Date: 1919-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Wit and Humor; Memoir; Cats
Description: Edward Frederic “E. F.” Benson was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist and short story writer. He is now known mainly for his “Mapp and Lucia” novels, and to a somewhat lesser extent, for his short “spook” stories about the supernatural. * * * * The two delightful pieces presented here, although classified as “stories” in the collection “The Countess of Lowndes Square,” seem rather to be memoirs. With charm and subtle humor, they relate the lives and times of several cats who ruled the household of the narrator.
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: Text is the public domain in countries where copyright is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA.

TWO CAT STORIES

BY
E. F. BENSON

CONTENTS:

•   “Puss-cat”

•   There Arose a King

“PUSS-CAT”

It was during the month of May some nine years ago that the beginning of the events that concerned Puss-cat took place. I was living at the time on the green outskirts of a country town, and my dining-room at the back of the house opened onto a small garden framed in brick walls some five feet high. Breakfasting there one morning, I saw a large black and white cat, with a sharp but serious face, observing me with studied attention. Now at the time there was an interregnum, and my house was without a mistress (in the shape of a cat), and it at once struck me that I was being interviewed by this big and pleasing stranger, to see if I would do. So, since there is nothing that a prospective mistress likes less than premature familiarity on the part of the householder whom she may be thinking of engaging, I took no direct notice of the cat, but continued to eat my breakfast carefully and tidily. After a short inspection, the cat quietly withdrew without once looking back, and I supposed that I was dismissed, or that she had decided, after all, to keep on her present household.

In that I proved to be mistaken: she had only gone away to think about it, and next morning, and for several mornings after that, I was subjected to the same embarrassing but not unfriendly scrutiny, after which she took a stroll round the garden to see if there were any flower-beds that would do to make ambushes in, and a convenient tree or two to climb should emergencies arise. On the fourth day, as far as I remember, I committed an error, and half-way through breakfast went out into the garden, to attempt to get on more familiar terms. The cat regarded me for a few moments with pained surprise, and went away; but after I had gone in again, she decided to overlook it, for she returned to her former place, and continued to observe. Next morning she made up her mind, jumped down from the wall, trotted across the grass, entered the dining-room, and, arranging herself in a great hurry round one hind leg, which she put up in the air like a flagstaff, proceeded to make her morning toilet. That, as I knew quite well, meant that she thought I would give satisfaction, and I was therefore permitted to enter upon my duties at once. So I put down a saucer of milk for her, which she very obligingly disposed of. Then she went and sat by the door, and said “A-a-a-a,” to show that she wished the door to be opened for her, so that she might inspect the rest of the house. So I called down the kitchen stairs, “There is come a cat, who I think means to stop. Don’t fuss her.” In this manner the real Puss-cat – though I did not know that – entered the house.

Now here I must make a short defence for my share in these things. I might, by a hasty judgment, be considered to have stolen her who soon became Puss-cat’s mamma, but anyone who has any real knowledge of cats will be aware that I did nothing of the kind. Puss-cat’s mamma was clearly dissatisfied with her last household and had, without the least doubt, made up her mind to leave them all and take on a fresh lot of servants; and if a cat makes up her mind about anything, no power on earth except death, or permanent confinement in a room where neither doors nor windows are ever opened, will stop her taking the contemplated step. If her last (unknown) household killed her, or permanently shut her up, of course, she could not engage fresh people, but short of that they were powerless to keep her. You may cajole or bully a dog into doing what you want, but no manner of persuasion will cause a cat to deviate one hair’s breadth from the course she means to pursue. If I had driven her away she would have gone to another house, but never back to her own. For though we may own dogs and horses and other animals, it is a great mistake to think that we own cats. Cats employ us, and if we give satisfaction they may go so far as to adopt us. Besides, Puss-cat’s mamma did not, as it turned out, mean to stay with me altogether: she only wanted quiet lodgings for a time.

So our new mistress went discreetly downstairs and inspected kitchen, scullery, and pantry. She spent some time in the scullery, so I was told, and felt rather doubtful. But she quite liked the new gas-stove in the kitchen, and singed her tail at it, as nobody had told her that lunch was a-cooking. Also she found a mouse-hole below the wainscoting, which appeared to decide her (for, as we soon found out, she liked work), and she trotted upstairs again and sat outside the drawing-room door till somebody opened it for her. I happened to be inside, with Jill, a young lady of the fox-terrier breed, and, of course, did not know that Puss-cat’s mamma was waiting. Eventually I came out and saw her sitting there. Jill saw her, too, and eagerly ran up to her only to talk, not to fight, for Jill likes cats. But Puss-cat’s mamma did not know that, so, just in case, she slapped Jill smartly first on one side the head, and then on the other. She was not angry, but only firm and strong, and wished that from the first there should be no doubt whatever about her position. Having done that, she allowed Jill to explain, which Jill did with twitchings of her stumpy tail and attitude provocative of gambols. And before many minutes were up, Puss-cat’s mamma was kind enough to play with her. Then she suddenly remembered that she had not seen the rest of the house, and went upstairs, where she remained till lunch-time.

