Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 9/My cats
MY CATS.
Does the love of pets originate in benevolence? It is generally associated with sensibility, a spurious virtue as different from benevolence as revery is from thought. The sentimental Sterne, though heartless to all who had legitimate claims on his affection, wept, or affected to weep, over a dead ass; Couthon, when the innocent he was consigning to the guillotine trod on his cur, shrieked out, “Wretch, have you no humanity?” and there are yet sensitive ladies to whom the sarcastic inquiry of the barbarian whether the Roman dames who fondled lapdogs had “no children to love” is very applicable.
But it is by no means to be inferred from such anomalies that quickness of sympathy with brutes of necessity denotes a perversion of feeling. Sensibility does not necessarily exclude, though it may overshadow, benevolence; as parasitical plants blight the trees they cling to. A fondness for pets certainly does not invariably indicate tenderness of heart; but conversely, as killing flies was the recreation of the boy Domitian, he who is unkind to brutes is never very considerate towards men. Sympathy with brutes implies, even in the coldest heart, some glimmering of the Supreme Love; as a passion for flowers implies an apprehension, more or less clear, of the divine Thought expressed in them:—yet there are hard, practical Christians who conceive that disinterested kindness to creatures emphatically declared to be objects of the Divine care is a wrong to our fellow men; though, that somewhere men are in want of bread would seem a very inconclusive argument against feeding creatures which are not useless if they awaken an unselfish love in our hearts, and whose storgé, or instinctive trust in man, was designed by the Father of All to arouse our benevolence.
Due allowance being made for particular circumstances, it may be assumed that the choice of pets is generally an index to character. The farmer entertains a dull affection for some gentle heifer, with mild Juno-like eyes and aromatic breath. His man Giles lounges at leisure moments round the sty, and fondly scratches the fat backs of the lethargic tenants with a clownish smile evoked by visions of future flitches. Community of tastes and pursuits leads the huntsman to seek an object of affection in his stables; and the soldier, whose life may depend on the fleetness and endurance of his charger, will share his last crust with him. A bucolic partiality for sheep can only be accounted for by the drowsy placidity of rural life. The love of birds is almost peculiar to women; and there is a graceful appropriateness in the tenderness of young girls for canaries and other little creatures, nimble, sweet-tongued, and sensitive as themselves. Matrons have a thoughtful preference for poultry. Venerable spinsters relish the spitefulness and loquacity of parrots, and admire a gaudiness of plumage according with their own æsthetic tastes. Some mental perversity may be inferred in a young lady who pets a parrot; and the Roman lady who, according to Martial, fondled a snake, must have been a sour old maid.
An attachment to a dog is honourable to both parties; and though dogs are sometimes kept at first from selfish considerations, he must be bad indeed who does not in the end appreciate and benefit by association with so noble an animal. There is a curious likeness between certain social classes and the dogs they respectively affect—between the stately staghound and the patrician, the eager pointer and the country squire, the bluff mastiff and the farmer, the furtive lurcher and the poacher, the pugnacious bulldog and the man of the ring, the brisk terrier and the London gamin, the peevish lapdog and the listless woman of fashion. The scarred and red-eyed bulldog of Landseer’s admirable “High and Low Life” is perfectly in keeping with the clay pipes, battered porter-pot, and other plebeian accessaries; but all our notions of the fitness of things would be outraged were he to take the place of the dignified hound in the library; and on seeing him there we should inevitably form a low estimate of the tastes of the aristocratic owner. Not only is the dog ordinarily a clue to the social status of the man, but a shrewd guess may be made at the disposition of the master from that of the dog.
Many years ago, when I was chatting about dogs with a distinguished American gentleman, whose guest I was, the latter asserted that a dog can distinguish in conversation words whose meaning he has once acquired; and, noticing my incredulous smile, he offered me immediate proof of it. To the rear of his house was a paddock, the herbage of which was so much to the taste of the cows of the neighbourhood that they were constantly breaking through the fence to get a bite of it, and keeping the dog in such a fever of indignation that the mere mention of a cow awoke his ire. The dog referred to, a fine Newfoundlander, was reposing after the fatigues of the day at the other end of the room we were sitting in. Requesting my silent attention, my friend spoke for a few moments on indifferent matters, and then, without any perceptible pause, or inflexion of voice, or glance at the unsuspicious animal, observed, “there’s a cow in the garden.” The effect was magical. With a groan expressing extreme disgust at so unseasonable a call, the dog arose, and, passing through the open door, set off for the paddock. Ere our laughter had ceased, the abused animal returned from his bootless errand, and, casting a reproachful glance at his master, recomposed himself to slumber.
