Margaret Benson

“ Once, in time long past, there were passages between Joey and Matilda. They were placed side by side, and as Joey looked on that demure Quakeress, her dove colour unrelieved except by two plumes of sober crimson; as he gazed on that marble eye while Matilda huskily and rapidly repeated the name of the kitchen-maid, Joey was aware of an emotion beautiful and strange. Self-control is a foreigner to that hot southern nature, and without a pause for thought he extended a claw—it was all he could do—to the lady. ”

“ He lives his life in the full light of day—there are no “silent silver lights and darks undreamed of” about Taffy.
Of course he has his nerves like the rest of us: after a display of affection he seeks a relief from the strain of emotion and repairs quickly to the waste-paper basket; if he is ill it is death to pity him. He becomes unable to raise his head from the ground, unable to swallow; a profound woe is on his face. The wholesome tonic of a few tricks, cheerful conversation, and a little bustle is necessary to restore him. ”

“ When one terrier only remained he turned again, made a long line to catch us up, squeezing through a gap which it would have been madness to attempt with the pack behind him, and rejoined us with cocked tail, looking for applause.
It is this quick intelligence of Taffy’s which renders daily intercourse so easy and so pleasant. If he knows you drive daily, the sound of the front door bell at the accustomed time will bring him to the door, to lie gently whining till it is opened. ”

“ He seemed to think it added a point to evening meditation to hear the squeak of the dying shrew or to see an innocent field-mouse untimely cut off while it was peacefully nibbling a blade of grass.
Just so both kittens, with the real self-consciousness of cats, played their games in public; they seemed to have no thought of anything but the mock combat, but the scene of the combat shifted so as to be always under the eye of a spectator. The explanation is simple: the life of a cat is a continuous drama, whether actual or imagined; and what actor will play to an empty house? ”

“ Probably as for Lovelace, so for Matilda, stone walls would not a prison make, for iron bars do not make any thing like a cage. She drags the door upwards with her beak, and holds it with her claw while she squeezes through like an egg sucked through a bottle-neck. This performance drives Joey to the verge of mania. He, too, pulls up his door, but he does not know how to hold it, and it bangs down again and leaves him voiceless with rage, while Matilda is running about as gay as a lark. ”

“ There is only one time in the day when one can be sure of seeing him awake, and that is at prayers. The presence of so many quiet people makes him feel it a good opportunity of amusing them by a little lively play with the bell-rope. If he is put out of the room he seeks an open door or window, and finds a chance of making a fine dramatic rush across the scene, accompanied by the stable cat. Prayers over, his vivacity subsides.
He has a name waiting for him when he wakes, for Sandy is to be glorified into Alexander. But what is the good of naming a cat who cannot hear you through his dreams? ”

“ At this age, to coerce is to terrify; and there is something truly heartrending in looking at the shrinking, furtive air that punishments produce, and thinking of the happy, courageous little beast who sharpened its claws for an attack on Taffy, and gave itself up to the human being in blissful confidence of kind dealing.
Sandy is more of an enigma. One could tell his possibilities better if he would wake up. As he sleeps he grows larger and larger, though few have seen him eat, and he never asks for food. ”

“ But Taffy is taught to preserve a modest demeanour; he is well snubbed if in excitement over a piece of paper he postures too much, like a dog in a chromo-lithograph—crouching forepaws, a plumy tail wagging, ears raised, and mouth open to show a healthy crimson tongue. ”

“ It is time that the old question of the superiority of cat or dog should be discussed on some other ground than that of British feeling or human egotism.
The case of the cat is prejudged if we are to weigh his merits on practical grounds, for the cat is a dreamer and a dramatist; or if we are to estimate his character from the point of view of Western civilisation, for the cat, as William Watson says, is the type of the Orient; or, finally, if we are to consider the moral qualities of the cat solely in relation to the desires of the human being. ”

“ We are apt to think of ourselves as occupying this unique position in creation that we alone have the power and inclination to annex other races of creatures for supplies, for service, and for pleasure. If this egotism is at all a matter of congratulation, at any rate we flatter ourselves falsely. The ant keeps its dairy establishment and its staff of domestic servants, or, as we invidiously choose to call them, its slaves. Pumas seem to show a distinct tendency to make pets of human beings, and I strongly suspect that cats take up the same position. We think we have domesticated the cat. ”

“ Persis was overwhelmed with pressure of affairs; one saw her crouching near the farm in early morning; met her later on the stairs carrying home game, and was greeted only by a quick look as of one intent on business.
The one drawback to this place was that it was surrounded by woods, carefully preserved.
By this time I had come to two clear resolves; the first, that I would never again develop the sensibilities of an animal beyond certain limits; for one creates claims that one has no power to satisfy. The feelings of a sensitive animal are beyond our control, and beyond its own also. ”

“ But I tremble for the prospects of next summer if we are going to prove so attractive a family. If Robin and Flapsy nest again in the ivied wall; if Dicksy brings a mate to the left hand gate-post; and Pecksy sets up an establishment in the arbutus bush, the war of the worlds will be nothing to the war of the robins.
And at this moment we have undergone a new adoption, for a milk white jackdaw without a tail flew into the garden yesterday, and the household was scattered, uttering endearments, among the cabbages, and scraps of raw meat adorned the lawn. ”