It was the manner in which she spent the first morning that gave me the key to the character of Puss-cat’s mamma, and we at once settled that her name had always been Martha. She had annexed our house, it is true, but in no grabbing or belligerent spirit, but simply because she had seen from her post on the garden wall that we wanted somebody to look after us and manage the house, and she could not help knowing how wonderful she was in all things connected with a mistress’s duties. Every morning when the housemaid’s step was heard on the stairs during breakfast (she had a very audible step), Martha, even in the middle of fish or milk, ran to the door, said “A-a-a-a,” till it was opened, and rushed after her, sitting in each bedroom in turn to see that the slops were properly emptied and the beds well and truly made. In the middle of such supervision sometimes came other calls upon her, the front-door bell would ring, and Martha had to hurry down to see that the door was nicely opened. Then perhaps she would catch sight of somebody digging in the garden, and she was forced to go out in this busiest time of the morning, to dab at the turned-up earth, in order to be sure that it was fresh. In particular, I remember the day on which the dining-room was repapered. She had to climb the step-ladder to ascertain if it was safe, and sit on the top to clean herself. Then each roll of paper had to be judged by the smell, and the paste to be touched with the end of a pink tongue. That made her sneeze (which must be the right test for paste), and she allowed it to be used. That day we lunched in the drawing-room, and it is easy to imagine how busy Martha was, for the proceeding was very irregular, and she could not tell how it would turn out. Meal-times were always busy: she had to walk in front of every dish as it was brought in, and precede it as it was taken out, and today these duties were complicated by the necessity of going back constantly to the real dining-room to see that the paper-hangers were not idling. To make the rush more overpowering, Jill was in the garden wanting to play (and to play with Jill was one of Martha’s duties) and some young hollyhocks were being put in, certain of which, for inscrutable reasons, had to be dug up again with strong backward kicks of the hind legs.

She had settled that there was but one cat, which was, of course, herself. Occasionally alien heads looked over the wall, and the cries of strangers sounded. Whenever that happened, whatever the stress of housework might be, Martha bounded from house into garden to expel and, if possible, kill the intruder. Once from my bedroom window I saw a terrific affair. Martha had been sitting as good as gold among hair-brushes and nail-scissors, showing me how to shave, when something feline moving in the garden caught her eye. Not waiting for the door to be opened, she made one leap of it out of the window into the apple-tree, and whirled down the trunk, even as lightning strikes and rips its way to the ground, and next moment I saw her, with paw uplifted, tearing tufts of fur from the next-door tabby. She was like one of those amazing Chinese grotesques, half-cat, half-demon, and wholly warrior. Shrill cries rent the peaceful morning air, and Martha, intoxicated with vengeance, allowed the mishandled tabby to escape. Then with awesome face and Bacchanalian eye she ate the tufts of bloodstained fur, rolling them on her tongue and swallowing them with obvious difficulty, as if performing some terrible, antique and cannibalistic rite. And all this from a lady who was so shortly to be confined. But it was no use trying to keep Martha quiet.

A second minute inspection of her house was necessary before she decided which should be the birth-chamber. She spent a long time in the wood-shed that morning, and we hoped that it was going to be there; she spent a long time in the bath-room, and we hoped it wasn’t. Eventually she settled on the pantry, and when she had quite made up her mind we made her comfortable. Next morning three dappled little blind things were there. She ate one, for no reason, as far as we could judge, except that she was afraid that Jill wanted to. So, as it was her kitten, not Jill’s, she ate it.

With all respect for Martha, I think that here she had mistaken her vocation. She should never have gone in for being a mother. The second kitten she lay down upon with fatal results. Then, being thoroughly disgusted with maternity, she went away and never was seen any more. She deserted the only child she had not killed; she deserted us who had tried so hard to give satisfaction; and in the basket there was left, still blind, still uncertain whether it was worth while to live at all, Puss-cat.

Puss-cat was her mother’s own child from the first, though with much added. She wasted no time or strength in bewailing her orphaned condition, but took amazing quantities of milk administered on a feather. Her eyes opened, as eyes should do, on the seventh day, and she smiled at us all, and spat at Jill. So Jill licked her nose with anxious care, and said quite distinctly, “When you are a little older, I will be always ready to do whatever you like.” Jill says the same sort of thing to everybody except the dustman.