Unlike those learned pundits who rejoice in their affinity to apes, I never see one of those odious caricatures of humanity without a sense of humiliation; and the person who pets a monkey may a priori be set down as a cynic. Nevertheless, I was once the possessor of one; a friend about to leave India, and at a loss how to provide for his favourite, pressed the tiny wretch on my acceptance, very much against my will. A few days’ confinement having familiarised him with his new abode, I left Jacko to follow the bent of his inclination—to roam where he pleased, and indulge that ill-regulated curiosity which led him, like the philosophers claiming kinship with him, to pry into matters far above his comprehension, and to seek the why and the wherefore of everything that perplexed him by defacing or destroying it. Peace fled my house; nothing could escape the prying eyes and busy fingers of this imp, in whose mischief there was so much method that I was sometimes inclined to ascribe it to intention. To put aught carefully aside was enough to attract his restless eyes and tempt him to pluck out the heart of the mystery. My domestics accounted for whatever was missing by saying, “The monkey has taken it.” Like the cat in London lodgings, he became the scapegoat for the sins of the whole household. He had an ignorant love of literature, and if indulged with pen and ink would spend hours in scribbling; but his cacoethes scribendi leading him to deface my books and papers, I was obliged, in self-defence, to interdict writing materials. He spent much of the time not devoted to these grave pursuits in the garden; destroying more fruit than he ate, for, like the poet Thomson, he ate only the sunny side of what he plucked; or prowled round the hen-roost, for he was as fond of eggs as a weasel, and preferred them fresh-laid. During my dinner he perched on the back of my chair, and generally behaved with tolerable propriety till the advent of dessert, when he insisted on helping himself to fruit and sweetmeats, and was very indignant unless he had at least a sip of wine; for, having once been tipsy on liqueur, he was constantly haunted by the memory of that strange delight, and anxious to renew it.
Having once seen me shoot a hawk, and examined its carcase with something of the perplexed awe of the savage on first witnessing the effect of fire-arms, he was so impressed by the occurrence that merely to point a stick at him, as if taking aim, threw him into an agony of terror.
Feeling somewhat out of sorts one evening, I prescribed to myself a couple of blue-pills, and retired early to bed, inadvertently leaving the box from which I took them on the table. A couple of hours afterwards, I was aroused from a feverish slumber by an unaccountable commotion in the adjoining room, as if some one were in sore distress; and on entering it there was my monkey stretched out on the floor, groaning and writhing with pain, and looking piteously towards me for compassion and assistance. The empty pill-box beside him explained the mystery. He recovered from the effects of this indiscretion, but he became eventually so troublesome that I banished him to a snug box in the garden at the base of a pole to which his chain was attached by a ring sliding on it, and permitting him to climb to the cross-piece at its summit. A few days after his rustication, the poor wretch was found hanging by the neck from his perch as dead as if Calcraft had operated on him. His chain had somehow got entangled, and in leaping towards the pole in order to descend, he committed suicide, whether accidentally or from depression of spirits I cannot say.
I will not, however, from fear of being deemed effeminate, dissimulate that my peculiar tenderness is for cats. Why should I scruple to confess a feeling that has been entertained by so many eminent men?
Whether considered in her frisky kittenhood, discreet maturity, or pensive age, none of the inferior animals exceed the cat in beauty of form, grace of movement, or gentleness of demeanour. In none is ferocity so strangely associated with sensibility, great muscular strength with a feminine softness of nature. Such being her attributes, it is not surprising that the cat should be thought the analogue of woman. Her very sobriquet of Grimalkin—the grey maiden—intimates that she suggested to our ancestors the idea of a fair spirit emergent from the gloom, like the White Lady of Avenel. Her vagueness of colour, and the luminousness of her eyes in the dark, led the ignorant to conceive that there was something supernatural about the cat, and gave birth to superstitions not yet quite eradicated from the popular mind; and a very disagreeable impression is undoubtedly made by the weird and uncanny aspect of a black cat under certain circumstances.
Adopting the more kindly view, Gray, in a charming poem, familiar to all, terms puss a “nymph;” and indeed what better representative of the grace, sensibility, witchery, artifice, and malice of the sex can be found among brutes? The frisky volatility of the kitten, yet innocent of blood of mice, irresistibly reminds us of the wild glee of a girl yet ignorant of the power of her charms; and the noiseless movements and sedate demeanour of the mature Tabby recall the silent activity and thoughtful composure of the experienced matron. From this involuntary association of ideas, the volatile girl is spoken of as “a mischievous kitten,” the Frenchman fondly addresses his spouse as “ma chatte,” and some persons by a strange mental obliquity vituperate any obnoxious old woman as “that old cat!”
