The Domestic Cat Part 6

Never give kittens poison, it is cruel in the extreme; you might chloroform them to death, but one doesn't like to waste much time in taking life, if merely a kitten's; the pail is always handy, and the poor wee things don't really suffer much if you do it properly. Always sink them, and keep the pail for three hours, after which bury them at once. I'll give you an example of the wrong way of doing things. Miss M--n, who lived not a stone's throw from where I now write, and who is an old maid (and may a merciful Providence keep her so!), was changing her residence last month, and at the last moment thought she couldn't be bothered with more than one of her kittens--little Persian beauties, whom she had let live a whole month--so one was s.n.a.t.c.hed from its mother's arms, and pitched carelessly into a pail of water. She never heeded its cries, nor the mother's piteous appeal to save her offspring; so presently kitty was dead, to all appearance, and the bucket was emptied over the wall into an adjoining field. This was at eleven o'clock in the morning, and late that evening some boys, in pa.s.sing, were attracted to the spot by plaintive mews, and there they found the kitten crawling in the gra.s.s, with sadly swollen body and inflamed mouth. The boys drowned and buried it, being more humane than old maid M--n.

If necessity, then, compels you to part by death with an old cat, and probably an old friend and favourite, I do not advise you to have her drowned. It is cruel in many ways; there is the catching of her, the putting of her into the sack with the stone, and the march to the waterside, the cat knowing all the while what is to happen, and that her mistress ordered her death. Do not drown her. If there is any one you can really trust, that you are sure knows the difference between a gun and a was.h.i.+ng-stick, by all means have her shot. It is over in a moment. The next best plan is to administer morphia. Don't grudge her a good dose--five or even ten grains. Cats are wonderfully tenacious of life, but they can't stand that. Make the morphia into a pill, with a little of the extract of liquorice, and force it down the throat. p.u.s.s.y will sleep the sleep that knows no waking, and you will have the satisfaction of knowing she did not suffer.

Apart from teaching a cat tricks, which tend to amuse children or older folks, there is a training which every p.u.s.s.y needs when young--viz, to be cleanly and honest. For some weeks after the kitten has been taken from its mother, and gone to its new abode, a flower-pot saucer filled with sand, or, what is better, a small box of garden mould, must be placed in a particular corner of the room, and the kitten taught to go there; two or three lessons are usually sufficient. By degrees wean her from the box, and teach her to go out of doors.

As to teaching her the difference between _meum_ and _tuum_, I maintain, with all cat-fanciers, that cats are honest by nature, although they may, at times, be tempted to steal a herring, or take a slight liberty with the canary. The great secret is to feed p.u.s.s.y well, and be kind to her; you may then let her sit on the table, or even extend to her the liberty of the press. Depend upon it she will never do anything to deserve disfranchis.e.m.e.nt.

If ever you catch p.u.s.s.y tripping, chastise her; but don't forget this, you must do so only very moderately, or in the fright she will forget what she is being whipped for. A little bit of whalebone is the best thing to use, but take care you do not hit her about the head. I have often known cats severely chastised for what they were quite innocent of. One p.u.s.s.y, I remember, used to be thrashed every day for a whole week for a certain act of impropriety, and it turned out, after all, that Charley, the black-and-tan, was the real culprit. She took it out of Charley, however. She whipped him upstairs, and she whipped him down, and finally she whipped him over the window, which was two storeys high. Poor Charley was much hurt, and didn't turn up again for a fortnight.

Would you have your cat a good mouser? Then _feed her regularly_ and liberally; I a.s.sure you, madam, that is the whole secret.

Cats, when young, can be taught a whole host of amusing tricks.

The most graceful of these is, perhaps, leaping heights. A cat that has had constant exercise at this sort of thing will spring almost incredible distances. The best plan to train her to this is to attach a hare's foot to the end of a rod and set it in motion for her. You can every day place it a little higher, and she will soon take to it naturally. Cats thus trained will climb the tallest trees, and leap from branch to branch like squirrels.