Soon after, Puss-cat arose from her birth-bed and staggered across the pantry. Even this first expedition on her own feet was not made without purpose, for in spite of frequent falls she went straight up to a blind-tassel, and after looking at it for a long time, tested it with a tiny paw to make sure of it, thus showing, while scarcely out of the cradle, that serious purpose which marked her throughout her dear life. Her motto was, “Do your work,” and since she remained unmarried in spite of many very eligible offers, I think that her unnatural mother must have impressed upon her, in those few days before she deserted her, that the first duty of a cat is to look after the house, and that she herself didn’t think much of maternity. Puss-cat inherited also, I suppose, her fixed conviction that she ought to have been, even if she was not, the only cat in the world, and she would allow no one of her own race within eyeshot of house or garden. Some of her duties, though they were always conscientiously performed, I think rather bored her, but certainly she brought to the expulsion of cats an exquisite sense of enjoyment. On the appearance of any one of her own nation she would go hastily into ambush with twitching tail and jerking shoulder-blades, teasing and torturing herself with the postponement of that rapturous stealthy advance across the grass, if the quarry was looking the other way, or the furious hurling of herself through the air, if a frontal attack had to be delivered. And I often wondered that she did not betray her ambush by the rapture and sonorousness of her purring, as the supreme moment approached.

Jill, I am afraid, gave her a lot of worry over this duty of the expulsion of aliens, for Jill would sooner play with an alien than expel it, and her plan was to gambol up to the intruder with misplaced welcome. It is true that the effect was just the same, because a trespassing cat, seeing an alert fox-terrier rapidly approaching, seldom, if ever, stops to play, so that Jill’s method was really quite effective, too. But Puss-cat had high moral purpose behind her: she wanted not only to expel, but to appal and injure, and like many moralists of our own species, she enjoyed her fulminations and onslaughts quite tremendously. She liked punishing other cats, because she was right and they were wrong, and vigorous kicks and bites would help them perhaps to understand that.

But though Puss-cat resembled her mother in the matter of the high sense of duty and moral qualities, she had what Martha lacked: that indefinable attraction which we call charm, and a great heart. She was always pleased and affectionate, and went about her duties with as near an approach to a smile as is possible for the gravest species of animal. Martha, for instance, played with Jill as a part of her duty, Puss-cat made a pleasure out of it and played with the ecstatic abandon of a child. Indeed, I have known her put dinner a quarter of an hour later, because she was in the lovely jungle of long grass at the end of the garden, and was preparing to give Jill an awful fright. This business of the jungle deserves mention, not because it was so remarkable in itself, but because it was so wonderful to Puss-cat.

The jungle in question was a space of some dozen yards, where in spring daffodils grew in clumps of sunshine and fritillaries hung their speckled bells. There were peonies also planted in the grass, and a briar-rose, and an apple-tree; nothing, as I have said, was remarkable in itself, but it was fraught with amazing possibilities to the keen imagination of Puss-cat. At the bottom of this strip of untamed jungle the lawn began, and it was one of Puss-cat’s plans to hide at the edge of the jungle, flattening herself out till she looked like a shadow of something else. If luck served her, Jill, sooner or later in the pursuit of interesting smells, would pass close to the edge of the jungle without seeing her. The moment Jill had gone by, Puss-cat would stretch out a discreet paw, and just touch Jill on the hindquarters. Jill, of course, had to turn round to see what this inexplicable thing meant, and on the moment Puss-cat would fling herself into the air and descend tiger-like on Jill’s back. That was the beginning of the game, and it contained more vicissitudes than a round of golf. There were ambushes and scurryings innumerable, assaults from the apple tree, repulsions from behind the garden roller, periods of absolute quiescence, suddenly and wildly broken by swift flanking movements through the sweet-peas, and at the end a failure of wind and limb, and Jill would lie panting on the bank, and Puss-cat, having put off dinner, proceed to clean herself for her evening duties. She had to be smart at dinner-time, whether we were dining alone, or whether there was a dinner-party, for she was never a tea-gown cat, and she dressed for her dinner, even if we were dining out. She was not responsible for that; what she was responsible for was to be tidy herself.

Puss-cat, without doubt, was a plain kitten; but again, like many children of our own inferior race, she grew up to be a very handsome cat. With great chic, she did not attempt colours, but was pure black and white. Across her broad, strong back there was a black saddle, but the saddle, so to speak, had slewed round and made a black band across her left side. There was an arbitrary patch of black, too, on her left cheek, a black band on her tail, and a black tip to it. Otherwise she was pure white, except when she put out a pink tongue below her long, snowy whiskers. But her charm – the outstanding feature of Puss-cat – was independent of this fascinating colouring. Martha, for instance, had been content that dishes were carried into the dining-room, and subsequently carried out. That and no more was her notion of her duties towards dinner. But Puss-cat really began where Martha ended. Like her, she preceded the soup, but when those who were present had received their share, she always went round with loud purrings to each guest, to congratulate them and hope that they liked it. For this process, which was repeated with every dish, she had a particular walk, stepping high and treading on the tips of her toes. This congratulatory march was purely altruistic: she did not want soup herself; she was only glad that other people had got it. Then when fish came, or bird, she would make her congratulatory tour just the same, and then sit firmly down and say she would like some too. Occasionally she favoured some particular guest with marked regard, and sometimes almost forgot her duties as mistress of the house, choosing rather to sit by her protégée and purr loudly, so that a dish would already be half-eaten before she went her round to see that everyone was pleased with his portion. Finally, when coffee was brought, she went downstairs to the kitchen and retired for the night, usually sharing Jill’s basket, where they lay together in a soft slow-breathing heap of black and white.