What is more suggestive of the comfort and repose of home than the cat dozing by the fire? What associate of our domestic life interferes less with ease and meditation? The soft murmur whereby she expresses her enjoyment of our caresses, does not pain us like the plaintive cry of a bird doomed to imprisonment for life. Her eyes, if not so lucidly intelligible, so expressive of a community of feeling as those of the dog, are transparent abysses of golden light, the very mystery of whose depths fascinates while it bewilders the thoughtful gazer. Her voice is more capable of inflexion, and more variously expressive of her feelings than is generally supposed, and can at times be subdued to a melodious cooing far sweeter and tenderer than that of the dove.
As the wild cat formerly abounded in the British Isles, being enumerated among beasts of chase in a charter of Richard II., it has been argued by some that our domestic cat descended from it, or in other words, that the domestic cat is the wild cat reclaimed; but specific structural differences are fatal to this theory. That our puss is of foreign origin is indicated by the high esteem in which she was formerly held; the British Prince Howel Dha, for instance, thought her a fit subject for legislation, and determined by law her value at various ages, the price even of a kitling before it could see being fixed at one penny—a much larger sum then than now.
Our Saxon sovereigns employed cats in the chase, and officials named Catatores, whose functions resembled those of “masters of the hounds,” had the care of them. In the course of time puss was transferred from the granary and the stable to the lady’s bower, and became the object of a tenderness which tacitly acknowledged the analogy between cats and women. Her society also relieved the melancholy gloom of the cell, the English rule of nuns in the thirteenth century considerately excepting her from the category of “beasts” which nuns were forbidden to caress. The Church regarded puss with particular favour. Wolsey, Richelieu, and other distinguished churchmen, lavished caresses on her, perhaps because the combination in her of silken suavity with a ruthless will was an exact reflection of the ecclesiastical genius.
The cat was also frequently introduced into churches as an architectural detail, of which there is an instance in the group of an old woman and her cat carved on a miserere in a church in the Isle of Thanet; and was even admitted into sacred paintings, such as the “St. Cecilia” at Bologna, wherein puss appears as an enraptured auditor of the strains an angel is eliciting from that very unangelic instrument the violoncello. During the middle ages a custom prevailed at Aix, in Provence, of exhibiting in a shrine, on the day of Corpus Christi, a cat arrayed in swaddling-clothes, before which incense was burnt and flowers strewn. On St. John’s day, on the contrary, a number of cats, enclosed in a basket, were borne in solemn procession with the chants of the clergy through the city, and burnt in the market place. The origin of this strange custom is unknown.
Down to a very late period it was fancied that various parts of the cat had medicinal virtues, three drops of blood from the tail being, for instance, considered a specific in epileptic cases. These fancies were merely silly, but others existed which had a malevolent tendency. Reminiscences of Pagan superstitions and magical rites,—such as the Scottish Taigherm, or sacrifice of a black cat to the subterranean powers,—seethed in the popular mind at a time when, agitated by great political and religious questions, it was in a transitional state, and assumed the form of an elaborate system of demonology, which Scripture was perverted to sanction, and which our British Solomon wrote a learned treatise to expound. The feminine love of cats became a crime: any lonely old creature who kept one was assumed to be in league with the powers of darkness, and liable to the penalty enunciated by the Mosaical law. Thousands suffered as witches on such evidence. At the very period when this holy horror of cats and their associates prevailed in England and America, they were in such esteem elsewhere that the four cats of the lady of the Protestant Bishop of Odensee, in Denmark, were interred beside her in the Cathedral of St. Knud, in that city, arrayed in white satin, and with a plumed black velvet cap on each feline head!
Mohammedans regard cats with kindly favour, from a tradition that the prophet, when called to prayer, cut off his sleeve rather than disturb one slumbering on it. The dog is considered unclean, but the cat is allowed to eat from the Moslem’s dish, and benevolent institutions for cats exist in various places. At Damascus there is an hospital for infirm cats. At Cairo there is a charitable fund for the maintenance of destitute cats, administered by the Cadi, to whose care the citizens consign superfluous kittens; and every afternoon, at the hour of Asser, these pensioners of the public receive a fixed dole.
The Chinese, in place of feeding, eat cats. Pleasant M. Huc says that, like the ancient Egyptians, they have a notion that the contraction and dilation of the cat’s pupils have some relation to the movements of the spheres, and look into its eyes to learn the time of day, as our old women prognosticate rain on seeing it wash its face, and as seamen gravely shake their heads and augur a coming storm when it is unusually frolicsome.