By holding your arms in front of p.u.s.s.y you will soon teach her to leap backwards and forwards over them. As she gets older, increase the distance of your arms from the ground, until at last you place them right over your head, and p.u.s.s.y will go over and through like any old steeple-chaser.

You may teach her to go through a hoop, or hoops, held at any elevation, and in all conceivable positions. Remember always to speak kindly to her when teaching her anything. Never chastise her; and when she has performed her little feat to your satisfaction, make much of her, and give her a morsel of fish, or any favourite food.

Cats are easily taught to fish in this manner: take them when young to a shallow stream, on a clear day, where the minnows are plentiful, and throw in a dead one or two, and encourage the cat to catch them. She will soon be after the living ones.

I had a cat that I taught to retrieve like a dog, and to fetch and carry. The same cat had for its constant companion my cheeky little starling, who used to hop about and on her, pick her teeth, and open her claws, but she never attempted to molest him.

You can teach your cat to follow you like a dog, and take long walks with you, and to come to you whenever you call her by whistling.

I have told you how to make your cat a good mouser, now I'll give you another wrinkle--how to make her a good trickster--_love her_ and take an interest in all her little performances, and you will be surprised at the amount of tricks she will learn.

Without reference to the accomplishments of performing cats, who require a special education, I may here enumerate just a few of the many simple performances, which, with firmness, gentleness, and patience, you may easily teach any cat of ordinary brain calibre. A cat may be taught to beg like a dog; to embrace you; to pat your nose or your neighbour's nose when told--(N.B. It's just as well it should _always_ be your neighbour's nose)--to down charge; to watch by a mouse's hole; to stand in a corner on her hind legs; to move rhythmically to music; to mew when told; to shut her eyes when told; to leap six or eight feet through a hoop or over your head; to feign sleep; to feign death; to open or shut a door; to ring the bell; to fish; to swim, and retrieve either in the water or on the land.

I have a cat who, if I hold her up in front of the map of London, will place her paw upon any princ.i.p.al building I like to name. The cat has been used to be carried round the room to catch flies on the wall. The princ.i.p.al buildings in the map are marked with square black spots, which she naturally mistakes for flies, so you have only to hold her in front of the map nearest to the spot you want her to touch, and slightly elevate your voice when you name the place, and the thing is done.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

AGREMENS OF CAT LIFE.

Before we can thoroughly understand the ways and habits of any animal, we must try, in a manner, to put ourselves in that animal's place, and thus be able to study life from its point of view.

I don't believe that G.o.d made any creature to be otherwise than happy, and He has endowed each member of His creation with just that amount of reason and instinct which shall enable it to find its food and a place to rest in, make love in its own way, marry after its own fas.h.i.+on--by civil contract--bring up its young, and, in a word, be generally jolly.

I found a poor bee this morning getting drowned in the water-b.u.t.t.

"Yes," I said, "I'll save your life, but I will give you as a treat to my pet spider." Man has the proposing, but not the disposing. I laid my bee for one moment on the edge of the b.u.t.t to dry, when whirr! away he darted through the bright morning suns.h.i.+ne, and my spider had to be content with a bluebottle for breakfast. This spider, I may tell you, is a very large and beautiful specimen, striped and marked like a silver tabby. He lives in an outhouse, and has a web, the network of which is a yard in diameter, with goodness knows how many feet of tack, and sheet, and stay, and guy. And a very amusing rascal he is, and not a bit afraid of me. Nearly every day, I give him a bee with the sting out. (It is in the kaleidoscope of events; that some day I may leave the sting in, just to see how he feels it.) I place the bee in the web, and it is amusing to see how quickly my friend s.h.i.+ns up the rigging--he catches the bee by the shoulders, and makes him spin for a few seconds like a top, till he is completely enveloped in a gauzy shroud, and there is a big hole in the web. I tell my spider he shouldn't make a hole in the web. "Never mind that," he replies, "soon make that all right," and sure enough next morning the web is nicely repaired, and the bee nearly eaten. I don't think he eats all the bee himself. I am convinced that he has a little wife who lives somewhere in a corner, and that every day he is careful to send her a leg, or a wing, or a bit of the breast.