“ There was something uncanny about it, and even possibly dangerous, for if I looked up from a book sometimes I found that topaz eye trying to catch and arrest my own, while the great cat stole silently nearer. I think if we had not relinquished the game Mentu’s claws would have blinded me.
For the wild nature in Mentu is as strong as his inbred civilisation; and the two are at strife together. His heart and his appetite lead him back and back to the house; keep him there for days together—a dainty fine gentleman, warm-hearted, capricious. ”

“ There is sacrifice of the lower desires to the higher when the cat brings a friend to share her dinner; when she lets a dog take food out of her mouth; when she carries on towards her kittens, after the immediate needs and desires of motherhood have ceased, a course of conduct more or less consistently educative. A cat, the Egyptians said, reasoned like a man, and this is true in that she determines, like a man, her own ends and purposes in life. It is not approbation but admiration that the cat demands from man; the dog accepts the purposes of life as given from above. ”

“ Round the side of the farm buildings an unexpected pool flashed into whiteness; the imagination was on the stretch to see an old owl flap out from under the eaves, and shoot by with silent wing; when suddenly from overhead came a flutter and crash of branches, and a great creature swooped down and fled by with train streaming behind.
It is but seldom he can cause so much sensation; and for the most part he walks alone behind the hedge, peering through at the barn-door fowls, as an anxious exhibitor at a fair peers out from his van to count the sordid crowd collecting. ”

“ It is true that if the muzzle is not in place he may bring any small handy object instead—some one else’s hat, the clothes brush, a Bible, or a hand bag, for he seems to regard the action as symbolic. If you feel dull, Taffy will turn out the waste-paper basket and find you a crumpled envelope; if you are inclined for affection he overwhelms you with demonstration.
In almost every mood or occupation Taffy is delighted to bear you company. There are only two things he cannot stand—one is golf and one is gardening. ”

“ One clear point of superiority in the dog is his rudimentary sense of humour. Almost any good-tempered dog, when well treated, will try from time to time to laugh off a scolding. If he is encouraged, the fooling is repeated again and again with growing exaggeration as he rolls [Pg 166] over with wide mouth and absurd contortions, or flies at one’s face to lick it. He appreciates humour in others at his own expense, a thing which not every human being is capable of doing; if he is teased laughingly, he too will play the fool; if he is teased cruelly he is cross or wretched. ”

“ No dog likes one to blow in his face or ear, but Taffy, though not wholly good-tempered, will allow the bellows to be placed even in his mouth if he is assured that it is a game. When the puff of air comes he darts up, jumps at and licks the person who is teasing him, and barks with a wagging tail. If he is really bored or tired he licks the nozzle of the bellows, or the hand that holds them, deprecatingly; he declines the game, but in perfect good humour.
Now a cat has no sense of humour at all. ”

“ The yellow cat never mewed, but his purr was like a thrashing-machine; the other was clamorous in pleasure [Pg 38] and complaint, her appetite unquenchable, her demands for affection, for comfort, for food, insistent and unabashed. She would try to drink from the milk-jug while her saucer was being filled; she would run her claws into a hand to get firm hold while she ate the scraps offered her.
If you put her out of the door she reappeared like a conjuring trick through the window; she would jump again and again on the lap of some one who did not want her; she would never take offence. ”

“ There they lived in a wild and wicked romance. People passing through the wood at evening might see a very small gold cock and a very large speckled hen sitting side by side on the branch of a tree; or in the morning might catch sight of the pair digging for a precarious livelihood in the grass at the covert edge; glancing round with guilty eyes and fleeing for safety into the bushes. ”

“ Just so Ra’s head erects itself; so slope his neck and back, and so the tail lies out in a free curve over the hind leg stretched back. Is there such a thing as a protective outline, and does the silly peacock owe his safety partly to this?
If his very pose is dramatic, much more so is his sudden entrance on the scene. All round the house in summer nights comes the whirring of the owls. Now there seems to be a heavy sleeper under one’s very window, now the sound purrs out from the walnut tree across the lawn, now from the bell tower or the ivy on the chimney stack. ”

“ Both kittens are entirely fearless with Taffy. Sandy’s is a mere absence of fear, greatly due to sleep, and Taffy may wag a tail in his face, just as a friend may flap a handkerchief in it, and yet only induce a flutter of an eyelid. The little cat, on the other hand, is a friend of his, will rub against his paws, and force him to take an ashamed interest in her. ”

“ The cat’s life, as distinguished from the dog’s, is essentially independent; and this, combined with finer sensibilities and a less facile intelligence, give a predominance in the cat of these elements of character which as developed in the human being we call the artistic temperament.
The cat is, above all things, a dramatist; its life is lived in an endless romance though the drama is played out on quite another stage than our own, and we only enter into it as subordinate characters, as stage managers, or rather stage carpenters. ”