Kitabı oku: «Shireen and her Friends: Pages from the Life of a Persian Cat», sayfa 9
Chapter Seventeen
And Chammy never came again
As the weather grew colder, Chammy hugged the fire more, so to speak, and was less and less inclined to run away.
Perhaps to talk of Chammy’s pedal progression as “running” is slightly to exaggerate. But, nevertheless, when Chammy made up his mind to go anywhere, whether it were on an expedition to the top of a curtain, or the extreme point of a poplar tree, he got there all the same. He would probably take a considerable time to make up his mind about it, however, and he would focus the spot he meant to reach with one eye for an hour or two to begin with. Probably, during this survey, his other eye would be wandering all round the room at Shireen, at Warlock, or at Lizzie and Tom. With one eye he was calculating the height of his ambition, as it were, with the other he was counting the chances there were against his ever reaching it at all. These chances had to be reckoned with, for first and foremost he had to descend from his perch or the branch in the ingle-nook. Having reached the floor, he would have to make for the wall of the room and creep along by the foot of the dado, perhaps changing colour once or twice so as to match the hue of the carpet, and thus do his best to escape observation. For Tabby might be there, and might sing out to Warlock:
“Oh, Warlock, here is Chammy just racing off as fast as lightning. Let us have some fun with him, and turn him over and over a few times.”
And they would do it too. And, although the cat and dog meant no harm, their attentions were somewhat disconcerting, to say the very least of it.
Or Lizzie and Tom might be on the floor and spy him, and Lizzie call to Tom, saying, —
“Oh, Tom, here is poor Chammy. I’m sure he is cold. Let us take him and nurse him by the fire a little.”
And Lizzie might roll him in a Shetland-wool shawl, and sit down before the blaze to warm him, shawl and all, being very much astonished, perhaps, when she opened the shawl to have a peep, to find no Chammy there at all.
“Oh, Tom! Tom!” she would say, looking half afraid, “I’m sure I had Chammy in my hands, and I’m sure I rolled him up; and now, why, he is clean gone!”
Or the cockatoo might see him, if Uncle Ben were there, and raise a terrible alarm, shrieking and crying, “Scray! Scray! Scray!” till all the prismatic crystals in the old-fashioned chandelier jingled to the sound.
Or the Colonel himself might find him.
“Oh, you’re on the hop, are you?” the Colonel would say. “Now you just come back to your perch by the ingle-nook.”
And he would lift him by the crest that was over his head and carry him back to the branch.
Chammy was a good-tempered kind of a chameleon at most times, though he could bite a little, and give a good pinch too if he saw any occasion; but there was nothing in the world made him more indignant than being lifted up by the crest.
It was a handy way of lifting him certainly, but Chammy used to get pea-green with anger when you did so, and his little nimble eyes would look directly back at you; or, I should rather say, one of them would, for very seldom indeed did he send them both to duty at the same time.
“Put me down at once, sir,” he would say, or seem to say, “this is an indignity I do not feel called upon tamely to submit to. You would not dare to lift a crocodile of the Nile thus. Yet I, too, belong to the ancient family of the Saurians, and I bid you beware.”
I have said that Chammy could bite. This is true; but if the weather were extra cold, he would stand any amount of teasing rather than be bothered turning his head or opening his mouth to pinch you. One of Chammy’s mottoes was “Perceverantia vincit” (Perseverance overcomes), and if his master put him back on his perch a hundred and fifty times after he, Chammy, had made up his mind to reach the top of that curtain, or get out at the window to climb a tree, he would watch his chance, bide his time, and begin all over again.
That is the sort of chameleon Chammy was.