Puss-cat, like the ancient Greeks, was never sick or sorry: never sick, because of her robust and stalwart health; never sorry, because she never did anything to be sorry for. From living with Jill, and never seeing a cat, except for those short and painful interviews which preceded expulsion from the garden, she grew to have something of the selfless affection of a dog, and when I came home after an absence she would run out into the street to meet me, stiff-tailed, and really not attending to the debarkation of luggage, but intent only on welcoming me home. Eight busy, happy years passed thus, and then one bitter February morning, Puss-cat disappeared.

The weeks went on, and still there came no sign of her, and when winter had passed into May I gave up all hopes of her return, and got a fresh cat, this time a young blue Persian with topaz-coloured eyes. Another month went by, and Agag (so-called from his delicate walk) had established himself in our affections, on account of his extraordinary beauty, rather than from any charm of character, when the second act of the tragedy opened.

I was sitting at breakfast one morning, with the door into the garden thrown wide, and Agag was curled up on a chair in the window (for, unlike Puss-cat and Martha, he did no housework at all, being of proud and aristocratic descent), when I saw coming slowly across the lawn a cat that I scarcely recognised. It was lean to the point of emaciation, its fur was disordered and dirty, but it was Puss-cat come home again. Then suddenly she saw me, and with a little cry of joy ran towards the open door. Then she saw Agag, and, weak and thin as she was, she woke at once to her old sense of duty, and bounded on to his chair. Never before in her time had a cat got right into the house, and such a thing, she felt determined, should not occur again. Round the room and out into the garden raged the battle before I could separate them – Puss-cat inspired by her sense of duty, Agag angry and astonished at this assault of a mere gutter-cat in his own house. At last I got hold of Puss-cat and took her up in my arms, while Agag cursed and swore in justifiable indignation. For how could he tell that this was Puss-cat ?

They never fought again, but it was a miserable fortnight that followed, and all the misery was poor Puss-cat’s. Agag, in spite of his beauty, had no heart, and did not mind how many cats I kept, so long as they did not molest him, or usurp his food or his cushion. But Puss-cat, though she understood that for some inscrutable reason she had to share her house with Agag, and not fight him, was a creature of strong affections, and her poor little soul was torn with agonies of jealousy. Jill, it is true, who was always treated with contemptuous unconsciousness by Agag, was certainly pleased to see her friend again, and had not forgotten her; but Puss-cat wanted so much more than Jill could give her. She took on her old duties at once, but often when she escorted the fish into the dining-room and found Agag asleep on his chair, she would be literally unable to go through with them, and would sit in a corner by herself, looking miserably and uncomprehendingly at me. Then perhaps the smell of fish would wake up Agag, and he would stretch himself and stand for a moment with superbly-arched back on his chair, before he jumped down, and with loud purrings rubbed himself against the legs of my chair to betoken his desire for food, or even would jump up on to my knees. That was the worst of all for Puss-cat, and she would often sit all dinner through in her remote corner, refusing food, and unable to take her eves off the object of her jealousy. While Agag was present, no amount of caresses or attentions offered to her would console her, so that, when Agag had eaten, we usually turned him out of the room. Then for a little while Puss-cat had respite from her Promethean vulture; she would go her rounds again to see that everybody was pleased, and escort fresh dishes in with high-stepping walk and erect tail.

We hoped, foolishly perhaps, that in course of time the two would become friends; else, I think, I should have at once tried to find another home for Agag. But indeed, short of that, we did all we could do, lavishing attentions on dear Puss-cat, and trying to make her feel (which indeed was true) that we all loved her, and only liked and admired Agag. But while we still hoped, Puss-cat had had more than she could bear, and once again she disappeared. Jill missed her for a little while, Agag not at all. But the rest of us miss her still.

