Kitabı oku: «The Domestic Cat», sayfa 9
Chapter Twenty Two.
The Dunghill Cat
I’m the dunghill cat – that is what I am. Nobody owns me, and I owe allegiance to nobody. Nobody feeds me; nobody puts a saucer on the ground and says, “Here, pussy, there’s a drop of milk for you, my pet.” Nobody ever gave me a bit of fish in my life, and nobody, so far as I can remember, ever called me pet names or spoke kindly to me. Not that I care, you know, but I merely mention it, that’s all. But don’t you despise me because I am only a poor dunghill cat. It isn’t my fault but my misfortune, as you shall presently hear. Circumstances over which I had no control have rendered me what I am; but I am come of respectable parents for all that. To be sure I could not swear to my father, not knowing exactly who he was, and the mum herself being at times a little hazy on the point. But my mother, madam, came from Egypt, and was descended from a long line of noble ancestors in that beautiful land, where, they tell me, there is bread enough for all, and where a poor cat is honoured and respected, as she always ought to be. And the mum told me that her original ancestors came over with the Conqueror – Cambyses, you know – so that is good enough, surely. Yes, madam, without meaning the slightest offence, I may just remind you that when your forebears were dressed in pig-skins, and not much of that; when they wore flint-headed spears, and stalked about the hills with painted faces, doing attitudes and saying “Ugh!” when astonished, my progenitors dwelt in palaces, loved and respected by all, and were considered the equals of prince, or priest, or peer – what do you think of that? But I’m not proud; I’m only the poor dunghill cat, that all the dogs chase, that all the little boys stone, and Bridget shakes the broom at. Bridget never can catch me, though – ha, ha! Won’t I eat her canary, first chance – you see if I don’t.
My earliest recollection is of being carried by the back of my neck, by something or somebody that I afterwards discovered was my mother. I was taken into a beautiful house, and deposited carefully on a rug in the corner of a cupboard. Then my mother began licking me all over with her tongue, when suddenly said a voice close alongside of me, “I declare that pussy has been and gone and got another kitten – as if one cat of the kind wasn’t enough about the house. Sarah, go and put it where you put all the others.”
I don’t know who the others were, or where they were put; but I know what Sarah did with me. She took me up with the hot tongs, mother screamed and so did I, till I couldn’t scream any more because the black water was all around me. Then followed a period of agony, and then a blank, and the next thing I recollect is finding myself lying, wet and cold, in my mother’s arms, and she all wet and cold as well as me.
“My dear chee-ild,” said my mamma, “this has been a sad morning; but you’re safe ne-ow, although the building is humble and your pallet is straw. Shade of Cambyses!” continued the old lady, rubbing a paw over her right ear, “why ever did I leave the land of Egypt?”
When I got a little older I began to look around me. I thought our new home was one of the jolliest places that could be, despite all the flowery accounts my mother used to give me of the land of her birth, with its marble halls and gorgeous tesselated pavements. It was a large, roomy loft in an old, old mill, and I used to run about the floor and chase the great spiders before I was big and brave enough to attack a wild mouse, or the great, untamable rats that used to frighten me so when mother was out, by standing on their hind legs and making dreadful faces at me. But didn’t they scamper off when mother came back!
One day mother brought me a live mouse. How brave I suddenly felt. You should have seen how I sprung on it, and heard how I growled. Had anyone, even the immortal Cambyses himself, attempted to rescue that wild mouse from my clutches, he should have died on the spot. How pleased my mother looked! I think I see her yet, with her old-fashioned face and her odd, old-world ways. Very much respected my mother was, I assure you. I’ve seen no less than seven well-dressed feline swells talking and singing to her all at once, and she didn’t know which of them to speak to first. Met a violent end, did my mother. Verdict – “Killed by the carrier’s collie.”
After I had slain and eaten one mouse, I felt every inch a Tom. I declined to lie any more in my mother’s arms. No more milk for me; blood, and only blood, was my motto, and I meant it, too. When I was a well-grown cat of nine months old my mother introduced me to her mistress’s house, and I became, for a time, a house-cat. I cannot say, however, that I liked the change. The lady of the dwelling was, they told me, exceedingly good and pious, went twice to church on Sunday, and read prayers morning and evening; but, sad to say, she never had studied feline economy. “If cats can’t find mice to eat,” she used to say, “they ought to starve.”
My mother told me that this was something like asking a person to make bricks without straw. My mother was very learned.