The deliberation manifested in all the droll animal’s movements was something to watch and wonder at, and afforded no end of amusement to Lizzie and Tom. He never lifted more than one leg at a time. Not he. Four legs in four seconds. That was the speed of his pedal progression, and you didn’t need a stop-watch either to determine it. But he studied periodically on the march. He might be slow, but he was also wondrous sure, and when it came to the turn of say a left hind leg, to move it had to come to time, else Chammy would slightly turn his head and focus one goggle backwards, as much as to say:
“What’s the hitch along down there? Why on earth don’t you move instead of delaying the procession?”
When Chammy saw a fly that he had taken a fancy to, he would stalk cautiously along towards it, one leg at a time of course, and if the fly was fool enough to wait there long enough, why, it got caught and swallowed, that was all. If it didn’t, why Chammy evinced no great degree of disappointment, another fly would be sure to come. Everything comes to the chameleon who waits. So he would wait.
There was a deal to be done, mind you, before a fly could be caught, he must first judge the distance, being well acquainted with the length of his own tongue. Then the jaws began to open, which they did as slowly as the minute hand of a watch. After the jaws were opened and both goggles focussed, the tongue, which looked like a garden snail, went slowly straight out. Pop! Where is the fly? And where is the tongue? Well, the tongue went back like a bit of india-rubber, and evidently the fly was there too, for Chammy immediately began to move his jaws like a cow chewing the cud, only infinitely slower.
When flies were scarce, Lizzie or Tom fed Chammy with mealworms. They would take up one at a time with a pair of forceps and put it on Chammy’s plate.
Chammy’s plate, by the way, was the lid of a pill-box, and sometimes he would eat a dozen good big fat mealworms at one sitting, and perhaps refuse food for ten days or more after it. If presented with a mealworm when not hungry, Chammy would focus it with one eye for about a dozen seconds, then slowly turn his head away in the drollest manner possible.
“Excuse me,” he would seem to say, “but I couldn’t touch it. No good eating if you’re not hungry, is there? Take it away. Take it away.”
Chammy’s attitudes were droll in the extreme while on his tree-branch. Sometimes he would be quite perpendicular against a topmost twig, which he held for all the world as an old, old man holds his long staff, his chin resting on his two clasped hands. When he had warmed both his hands at the fire on a wintry day, he used to slowly turn round his back to the blaze to entice a little heat into his chilly old spine.
But Chammy got many a tumble, and sometimes he would stupidly catch his own tail to prevent himself from falling. So that if he had lived for hundreds of years, and he certainly gave one that impression, he had not gained a very great amount of wisdom in that time.
But he was wise enough to know that the flies were to be found mostly on the window panes, though for the life of him he never could discover why he couldn’t catch one when it was on the other side of the glass, he would have a shot at such a fly again and again, then turn pea-green with anger and disappointment, and crawl slowly away.
The Colonel was a very humane man, and when the frost became very hard, he placed a small but elegant oil-stove in a corner for the comfort of the chameleon. It had crimson glass in front, and as this glass got warm, Chammy used to stand up against it, the whole forming a very pretty picture.
Then Lizzie got a box and lined it with red flannel, and Chammy was put to bed in it every night. But the oil-stove had to be lit before he could be prevailed upon to stir of a morning. When Chammy felt certain, from his feelings, that the room was well-aired, then he gathered himself slowly up and took up a position on the edge of the box and in the front of the stove, and there he stood for hours, warming first one hand and then another.
Well, I have been writing about this queer pet all the time as if it had been a male. But the truth is, it turned out to be as Tommie said, a “her chameleon,” for lo! and behold it was discovered one morning that Chammy had laid some eggs. She put them all together in a heap in the corner and appeared to be employed all the time lifting and counting them and feeling them over. There were five altogether, about the size and shape of small beans, and pink in colour.
Chammy ate no food after this. She didn’t even seem to care to come any more to warm her toes at the stove. And, on going to take off the lid of her box one morning, Lizzie found poor Chammy immovable and colder than ever she had been before.
Then Lizzie sat down on the floor beside the red-lined box and burst into tears.
They made Chammy a grave near the sweet-scented syringa-tree, and when spring-time came, they planted it with forget-me-nots, and Chammy never came again.