THERE AROSE A KING

Agag, though of undoubtedly royal blood, was never a real king. He was no more than one of the Hyksos, a shepherd-king, bound by the limitations of his race, and no partaker in its magnificence. Naturally, he did not work as the late housekeeper had done (and no one expected that of him), but he had neither the splendour nor the vivacity, possessed, let us say, by Henry VIII. or George IV., to make up for his indolence in affairs of state. Henry VIII., anyhow, busied himself in marriages, whereas Agag was merely terrified at the idea of wooing, not to say winning, any of the princesses that were brought to his notice; and they, on their part, only made the rudest faces at him. Again George IV., though unkingly in many respects, used to plunge about in the wild pursuit of pleasure, and was supposed to have a kind heart. Agag, on the contrary, never plunged: a cushion and some fish and plenty of repose were the sum of his desires, and as for a kind heart, he never had a heart at all. An unkind heart would have given him some semblance of personality, but there was not the faintest room to suppose that any emotion, other than the desire for food and sleep and warmth, came within measurable distance of him. He died in his sleep, probably of apoplexy, after a large meal, and beautiful in death as in life, was buried and forgotten. I have never known a cat so completely devoid of character, and I sometimes wonder whether he was a real cat at all, and not some sort of inflated dormouse in cat’s clothing.

There followed a republican regime in this matter of cats. We went back, after Agag, to working cats, who would sit at mouse-holes for hours together, pounce and devour, and clean themselves and sleep, but among them all there was no “character” which ever so faintly resembled even Martha, far less Puss-cat.

I suppose the royalty of Agag, stupid and dull though he was, had infected me with a certain snobbishness as regards cats, and secretly – given that there were to be no more of those splendid plebeians, like Puss-cat – I longed for somebody who combined royal descent (for the sake of beauty and pride) with character, good or bad. Nero or Heliogabalus or Queen Elizabeth, or even the Emperor William II. of Germany would have done, but I didn’t want George I. on the one side or a mere mild President of a small republic on the other.

Just after Agag’s death I had moved up to London, and for a time there was this succession of unnoticeable heads of the state. They were born – those presidents of my republic – from respectable hard-working families, and never gave themselves out (though they knew quite well that they were the heads of the state) to be anything else but what they were: good, hard-working cats, with, of course, not only a casting, but a determining vote on all questions that concerned them or anybody else.

We were democratic in those days, and I am afraid “freedom broadened slowly down” from president to president. We were loyal, law-abiding citizens under their rule, but when our president was sitting at the top of the area steps, taking the air after his morning’s work, it used to be no shock to me to see him tickled on the top of his head by people like tradesmen coming for orders, or a policeman or a nursery-maid. The president, in these circumstances, would arch a back, make poker of a tail, and purr. Being at leisure and unoccupied with cares of State, he did not pretend to be anything but bourgeois. The bourgeoisie had access to him; he would play with them, without any sense of inequality, through the area railings. There was a nursery-maid, I remember, whom our last president was very much attached to. He used to make the most terrific onslaughts at her shoelaces.

But now all that regime is past. We are royalist again to the core, and Cyrus, of undoubtedly royal descent, is on the throne. The revolution was accomplished in the most pacific manner conceivable. A friend, on my birthday, two years ago, brought a small wicker basket, and the moment it was opened, the country, which for a month or two had been in a state of darkest anarchy, without president or any ruler, was a civilised state again, with an acknowledged king. There was no war; nothing sanguinary occurred. Only by virtue of the glory of our king we became a great Power again. Cyrus had arranged that his pedigree should come with him; this was much bigger than Cyrus, and, being written on parchment (with a large gold crown painted at the head of it), was far more robust than he whose ancestors it enumerated. For his majesty, as he peered over the side of the royal cradle, did not seem robust at all. He put two little weak paws on the edge of his basket and tried to look like a lion, but he had no spirit to get farther. Then he wrinkled up his august face, and gave a sneeze so prodigious that he tumbled out of the basket altogether, and by accident (or at the most by catarrh) set foot in the dominions where he still reigns. Of course, I was not quite so stupid as not to recognise a royal landing, though made in so unconventional a manner; it was only as if George IV., in one of his numerous landings on some pier (so fitly commemorated by the insertion of a large brass boot print), had fallen flat on his face instead, and was commemorated by a full-length brass, with top-hat a little separate.

Babies of the human species, it is true, are all like each other, and I would defy any professor of Eugenics or of allied and abstruse schools of investigation to say, off-hand, whether a particular baby, divorced from his surroundings, is the Prince of Wales or Master Jones. But, quite apart from his pedigree, there was never any question at all about Cyrus. There was no single hair on his lean little body that was not of the true and royal blue, and his ears already were tufted inside with downy growth, and his poor little eyes, sadly screened by the moisture of his catarrh, showed their yellow topaz irises, that were never seen on Master Jones. So he tumbled upside down into his new kingdom, and, recovering himself, sat up and blinked, and said, “Ah-h-h.” I took him up very reverently in both hands, and put him on my knee. He made an awful face, like a Chinese grotesque instead of a Persian king, but anyhow it was an Oriental face. Then he put a large paw in front of his diminutive nose and went fast asleep. It had been a most fatiguing sneeze.