Well, one evening – and I had been starving all day, and was dreadfully hungry and too faint to watch for mice – I happened to stroll into the pantry, and there I found such a nice, nice dish of cream. Luscious! But what a thrashing I got five minutes afterwards – I wasn’t hungry for a week. Then the hunger came on again worse than ever, and I stole again. I couldn’t help it, really. Then I was called a nasty, thieving brute, and got blamed many times when quite innocent. There is Briddy with the broom again. She hasn’t forgiven me for that herring yet, and I can swear it wouldn’t have kept for another day. Besides, what do I care if it was for Master Fred’s breakfast? Briddy had no business to be upstairs trying on missus’s Sunday bonnet, and the kitchen-door wide open. She thinks I don’t see all her capers, and her opening drawers, and keeking into cupboards, and examining this, that, and t’other, when her missus is out. But lying on the top of that wall I can see a great deal more than I trouble to tell of. But Briddy blamed me for eating those two new-laid eggs that the baker brought. She “just laid them down outside in the strawberry-basket, m’m, for one minute; and when she turned again, la, m’m, they was broke and eaten, they was!” She forgot to mention how the baker crumpled her cap, though; and she didn’t tell how she was all over flour, and had to brush herself from top to toe when the bell rang. But, mind you, it wasn’t me that stole the eggs. I would confess at once if it was; for what could a couple of paltry new-laid eggs add to the weight of crime I have been guilty of in my day? Why, nothing. But Dr Ricket’s jackdaw took the eggs, for I saw him hop on to the wall, and he gave a look down, first, with one side of his head, at Briddy and the baker, then, with the other side of his head, to the eggs; then down he went, and it was all over in a moment – I mean the eggs were. Just like Briddy, blaming me for that piece of cold pork. Mind you, I don’t say I wouldn’t have taken it had I got the chance, but I didn’t. “That beautiful piece of pork gone next, m’m; and I never can keep that cat out. And whatever shall I do, m’m?”
But I wonder why Briddy didn’t say a word about that visit she had from the policeman. Much of a lover he is, anyhow. I could see him through the window, and he never opened his mouth but to put something into it. His courtship was so un-Byronic, for he sat and he sat, and he chewed and chewed, and glowered and glowered at Briddy, till I wondered she didn’t spit in his face and turn him out. Ah, Briddy, you needn’t shake the broom, what would you do without me?
But to resume my story. One night I was shut up in a room by accident, and no one heard me call, for I did call, and, in the morning, the room wasn’t just as it ought to have been, and for this new offence I was condemned to die – taken away in a sack, and drowned.
Not dead? Bless you, no; it wasn’t likely I was going to remain at the bottom of a mill-dam, in an old guano-bag. I was up again before you could say mouse, and had swam on shore as cool as you like. It was a beautiful day in early autumn, the fields were all ablaze with golden grain, and the berries beginning to turn red and black in the hedgerows. I sat down on a sheaf of wheat and basked till dry in the warm sunshine. Then a young pheasant ran round the corner and cried, “Peet, peet, have you seen my mother anywhere?” I thought I never had tasted anything half so sweet in all my life. Then I felt a new Tom from top to toe. Go back and be a house-cat? No, perish the thought. And I never did.
I am now fifteen years of age, and as I look back to the days that are gone I cannot help exclaiming, “What a jolly life I’ve led.” I’ve been a Bohemian, a robber, a brigand, and a thief. “It is a sin, pussy,” you say; “why don’t you reform?” “’Cause I won’t,” I answer. Had I been differently brought up, better treated, better fed, and better understood, I mightn’t be what I am. I would then have been as honest and virtuous as one of good Mrs Peek’s cats. She knows how to treat a cat, and it is only a pity she isn’t an Egyptian, she might have married Cambyses.
Well, well, as I said before, I’m now fifteen years of age; I’ve seen many ups and downs in the world, but I suppose my day is wearing through, and I must soon be preparing for the happy hunting-fields on the other side of Jordan.
Now, madam, you know I’m only a cat, a common dunghill cat, and have only common dunghill notions, but here are my sentiments. Religion is a beautiful thing when brought to bear on everyday life, and not put off and on with your moiré antique. But never you go away to church and forget to give pussy her breakfast.
And have your prayer-book in one hand if you like of a morning, but have a nice bit of fish or a saucer of milk for pussy in the other, and the beauty of the one hand will be reflected from the other, as the stars are mirrored in the ocean’s wave.