Chapter Eighteen
Shireen’s Birthday. – Stamboul’s Life and Career
Shireen’s birthday party at the Castle was going to be a very grand affair, so Tommy and Lizzie would have told you, for they had made great preparations for celebrating the event.
Shireen had reached the advanced age of one-and-twenty, and yet there was but little sign that her strength was actually failing her. She did not care to move about quite so much as she had done many years before, and preferred, as we have seen, to take her little rambles about the village, and visit her many friends there.
She preferred, too, the lawn to the forest on a sunny summer’s afternoon, or a seat by the low fire among her old friends, when the wintry winds were roaring around the chimneys, and shaking doors and windows.
But to look at Shireen, with her lovely coat, her sweet face, her wee, short ears, and blue eyes, you would not have said she was more than seven.
“I wonder,” said Lizzie, on the morning of Shireen’s birthday, “if Mrs Cooper will come, and bring her lovely prize cat Stamboul?”
“Oh, yes, she is sure to come,” was the reply. “I’ve just had a letter.”
So away ran Lizzie and Tom to complete the arrangements for the afternoon and evening entertainment, for the great coup de théâtre was to consist of lighting up the grounds after dark with coloured lamps, and the flowerbeds and borders with fairy lights, and this duty devolved upon Lizzie and her little brother.
How anxiously they scanned the sky as they hung up their lamps and their Chinese lanterns, and how suspiciously they eyed the clouds, I need not tell you. But twenty times, at least, Tom ran to ask his uncle if he was quite sure it wouldn’t rain. So at last Uncle Clarkson told him that he was only a soldier, and not supposed to be able to read the signs or the sky, and that if they wanted true information, they must go to old Ben; they might as well bring him to luncheon. So, as soon as everything had been completed to the entire satisfaction of the children, off they set, and in a little more than an hour’s time, they re-appeared again, dragging Uncle Ben by his two hands on to the lawn.
Luncheon was laid in a tent erected specially for the purpose, and some time before they all sat down, a carriage rattled up the avenue, and Mrs Cooper herself alighted with her maid, who was carrying a mysterious-looking parcel, which was half basket, half bird’s cage, and really was the travelling-home of Stamboul, the prize cat.
Everyone waited anxiously to see Stamboul, and when presently he stalked forth, with his lovely red and white coat shining like satin and floating all over him, there was a general hum of admiration.
Stamboul did not take very much notice of anyone, he gave one glance at Shireen, then looked at the dogs. Satisfying himself, apparently, that they were harmless, he next turned his attention to the grass, walking gingerly over it, and shaking a fore-foot at every step, in case it might be damp.
Then he entered the tent and disposed of himself in a straw chair, that had a cushion to it.
Now, although the party congregated together to celebrate Shireen’s birthday was everything that could be desired, and though the feast was fit for a queen, and the lawn and grounds after dark looked like a scene from the “Arabian Nights,” still it is more with the cats and dogs we have to do than with Lizzie’s and Tom’s little human friends, or the older human beings who sat in the tent, talking and laughing very pleasantly indeed.
Shireen and her old friends occupied a beautifully lit up summer-house. Even Cracker and the chameleon, who at this time was alive, were here to-night; but Stamboul occupied the place of honour, which was a straw chair, and he accepted the dignity with the easy grace of a prince of the blood royal, and as if he quite merited the honour and dignity.
For some time he sat thoughtfully washing his beautiful face, and all kept silence around him, till he should be pleased to break the silence.
“Yes, Shireen,” he said at last, “I have been a prize cat now for many years, and, indeed, I believe I am entitled to dub myself a champion. Oh, no, Mr Warlock,” he continued, smiling, “I wasn’t always a prize cat; nor have I been all my life as beautiful and fully pelaged as I am now; indeed, I was once as plain and humble-looking as your friend Tabby there.”