Royal Persian babies, as you perhaps know, must never, after they have said good-bye to their royal mammas, be given milk. When they are thirsty they must have water; when they are hungry they have little finely chopped-up dishes of flesh and fish and fowl. As Cyrus slept, little chopped-up things were hastily prepared for him, and when he woke, his food and drink were waiting his royal pleasure. They seemed to please him a good deal, but at a crucial moment, when his mouth was quite full, he sneezed again. There was an explosion of awful violence, but the Royal baby licked up the fragments. . . . We knew at once that we had a tidy king to rule over us.

Cyrus was two months old when he became king, and the next four months were spent in growing and eating and sneezing. His general manner of life was to eat largely and instantly fall asleep, and it was then, I think, that he grew. Eventually a sneeze plucked him from his slumber, and this first alarum was a storm-cone, so to speak, that betokened the coming tornado. Once, after I began to count, he sneezed seventeen times. . . . Then, when that was over, he sat quiet and recuperated; then he jumped straight up in the air, purred loudly, and ate again. The meal was succeeded by more slumber, and the cycle of his day was complete.

His first refreshment he took about seven in the morning – as soon as anybody was dressed – and an hour later, heavily slumbering, he was brought up to my room when I was called, buttoned up in my servant’s coat, and placed on my bed. He at once guessed that there must be a pleasant warm cave underneath the bedclothes, and, with stampings and purrings, penetrated into this abyss, curled himself against my side, and resumed his interrupted slumbers. After a while I would feel an internal stirring begin in my bed, and usually managed to deposit the king on the floor before his first sneeze. His second breakfast, of course, had come upstairs with my hot water, and after the sneezing was over he leaped into the air, espied and stalked some new and unfamiliar object, and did his duty with his victuals. He then looked round for a convenient resting-place, choosing one, if possible, that resembled an ambush, the definition of which may be held to be a place with a small opening and spaciousness within.

That gave us the second clue (tidiness being the first) towards the king’s character. He had a tactical mind, and should make a good general. As soon as I observed this, I used to make an ambush for him among the sheets of the morning paper, providing it with a small spy-hole. If I scratched the paper in the vicinity of the spy-hole, a little silver-blue paw made wild dabs at the seat of the disturbance. Having thus frustrated any possible enemy, he went to sleep.

But the ambush he liked best was a half-opened drawer, such as he found one morning for himself. There among flannel shirts and vests he made himself exceedingly comfortable, pending attacks. But before he went to sleep he made a point of putting out a small and awe-inspiring head to terrify any marauding bands who might be near. This precaution was usually successful, and he slept for the greater part of the morning.

For six months he stuffed and sneezed and slept, and then, one morning, like Lord Byron and the discovery of his fame, Cyrus woke and discovered the responsibilities of kingship. His sneezing fits suddenly ceased, and the Cyropaidaia (or education of Cyrus) began. He conducted his own education, of course, entirely by himself; he knew, by heredity, what a king had to learn, and proceeded to learn it. Hitherto the pantry and my bedroom were the only territories of his dominion that he had any acquaintance with, and a royal progress was necessary. The dining-room did not long detain him, and presented few points of interest, but in a small room adjoining he found on the table a telephone with a long green cord attached to the receiver. This had to be investigated, since his parents had not told him about telephones, but he soon grasped the principle of it, and attempted to get the ear-piece off its hook, no doubt with a view to issuing orders of some kind. It would not yield to gentle methods, and, after crouching behind a book and wriggling his body a great deal, he determined to rush the silly thing. A wild leap in the air, and Cyrus and the green cord and the receiver were all mingled up together in hopeless confusion. . . . He did not telephone again for weeks.

The drawing-room was less dangerous. There was a bearskin on the floor, and Cyrus sat down in front of the head, prepared to receive homage. This, I suppose, was duly tendered, because he tapped it on the nose (as the King entering the City of London touches the sword presented by the Lord Mayor), and passed on to the piano. He did not care about the keyboard, but liked the pedals, and also caught sight of a reflection of himself in the black shining front of it.

This was rather a shock, and entailed a few swift fandango-like steps with fore-paws waving wildly in the air. Horror! The silent image opposite did exactly the same thing; . . . it was nearly as bad as the telephone. But the piano stood at an angle to the wall, offering a suitable ambush, and he scampered behind it. And there he found the great ambush of all, for the back cloth of the piano was torn, and he could get completely inside it. Tactically, it was a perfect ambush, for it commanded the only route into the room from the door; but his delight in it was such that whenever he was ambushed there, he could not resist putting his head out and glaring, if anybody came near, thus giving the secret completely away. Or was it only indulgence towards our weak intellects, that were so incapable of imagining that there was a king inside the piano?

