of stealing, and he really did take it; but the cook was too sharp for him, and gave him a whipping for stealing the portion of her poor old mother. That didn't pay, and only was the means of his getting two whippings instead of one.
The cook hardly fed him at all, but expected him to cater for himself out of the mice that were living behind the boards, and who came out at night and played about. The supply of mice varied very much, and he said that, when mice were plentiful, he used to let them go so as to save them for another dinner later on; then if mice were scarce he got so weak he couldn't catch them. He often thought it wasn't good enough, and that he would like to make a change. He visited every house in the square in which he lived, in turn, hoping that they would see fit to keep him, as he was a black cat, and a black cat taking up its abode with you is accounted lucky. But no, they all broomed him out, and one tall cook hot-watered him out, and that hurt. So he stayed on with Mrs. Murch and was bullied all the time, and had no pleasure in life, except on warm sunny days sitting in the square garden pretending that there was no necessity to fag after birds. He used to envy the cats who didn't have need to pretend, but were so well fed that all they need do was to look lazily after the birds flying past, and gibber at them, or cats like us who are positively forbidden to go after birds because it is cruel. The first time the family went away for the summer and left him, he couldn't make head or tail of it, he said. But other cats told him he might think himself lucky They had not locked him in, the way They do sometimes, and then the policeman has to get them out if he is kind and has a mind to. Charlie had the run of the garden and the birds, but he missed the 'drain' of milk the cook gave him when she was in a good humour, and he soon got so weak and flabby that he could not catch a bird, and they used to sit in the branches and mock at him—the sparrows, that is.
He made up his mind that he would not go through with it another year, and about July he began to make love to the cook's mother, taking her a mackerel or so that he had stolen on purpose for her and laying it at her feet. The cook's mother was pleased with him, and, as he had calculated, offered to borrow him for a month and see what he could do with the rats down at her place, down at Limehouse Pier, or something like that, and he said we would hardly believe it, but he got far more to eat while he was there than at home. The poor are much more lavish than the rich, and live so much better. And he saw life! 'My word!' he would say, licking his whiskers, which were fine and large, and his only beauty. He said they were of immense use to him in showing what sized gaps he could get through, for if his whiskers were at all incommoded, he at once knew that the hole or gap was too small for the thickest part of him. Such tight places he had been in. He would lift up his head and yawn and say:
'The things I have seen, ma'am, you would not believe!'
Then mother would kindly ask him to spare our youth, and not tell us all the dreadful things that he had seen and heard in the slums, for it would not have been nice. He might tell her when they were alone, but as they seldom were alone I don't think he ever got the chance, though he was dying to shock her, because she was so shockable.
And then the old woman died, and a rent-collecting lady, who had been kind to her when she couldn't pay her rent and paid it for her herself, took Charlie away with her when all the sticks were sold—there was only a table and a chair, as far as I can remember, when she had pawned everything—and gave him to a little boy who was her nephew. It happened to be a little boy in Egerton Gardens where we lived. Funny, how small the world is! That boy was rough and played experiments with him, and catapulted him, and tied things to him, and harnessed him, and put him to bed in his sister's doll's nightgowns in the day-time. That was disagreeable, Charlie said, but he never bit him, and he was glad afterwards, for the little boy got ill.