Tabby winced and felt a little hurt. Certainly she did not lay claim to any great degree of beauty; still it seemed hard she should be thus singled out.
Even Chammy turned one eye down at her, and Dick cocked a black bead of an optic towards her. Only Warlock gave her face a kind of consolatory lick, as much as to say, —
“If you ain’t very pretty, Tabby, you are very good, and virtue is better, any day, than beauty.”
“Well, my friends,” continued Stamboul, “you may think it is very nice to be a first-prize cat, and to be made a great fuss with, and a great show of at exhibitions, and to be boasted about by your mistress, and crowed over by her friends; but I can tell you a show cat’s life has its dark side as well as its light, and this, I think, you will be ready enough to admit, when you have heard some of my adventures and experiences.”
Stamboul’s Life and Career
“Ever see a cattery, Shireen? No, I dare say you never did; and of course, Tabby, you never did? Well, I will tell you of the cattery in which I was born, and there are many far less pleasant than that, I can assure you.
“I remember it well, though it is many years ago. I don’t say that I can actually recollect the day of my birth, but I mind the days of my kittenhood right well. And I can remember as if it were but yesterday, the morning I and my brothers and sisters were all bundled off to a show.”
“To be sold, I suppose?” said Shireen.
“Yes, my dear,” said Stamboul, “to be sold. But mind you, I don’t blame my old mistress in the least for this. She was at heart a lover of animals; and if she kept us in a cattery, and restricted us of our liberty to some extent, it was not altogether her fault.
“Mrs Rayne was a widow lady, and lived almost by herself in a pretty house in the country. She had neither kith nor kin belonging to her, as far as ever I could see. She had one faithful old man-servant and his wife, who lived in the house and attended on her in every way. But Mrs Rayne looked after the cattery herself. She fed us, and she gave us milk and water.”
“Thought cats never drank water?” said Cracker.
“A very great mistake, I assure you, sir,” said Stamboul. “A cat won’t thrive unless she has water, and that water must be soft, and clean, and sweet.”
“Well, Stamboul,” Cracker said, “a dog is never too old to learn.”
“But,” continued Stamboul, “I must tell you about the cattery. You see, there was a little cottage down in the grounds, nicely shaded with trees and all that, and with oceans of honeysuckle swelling all over the porch, and clustering round the windows. It was only a two-roomed cottage; but, nevertheless, Mrs Rayne conceived the notion of turning it into a cattery, for this amiable lady had an idea that if she did her best to improve the breed of cats in this country, she would be able to get for them a somewhat higher place or standing as members of society.
“She had commenced by keeping a few – three I think – for her own pleasure; but one by one they disappeared. They had been trapped, poisoned, or shot by the keepers, so she saw that if she were to do any good at all, she must protect her valuable cats, and at the same time keep their breed and species select and pure. So she had a look round the cottage one day, and was glad to find, to commence with, that it was not damp. Dampness in a cattery is likely to give rise, directly or indirectly, to many ailments incidental to cat-life.
“Then Mrs Rayne proceeded to furnish the cottage, after a fashion, plainly and well. This, I may tell you, Mr Cracker, was quite as much for her own sake as for the sake of the pussies. You see, she reasoned thus, and very rightly too, cats have become like clogs, domesticated, they have for countless ages given up their own wild life in the woods, and hills, and cairns, and elected to live with mankind, and share his joys and sorrows. In doing so, they give up, in a great measure, their freedom; they become the willing slaves of man, the playmates of his children, the gentle, soothing comforters to many a lonely human being, who has nothing before him in this world except the grave. Well, then, if pussy has done and does do all this, is it fair to keep her all her little life like a wild beast, shut up in a cage, or banished to barn or outhouse?
“No, and Mrs Rayne – although the cottage would be the home of the cats par excellence– would often visit it and spend many an hour therein, with her books or her knitting. She would even take her food there sometimes, for a cat never looks upon any place as an ideal home if a kettle never sings upon a hob by the fire, or a table is never spread for breakfast, or for tea.