Like the good bishop in Victor Hugo’s tale, my heart has, with an occasional interregnum, been ruled by a dynasty of cats ever since the days when those entrancing myths, the White cat, Whittington’s cat, and Puss in boots had for me the authority of history. In after life, when a cat did not share it, my domestic comfort seemed incomplete; and now that my hair is grey I cannot pass a cat in the street without pausing to salute her.
When in India, I possessed a feline friend of remarkable sagacity. Seeing her one day eating raw fish, and enquiring whence it came, my domestics smilingly replied that Jenny must have caught it herself, as she often fished in the neighbouring brook. In consequence of this extraordinary statement I watched her movements for some days, and had finally the satisfaction of seeing her take her way to the brook, pause on its margin to contemplate the small fry sporting in its shallow waters, and when one came within her reach, capture it by a swift extension of her paw. This feat I saw frequently repeated afterwards. On a subsequent occasion, when travelling in Assam, my camp was pitched on a sandy islet in a tributary of the Brahmaputra, for security from the tigers which infested the banks. In the afternoon succeeding my arrival there, on looking around for Jenny, she was nowhere to be seen, and the encampment was searched for her in vain. During the discussion as to what could have become of her, the truant was espied by a sharpsighted fellow, snugly ensconced in the fork of a shady tree across the river; though it seemed incomprehensible how she could have got across the channel which was a hundred feet in width. When the sun approached the western horizon the mystery was solved by her composedly swimming back; and so long as we remained on that arid spot, impatient of the heat and lack of shade, she passed part of each day in the same tree! It was my habit, when in cantonments, to pace up and down before my door in the cool of the evening, and Jenny always attended me, unweariedly following me to and fro, as if, like myself, she felt the need of exercise. If my walk extended beyond my own domain she was eager to accompany me; and when I returned from abroad, warned of my approach by the sound of horsehoofs, she would advance a considerable distance from the house to greet me. She lived on the most friendly terms with my dogs, but had a special pique against a parrot which swung on an iron perch a couple of feet from the floor of the veranda, just where Jenny preferred taking her afternoon nap. The bird, usually silent at the hour when in tropical lands all creatures are exhausted by the heat, was sometimes perversely loquacious; and the cat’s annoyance on such occasions was extremely diverting. Twice I myself saw her, after turning uneasily and watching him for a time with gleaming eyes, rush swiftly at the noisy wretch and give him, with her paw, a spiteful buffet that knocked him off his perch, as a hint that his prattle was disagreeable and out of season; and in both instances, after a shrill shriek of surprise and indignation, the discomfited bird relapsed into gloomy silence for the rest of the day. If I whistled an air to her, Jenny would leap on my knee, gaze intently at me, and express her delight by a soft cooing murmur. This dear creature, of whom I never think without a sigh, was lost overboard by night in the Ganges.
When residing in a wild American region, some years afterwards, I was in the habit of visiting a neighbour dwelling some three miles away, and leaving my cabin to the care of a cat. One evening Tab was not visible when I was about to go, and I departed leaving the door ajar for her—she subsequently acquired a knack of opening it by springing at the latch. When I had nearly traversed the forest intervening between the two houses, a rustling in the fallen leaves made me start and turn round; but, instead of the panther which I fancied was tracking me, I saw my poor Tab almost exhausted by strenuous efforts to overtake me. She slipped out and hid herself thus several days in succession in order to follow me when I was fairly on the road; and, whether she was actuated by affection or aversion to solitude, I henceforth called her to accompany me whenever I went forth. She would leap on my lap when I whistled to her, but had an unpleasant fashion of patting me on the mouth which I construed into disapproval of my efforts to amuse her. On leaving the place I reluctantly consigned her to my neighbour’s care.