The exploration of the kitchen followed; the only point of interest was a fox-terrier at whom the king spat; but in the scullery there was a very extraordinary affair – namely, a brass tap, conveniently placed over a sink, half-covered with a board. On the nozzle of this tap an occasional drop of water appeared, which at intervals fell off. Cyrus could not see what happened to it, but when next the drop gathered he put his paw to it and licked it off. After doing this for nearly an hour he came to the conclusion that it was the same water as he drank after his meals. The supply seemed constant, though exiguous; . . . it might have to be seen to. After that he just looked in at the linen cupboard, and the door blew to while he was inside. He was not discovered till six hours later, and was inclined to be stiff about it.

Next day the Royal progress continued, and Cyrus discovered the garden (forty feet by twenty, but large enough for Mr. Lloyd George to have his eye on it, and demand a valuation of the mineral rights therein). But it was not large enough for Cyrus (I don’t know what he expected), for after looking at it closely for a morning, he decided that he could run up the brick walls that bounded it. This was an infringement of his prerogative, for the king is bound to give notice to his ministers, when he proposes to quit the country, and Cyrus had said nothing about it. Consequently I ran out and pulled him quietly but firmly back by the tail, which was the only part of him that I could reach. He signified his disapproval in what is called “the usual manner,” and tried to bite me. Upon which I revolted and drove the king indoors, and bought some rabbit wire. This I fastened down along the top of the wall, so that it projected horizontally inwards. Then I let the king out again and sat down on the steps to see what would happen.

Cyrus pretended that the walls were of no interest to him, and stalked a few dead leaves. But even a king is bounded, not only by rabbit wire, but by the limitations of cat-nature, which compelled him to attempt again what he has been thwarted over. So, after massacring a few leaves (already dead), he sprang up the wall, and naturally hit his nose against the rabbit wire, and was cast back from the frontier into his own dominions. Once again he tried and failed, appealed to an obdurate prime minister, and then sat down and devoted the whole power of his tactical mind to solving this baffling affair. And three days afterwards I saw him again run up the wall, and instead of hitting his nose against the rabbit wire, he clung to it with his claws. It bent with his weight, and he got one claw on the upper side of it, then the other, wriggled round it, and stood triumphant with switching tail on the frontier.

So in turn I had to sit and think; but, short of building up the whole garden wall to an unscalable height, or erecting a chevaux de frise on the top of it, I had a barren brain. After all, foreign travel is an ineradicable instinct in cat-nature, and I infinitely preferred that the king should travel among small back-gardens than out of the area gate into the street. Perhaps, if he had full licence (especially since I could not prevent him) to explore the hinterlands, he might leave the more dangerous coast alone. . . . And then I thought of a plan, which perhaps might recall my Reise-Kaiser, when on his travels. This I instantly proceeded to test.

Now I had been told by my Cabinet that the one noise which would pluck the king out of his deepest slumber, and would bring him bouncing and ecstatic to the place where this sound came from, was the use of the knife-sharpener. This, it appeared, was the earliest piece of household ritual performed in the morning, when Cyrus was hungriest, and the sound of the knife-sharpener implied to him imminent food. I borrowed the knife-sharpener and ran out into the garden. Cyrus was already four garden walls away, and paid not the slightest attention to my calling him. So I vigorously began stropping the knife. The effect was instantaneous; he turned and fled along the walls that separated him from that beloved and welcome noise. He jumped down into his own dominion with erect and bushy tail . . . and I gave him three little oily fragments of sardine-skin. And up till now, at any rate, that metallic chirruping of the sharpened knife has never failed. Often I have seen him a mere speck on some horizon roof, but there appears to be no incident or interest in the whole range of foreign travel that can compete with this herald of food.

On the other hand, too, if Cyrus is not quite well (this very seldom happens), though he does not care for food, he does not, either, feel up to foreign travel, and, therefore, the knife-sharpener may repose in its drawer. Indeed, there are advantages in having a greedy king that I had never suspected. . . .

As the months went on and Cyrus grew larger and longer-haired, he gradually, as befitted a king who had come to rule over men, renounced all connection with other animals, especially cats. He used to lie perdu in a large flower-pot which he had overturned (ejecting the hydrangea with scuffles of backward-kicking hind legs), and watch for the appearance of his discarded race. If so much as an ear or a tail appeared on the frontier walls, he hurled himself, his face a mask of fury, at the intruder. The same ambush, I am sorry to say, served him as a butt for the destruction of sparrows. He did not kill them, but brought them indoors to the kitchen, and presented them, as a token of his prowess as a hunter, to the cook. Dogs, similarly, were not allowed, when he sat at the area gate. Once I saw, returning home from a few doors off, a brisk Irish terrier gambol down my area steps (Cyrus’s area steps, I mean), and quickened my pace, fearing for Cyrus, if he happened to be sitting there. He was sitting there, but I need not have been afraid, for before I had reached the house a prolonged and dismal yell rent the air, and an astonished Irish terrier shot up, as from a gun, through the area gate again with a wild and hunted expression. When I got there I found Cyrus seated on the top step calm and firm, delicately licking the end of his silvery paw.