“So, when completed, the cottage not only had a nice low fire, protected by a strong guard, to be put on when the fire was lit and no one in the room, but there were in it a table and stools, a couch, and a nice wicker easy-chair and footstool.
“There was a cupboard or two also, and there were brackets and flower-stands, and a mirror or two, and nick-nacks on the mantelpiece as well.
“In fact, this room – which was the winter end of the cottage – was so comfortable, that no one could have told it was a cattery. The other room was furnished as a summer-room, and needed no fireplace.
“There was in each a sanitary box of earth; but as the cats had at all times free access to the garden by means of a little swinging door at the bottom of the main door, this box was never used except for the convenience of young kittens.
“You will now observe, Tabby, that Mrs Rayne, in a manner, lived among her cats, so that she had their companionship and they had hers. Moreover, as a special treat, she used to take one of them into the house, frequently of a night, and whenever any cat was ailing she treated it as kindly and considerately as if it had been a baby.
“The cat’s garden itself deserves a word or two.
“You see, galvanised wire fencing is very cheap, as I dare say you, Cracker, being a farmer’s dog, know. Well, Mrs Rayne, first and foremost, laid out the pussies’ garden in front of and partly round the cottage. She laid down a bit of a lawn; she planned walks, and planted shrubs and flowers, for I can assure you, Cracker, we cats have an eye for colour and effect as well. Then she surrounded the whole with a high wire fence, covering in the top as well, so that birds might not come in to eat pussies’ food, and be eaten by the pussies in turn.
“The place was sheltered from the cast and north by a wooden fence, so on the whole, either in winter or in summer, a more comfortable cattery never existed to my knowledge, and I have seen a few.
“The garden was laid out then partly for effect, but partly, also, for utility and luxury. The lawn was a delightful place for the young cats to tumble and jump upon, when the spring and summer were in their prime, and the grass and weed-tops, that grew on this wildery of a lawn, helped to keep the cats in health.
“Then here and there, at different heights all round the wooden fence, and the wire fence also, were placed shelf-seats, about eighteen inches long, by one foot broad. On these the cats would lie and sun themselves, or they could take exercise all round, by leaping from one to the other.
“Among the flowers that grew around was Valerian, of which the cat is fond, and several other pretty flowers, that appealed to pussy’s sense of smell, and gratified her eye.
“There was a filter indoors, and large, clean dishes were placed on the floor for the drinking water, so that the furry inmates could help themselves whenever they pleased.”
“And a bit of brimstone in each dish, I suppose?” said Cracker. “A fine thing brimstone, you bet.”
“Fiddlesticks!” said Stamboul disdainfully. “Mr Cracker, I am afraid your notions are somewhat antiquated.”
“I don’t know what that be,” retorted Cracker. “I just speak as I’ve been taught.”
“True, true, my good fellow, and doubtless with the best intentions; but then, living in the country as you do, one is bound to believe a great many popular and foolish fallacies.”
“I own to it, I own to it, Stamboul,” said Cracker. “Now up north, where I comes from, a cat ain’t looked upon as much of a stunner I ’ssure you, Stamboul. They are just kept as a kind o’ live mousetraps.”
“Yes, I know,” said Stamboul; “and they are starved under the mistaken notion that this makes them catch mice.”
“So they be. And doesn’t it? I know if I were main hungry, and spotted a fine fat rabbit dashing past, I’d soon have he, you bet, and my dinner next, afore he were cold.”
“True, Cracker, but it is also a fact that the better a cat is fed, so long as he is not foolishly pampered and spoiled, the better a hunter he will make. You see, Cracker, to catch mice and rats, a cat has to have a deal of patience, and a world of cunning, and spend long nights of determined watching. To do this he must be in form. If he is half-starved, he is nervous, and tired, and weary; if he be hungry, then instead of watching by the cat’s run, he’ll be thinking more of the cupboard and the last square meal he had, and wondering when he will have another. Or, it is possible enough, instead of watching at all for master rat – and a well-bred cat won’t eat a rat after all – he will prefer to do his hunting in the nearest pigeon-loft or hen-house.”