Well, he is happy, I know. Hadn't he a nice private house, without rent or taxes, maybe a wife, and a thriving business, to say nothing at all about the bee. I have studied cats as I have studied that spider. I have imagined myself that spider. I have been, or imagined myself to be, a cat--a Tom, you know, and I can fully understand a p.u.s.s.y's life and a p.u.s.s.y's joys and sorrows.

"How different," I thought, as I mused one morning under a tree, "is the life of a cat from that of a dog. I'm the parson's cat to be sure, but then I'm my own master. Now, there is the parson's Saint Bernard dog, Dumpling for instance,--an honest, contented fellow enough, but, bless you, he isn't free. _I_ am. Dumpling can't do as he pleases. I can.

I can go to bed when I like, rise when I like, and eat and drink, when, where, or what I choose. Dumpling _can't_. Really I feel I can forgive Dumpling for chasing me into the apple-tree last Sunday when I think of the dull life the dog leads, and how few are his joys compared to mine.

Poor Dumpling needs servants to wait upon him, and he can't even walk a couple of miles, and make sure of his way home, or sure of not getting into a row, or not getting stolen, or something else equally ridiculous.

The other day Dumpling actually sat on the door-step for two hours in the rain, till his great s.h.a.ggy coat was wet through and through, because, forsooth, he didn't know how to get the door opened. Would I have done that? No. I should have walked up politely to the first kind-faced pa.s.senger, and asked that pa.s.senger to `be good enough to ring this bell for me, please, 'cause I ain't big enough,' and the thing would have been done. Could Dumpling unlatch a door or catch a mouse?

Could he climb a tree and rob a sparrow's nest? or could he find his way home over the tiles on a dark night? I would laugh to see him try.

"Now here am I on this bright, beautiful summer morning, as fresh as a daisy, as happy as a king. Catch me sleeping in the house on a summer's night!

"How sweetly the birds are singing, but how much more sweetly they will taste! What a glorious day I had of it yesterday all through! Put in an appearance at the parson's breakfast-table, just for fas.h.i.+on's sake, and pretended to drink the milk my kind mistress placed before me.

Fairly won the old lady's heart by rubbing my head affectionately against the canary's cage. `Dear Tom,' said she, `_you_ would never touch the pretty bird?' Oh! wouldn't I, though?

"What a nasty old man that Farmer Trump is! I'm sure, if it wasn't that I have a taste for pigeons, and am a little bit of a Columbarian, I would never have thought of looking at his lot, anyhow. Besides, I had only eaten two when in came _he_, and out went _I_. Well, if he didn't take his gun and fire after me. Well, if he hadn't done anything of the sort, he wouldn't have shot his bantam c.o.c.k.

"I didn't go into that milk cellar of my own free will. It was purely accidental. I was chased by a dog, but being in, how could I, being only a thirsty cat, and amid such profusion, help helping myself to a drop of cream? And if the clumsy old dairymaid hadn't thrown her shoe at me, she wouldn't have broken the milk-house window. It was no business of mine. I met Master Black-and-tan outside, and warmed him.

I gave _him_ sore eyes. That old shoe brought luck with it, however, for about an hour after I found myself in a large and beautiful garden, filled with beds of the rarest flowers. It isn't always you get a bed made for you, thinks I; so I sc.r.a.ped about me a bit, and went off to sleep in the sun. Where did that half-brick come from? I wonder. I'm somehow of opinion that it was meant for me. However, if people will use profane language, and heave bricks at the heads of unoffending cats, they mustn't be astonished if they do smash the cuc.u.mber frame.

"I find it so much better to live in the free forest, because, if I live in the house, a day never pa.s.ses that I do not get into a row, and I always get the worst of it. Only yesterday I looked in for a few minutes at tea-time, and there was Dumpling standing, with a yard of tongue hanging from one side of his mouth; and Master must pat him, and call him a fine fellow; then I jumped on the sofa-stool, and smacked him in the face, and Dumpling knocked down the stool to get at me, besides a cup and saucer, with his wisp of a tail, and I bolted through a pane of gla.s.s, and got blamed for that. Day before, a mouse was pleased to get behind a china vase, and I had to break the vase to get at it--I got blamed for that. Same day I ran away with a mackerel. That mackerel seemed positively to say, `Oh, p.u.s.s.y, do run away with me, and eat me in some nice, quiet corner.' And I did; and, would you believe it, I was even blamed for that!