Once only, as far as I remember, was Cyrus ever routed by anything with four legs, but that was not a question of lack of physical courage, but a collapse of nerves in the presence of a sort of hobgoblin, something altogether uncanny and elfin. For a visitor had brought inside her muff an atrocious little griffon, and Cyrus had leaped on to this lady’s knee and rather liked the muff. Then, from inside it, within an inch or two of Cyrus’s face, there looked out a half-fledged little head, of a new and nerve-shattering type. Cyrus stared for one moment at this dreadful apparition, and then bolted inside the piano-ambush. The griffon thought this was the first manoeuvre in a game of play, so jumped down and sniffed round the entrance to the ambush. Panic-stricken scufflings and movements came from within. . . . Then a diabolical thought struck me: Cyrus had never yet been in his ambush when the piano was played, and the griffon being stowed back again in the muff, for fear of accidents, I went very softly to the keys and played one loud chord. As the Irish terrier came out of the area gate, so came Cyrus out of his violated sanctuary. . . .

Cyrus was now just a year old; his kitten-coat had been altogether discarded; he already weighed eleven pounds, and he was clad from nose to tail-tip in his complete royal robes. His head was small, and looked even smaller framed in the magnificent ruff that curled outwards from below his chin. In colour he was like a smoky shadow, with two great topaz lights gleaming in the van; the tips of his paws were silvery, as if wood-ash smouldered whitely through the smoke.

That year we enjoyed a summer of extraordinary heat, and Cyrus made the unique discovery about the refrigerator, a large tin box, like a safe, that stood in the scullery. The germ of the discovery, I am afraid, was a fluke, for he had snatched a steak of salmon from the tray which the fishmonger had most imprudently left on the area steps, and, with an instinct for secrecy which this unusual treasure-trove awoke in him, he bore it to the nearest dark place, which happened to be the refrigerator. Here he ate as much as it was wise to gobble at one sitting, and then, I must suppose, instead of going to sleep, he pondered. For days he had suffered from the excessive heat; his flower-pot ambush in the garden was unendurable, so also was his retreat under my bedclothes. But here was a far more agreeable temperature. . . . This is all the reconstruction of motive that I can give, and it is but guesswork. But day after day, while the heat lasted, Cyrus sat opposite the refrigerator and bolted into it whenever he found opportunity. The heat also increased his somnolence, and one morning, when he came up to breakfast with me, he fell asleep on the sofa before I had time to cut off the little offering of kidney which I had meant to be my homage. When I put it quite close to his nose he opened his mouth to receive it, but was again drowned in gulfs of sleep before he could masticate it. So it stuck out of the corner of his mouth like a cigarette. But eventually, I knew, he “would wake and remember and understand.”

And now Cyrus is two years old, and has reigned a year and ten months. I think he has completed his own education, and certainly he has cleared his frontiers of cats, and, I am afraid, his dominion of sparrows. One misguided bird this year built in a small bush in his garden. A series of distressing unfledged objects were presented to the cook. . . . He has appropriated the chair I was accustomed to use in my sitting-room, and he has torn open the new back-cloth that I had caused to be put on my piano. I dare say he was right about that, for there is no use in having an ambush if you cannot get into it. In other ways, too, I do not think he is strictly constitutional. But whenever I return to his kingdom after some absence, as soon as the door is open Cyrus runs down the steps to meet me (even as Puss-cat used to do) and makes a poker of his tail, and says “Ah-h-h-h.” That makes up for a good deal of what appears to be tyranny. And only this morning he gave me a large spider, precious and wonderful, and still faintly stirring. . . .

ABOUT THIS EBOOK

Two Cat Stories

BY
Edward Frederic Benson
(1867–1940)

Edward Frederic “E. F.” Benson was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist and short story writer. He is now known mainly for his “Mapp and Lucia” novels, and to a somewhat lesser extent, for his short “spook” stories about the supernatural.

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The two delightful pieces presented here, although classified as “stories” in the collection The Countess of Lowndes Square, seem rather to be memoirs. With charm and subtle humor, they relate the lives and times of several cats who ruled the household of the narrator.

This ebook was created by ECM for MobileRead.com, September 2017, and may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes.

These stories appeared in the collection “The Countess of Lowndes Square,” published in 1920. Text is in the public domain in countries where copyright is “Life + 70” or less, and in the USA.

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