“There is a deal in what you say,” said Shireen.
“Yes, I can see that,” Warlock put in.
“Well,” said Cracker, “I gives in to superior judgment.”
“And now,” continued Cracker, “is it true, Stamboul, that cats will suck a child’s breath? Mind, I’m not so far left to myself as to believe this, although there, maybe, is some hayseed in my hair.”
“A sillier notion,” said Stamboul, “was never heard, and this fallacy dates back to the days of witchcraft. Pah! out on such a ridiculous notion, it is really too absurd to argue about.”
“Well, Lady Shireen there, while telling her story, has proved in her own experience that it isn’t places so much that cats love as persons,” said Tabby.
“That is true, Tabby, if the persons are good to them; and I really think that people are beginning to think now, that cats are reasoning, thinking beings, with minds differing from their own only in degree.”
“If not interrupting you too much, Stamboul,” said Warlock, “I have just one word to say, having been a student of cat-life, especially of Mother Shireen there, and my own companion and field-ranger, honest Tabby here. Well, there is a saying, which is all too common among human beings I think, and that is the expression, ‘As cross as a cat.’ I’ve seen a cat cross, and I’ve felt her claws, too, but that was when she was either done out of her rights and starved, or put upon in some way or another.”
“Glad to hear you stick up for cats, Warlock,” said Stamboul.
“Oh, I just speak of cats as I find them. Now, for instance, who is it among human beings I wonder, that hasn’t noticed how fond a well-trained, well-kept cat is of children?
“Here is a bit master read in a book the other day (‘The Domestic Cat,’ by same author), and he told me that the writer had studied cats ever since he was the height of the parlour tongs.
“‘But,’ says the author, ‘the domestic cat is par excellence the playmate and friend of childhood. What is it, indeed, that pussy will not bear from the hands of its child-mistress? She may pull and lug pussy about any way she pleases, or walk up and down the garden-walk with it slung over her shoulder by the tail. If such treatment does hurt the poor cat, she takes good care not to show it. It is amusing enough sometimes to watch a little girl making a baby of her favourite pussy. They are wearied with gambolling together on the flowery lawn, and playing at hide-and-seek among the shrubbery, and pussy “must be tired,” says little Alice. Pussy enters into the joke at once, and seems positively dead beat; so the basket is brought, the little nightcap is put on, the shawl is carefully pinned around its shoulders, and this embryo mamma puts her feline baby to bed and bids it sleep. There are always two words, however, with pussy as regards the sleeping part of the contract, for little Alice never can get her baby to close more than one eye at a time. Pussy must see what is going on. Anon the baby “must be sick,” and pussy forthwith appears as if she couldn’t possibly survive another hour. Bread pills are manufactured, and forced down the poor cat’s throat, she barely resisting. Then lullabies, low and sweet, are sung to her, which pussy enjoys immensely, and presently, joining in the song herself, goes off to sleep in earnest.
“‘And Alice, pussy’s friend, although at times she may use the furry favourite rather roughly, is kind to her in the main. Doesn’t pussy get a share of Alice’s porridge every morning? Doesn’t she sup with Alice every night? And do you think, for one moment that Alice would go to bed without her of a night? Not she! And still this cat may be as savage as a tiger to strangers, and even to those in the house who do not treat her well. And let anyone else, except a child, attempt to lift this pussy by the tail, and see what he will see.’”
“And feel what he’ll feel,” said Cracker; “and serve him right, says I.”
“But I fear,” said Shireen, “this is somewhat of a digression. You were talking, Stamboul, of your pleasant and delightful cattery, the home of your kittenhood.”
“Yes. Well, I shall go on with my story.”