"I'm going to see Zelina to-night. Zelina is a beautiful black Persian angel, with hazel eyes and flowing fur, and a voice that would lure the larks from the sky. Zelina belongs to the barber, and I met her by appointment in the back garden, and found her very thick with three other fellows. That's the worst of Zelina. But I fellowed them! For five minutes you wouldn't have seen either of us for fluff, and at the end of that time little remained of the other cats save the teeth.

Meanwhile Zelina looked calmly on. Then I wooed Zelina beneath the moon, and thrashed her, and beat her, and bit her, till at last she consented to fly with me to a foreign sh.o.r.e; but we made such a row that we awoke the brute of a barber, and he threw a basin of dirty water right over us, and there was no more foreign sh.o.r.e thought of. But I'll see her to-night, sweet Zelina!"

I'll conclude this paper with a rather curious anecdote, told me by Captain A. Brown, late of Arbroath, now of Chatham, Canada. "We have a cat," says Captain Brown, "who brought up a kitten in a loft above the woodshed, until it was old enough to wean; she then brought it down to run about, but the dog (a puppy) would on every opportunity take the kitten in its mouth and drag it about. This the cat didn't seem to like, so one day she took it in her mouth, and carried it along, on the top of the fence, to the nearest farm, a quarter of a mile off, where the _kitten's father lived_. She placed the kitten at the male parent's feet, gave it suck once more, then started off home along the fence, and never went near it again."

This anecdote, for the truth of which the captain vouches, clearly proves that p.u.s.s.y has a much larger amount of reasoning power than most people give her credit for. It was just as though p.u.s.s.y had addressed the male cat thus:

"I've brought you your youngster, Thomas. It cannot live at home for the mischievous puppy. Goodness knows I've done _my_ duty to him as a mother; now, hub, you have a turn. Time about's fair-play, Thomas; good-bye."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

SAGACITY OF THE CAT.

"The dignity of life is not impaired By aught which innocently satisfies The humbler cravings of the heart; and he Is still a happier man, who, for the heights Of speculation not unfit, descends, And such benign affections cultivates, Among the inferior kinds."

Wordsworth.

I think many of the miseries which the "harmless necessary cat" has to endure in this wicked world of hers and ours would be mitigated if not entirely removed, were we only to take the trouble to study and consider what a wonderfully reasoning and sensible little thing she is. "Leave the study to old maids," I think I hear some manly (?) reader exclaim.

But why to old maids? It is you who are unkind to p.u.s.s.y, and regardless of her comforts, and not old maids. And indeed, indeed now, I never for the life of me could see why any stigma should attach itself to an old maid any more than to a cat. Most of the old maids I have known were very agreeable persons indeed, and I've spent many a quiet and enjoyable hour with old maids over a cup of homely tea. My two maternal aunts are old maids, they even plead guilty to the soft impeachment, but cheerier bodies you wouldn't meet anywhere. They go three times to the kirk on a Sunday, to be sure, and wouldn't cook a meal on that sacred day for a world. But just see them on a week-day, look at their bright smiling faces--what odds if they do try to appear a few years younger?--and ah!

just see them go through the intricate figures of the mazy Reel o'

Tulloch, and hear them crack their thumbs, and cry "hooch!" you wouldn't say old-maidendom was so very dreary after that. It isn't always a woman's fault if she can't get married: many, whose early affections have been blighted, would not marry if they could, for haven't they got a posy somewhere, a locket with a face, a lock of hair, and a faded ribbon which erst was bonny blue--relics of lost love, around which cling sweetest memories of the past? Besides, have not unmarried ladies more opportunities to taste the sweets of doing good, and, better still, more time to cherish hopes of happiness hereafter, which are worth a world of wedded bliss?