My present favourite, Tootee, is the prettiest of a litter presented to me four years ago by her mother, who implored my patronage of them by bringing them up from her retreat in the kitchen, and laying them at my feet. She early learnt to recognise a summons in a snap of my fingers, and the headlong rush of the entire feline family up the stairs on hearing this signal was extremely ludicrous. Though the confinement of a great city is very unfavourable to its development, the intelligence of Tootee is singular. She likes to accompany me into the garden and to run after a ball, and when younger, frequently brought it to me in her mouth. She is in the habit of putting her paws on my shoulders, licking my face, and nibbling at my nose,—a strange trick which I discourage,—and is very partial to my shoulder as a seat. Having discovered that, from some defect in the lock, my bed-room door may be opened by pushing it, she springs at it repeatedly in order to overcome by her weight the slight resistance of the bolt. When desirous of leaving the room she stands erect on her hind legs, and paws at the handle of the door as if conscious that it is necessary to act upon that in order to open the door. Should we go into the country or to the seaside, after exploring every nook of our temporary home and ascertaining what rooms are mine, she never intrudes elsewhere, being very diffident of strangers. Packing she understands to portend a move, becomes then unquiet, and wanders up and down the house mournfully as if bidding farewell to familiar objects; but, once established in a new place, she accommodates herself to necessity, and evinces no disposition to ramble. She is averse to solitude, and piteously remonstrates against being left alone; she distinguishes my knock from others, and generally comes to the door to welcome me; if her name is mentioned in conversation she pricks up her ears, and if directly spoken to usually replies by a gentle prut as eloquent as words. A cushion has been appropriated to her private use, and she evinces her apprehension of its being her property by sharpening her claws on no other object, by her uneasiness when it is used by any one, and by immediately resuming possession of it when relinquished to her. Only once was she so forgetful of her duty as to help herself to anything on the table in my absence. If not immediately attended to at meals, she drums impatiently on my arm, and having thus reminded me of her presence, composes herself to wait for a time. If still neglected she leaps on her mistress’ lap or shoulders, tries gently to intercept what she is raising to her mouth, and if permitted, will take it daintily from her lips. She never scratches or betrays the least bad temper, permitting herself to be handled roughly without resisting, and remonstrating merely by a soft mew.
I have been beguiled into these domestic reminiscences by a belief that the faults of puss, like those of women, are chiefly due to the injudicious way in which she is ordinarily treated by men. The faculties of the dog are developed by regular food, freedom, kindness, and association in our daily amusements. The cat is restricted to the house, stoned if she leaves it, fed scantily or not at all, despised as a household drudge, a forlorn Cinderella—but for whom, however, we should be over-run by vermin—abandoned to the caprices of children, and made occasionally the subject of cruel scientific experiments. We ill-treat her and yet inveigh against her want of affection; we dine on mutton and reproach her with her carnivorous instinct; we frequently resent even a kindness, and are shocked at her promptness to avenge a wrong. I confess that I rejoice to hear the howl of lamentation that follows the scratch she has inflicted on the vicious child whose daily amusement is tormenting her; for it is not well, because parents are injudicious, that cruelty and lack of consideration for the sufferings of our fellow-creatures should pass unpunished. The alleged unsociability of puss is contradicted by the numerous instances wherein she has dwelt on amicable terms with other animals. At Lucerne, several centuries ago, a cat, dog, bird, and mouse fed daily from the same plate; and two cats are now to be seen in the Zoological Gardens dwelling in harmony with a miscellaneous assemblage of monkeys, musing serenely in the midst of ceaseless tumult, and even sometimes joining in a friendly way in the frolics of the volatile crowd.
The sensibility of the cat to music, like that of men, varies with the individual. A French lady of the last century had a cat remarkable for its love of music, and gifted with such power of discriminating good from bad, that it evinced unmistakeable annoyance at a discord or error in time. So assured was she of this, that Madame Dupuy relied implicitly on the cat’s intelligence to inform her whether her execution of a new sonata was open to criticism; conceiving herself sure of pleasing in public when puss purred applause, and asserting solemnly that the bravas of her friends invariably confirmed the approbation of the feline critic; though cynics may refer this musical success to the age and wealth of the amateur. Be this as it may, at her death Madame Dupuy bequeathed her large estates to the cat, arranging for her residence in Paris and the country alternately, and leaving legacies to various friends on the condition of their visiting the cat at stated periods to inquire after her health and comfort.
It is melancholy to learn that the legal profession alone benefited by this testament, a parallel to which was recently recorded in the “Times;” two dogs having, by their solicitors, petitioned the High Court of Chancery that, in accordance with the wishes of their deceased mistress, the sum of 666l. 13s. 4d. in the three per cents. might be appropriated from her estate for their support; which, after hearing the arguments of counsel, the Vice-Chancellor ordered to be done.
Happy land, where dogs are taxed, and have property in the Funds! But there is a reverse to the picture. Not long ago a poor girl committed suicide in London on account of the death of her cat, and in her lifeless hand was a scrap of paper containing a touching entreaty that her “dear little kitten” might be laid in her coffin and buried with her.
Let the reflection that there are probably in this wealthy land many lonely women, like this unhappy creature, without other friend on earth than a cat, win us to act more kindly to Puss!