Cats then, like old maids, are fifty times worse than they are painted, and the reason why people don't like them is because they don't understand them. I have at this moment a large and beautiful tabby, and I positively rejoice that that cat is so fierce to everyone but me, because before I got her she was subjected to the most barbarous treatment, neither fed, nor housed, nor watered, and I believe I was the first person from whom she ever got a word of kindness. No wonder that at first she did not understand my meaning. But she does now, though she never will be tame; but if I am asleep she mounts guard on the table near me, and her purring chant is speedily turned into a low, ominous growl if any one but touches the handle of the door. Does she know that I am asleep, and that one in sleep is helpless as regards defence? I'm sure she does, for--

_Cats know the nature of sleep in others_.--A friend of mine has a p.u.s.s.y, Kate to name, who has been early trained to habits of cleanliness. When Kate wishes to get out at night she goes to her master's bedside, and mews loudly and entreatingly. To see how she will behave, sometimes her master pretends to be fast asleep, and snores loudly. "Oh!" thinks puss to herself, "this will never do;" so she invariably stands upon her hind legs, and pats his face with her gloved hand. When he gets up, she trots pleasantly before him towards a little window, which he opens for her, and admits her into the garden. The same cat for many years used to seat herself regularly every night on a chest of drawers, waiting patiently till the door of the adjoining cupboard was thrown open for her: this cupboard was a very prolific hunting-ground of p.u.s.s.y's. When she had kittens, and they were able to eat, she used to bring all the mice to them, and present them with that fond "murring" mew which all cat lovers know so well.

Everybody knows that cats can open doors if left off the latch, and also that they soon get up to the mechanism of the old-fas.h.i.+oned hand-and-thumb latch; they open this by springing up, and holding on to the hand portion with one arm, while they press down the thumb portion with the other foot.

A lady friend of mine has a large Tabby Tom who can open a room door, by standing on his hind legs and turning the k.n.o.b with his teeth. This is clever, but cats even know how to _fasten_ doors, at least some do; and this same _lady was once in_ a cupboard, when one of her p.u.s.s.ies came and turned on the b.u.t.ton latch of the door, and made her a prisoner for some considerable time!

In a small village which I know, there is an old woman who lives by keeping lodgers of the more humble description. As these have often to get up and be off early in the morning, the woman always gives them strict injunctions to shut the door when they go out, for fear of thieves. One morning a lodger had forgotten to obey his landlady's instructions. p.u.s.s.y, however, had witnessed the infraction of the rule, and walked directly to her mistress's bedside, and began to mew most plaintively. Nor would she be content till the woman got up, when the cat led her directly to the door. p.u.s.s.y wouldn't go out, but so soon as the door was shut, led the way again back to bed, _singing_. Old women's cats are nearly always wiser than others--they get more care taken with their training, and more comfort and love. They know all the ways, likes, and dislikes of a beloved mistress, and study them just as they do their own. Indeed, some of the things I have known old women's cats do are unaccountable in any other way, but the belief that they are possessed of a very high amount of intelligence and reasoning power. No wonder our ignorant ancestors believed them possessed of devils.

You see it is just like this--when you once get a cat to love you, you, and you only, will become the study of her whole life. She soon finds out what pleases you, and what vexes you, and also what you love, and, whether that be dog or child, she will love it too, to please you.

Cats will often, very often--just like dogs--lead those they love to places where something or some creature is in danger. It may be, as happened to myself once, while residing in Lincoln, two summers ago, when a cat came towards me out of an entry, and, as plain as any animal could speak, gazed up into my face, and cried: "Come, oh come and help me?" I followed, and she led me down the garden to a closet, through which her kitten had dropped into the cesspool below. Now just think for one moment of the amount of sagacity shown in this case! Piteously the little kit had mewed to her mother: "Mother, mother, come and help me?" p.u.s.s.y's answer had been: "My dear, I can't, but I'll soon find those who will." And that was precisely my answer to the mother cat, when I saw the state of affairs, and I kept my word.