The Cat Megapack
Page 33
The thing I am most concerned about is my fur; it is coming off in spots: there is a bare spot on the back of my neck, on the place by which they lifted me up out of the soap barrel, half as large as your hand; and whenever I wash myself, I get my mouth full of hairs, which is very disagreeable. I heard your grandfather say today, that he believed he would try Mrs. Somebody’s Hair Restorer on the cat, at which everybody laughed so that I ran out of the room as fast as I could go, and then they laughed still harder. I will write you again in a day or two, and tell you how I am getting on. I hope you will come home soon.
Your affectionate Pussy.
VII.
My Dear Helen:
I am so glad to know that you are coming home next week, that I cannot think of anything else. There is only one drawback to my pleasure, and that is, I am so ashamed to have you see me in such a plight. I told you, in my last letter, that my fur was beginning to come off. Your grandfather has tried several things of his, which are said to be good for hair; but they have not had the least effect. For my part I don’t see why they should; fur and hair are two very different things, and I thought at the outset there was no use in putting on my skin what was intended for the skin of human heads, and even on them don’t seem to work any great wonders, if I can judge from your grandfather’s head, which you know is as bald and pink and shiny as a baby’s. However, he has been so good to me, that I let him do anything he likes, and every day he rubs in some new kind of stuff, which smells a little worse than the last one. It is utterly impossible for me to get within half a mile of a rat or a mouse. I might as well fire off a gun to let them know I am coming, as to go about scented up so that they can smell me a great deal farther off than they can see me. If it were not for this dreadful state of my fur, I should be perfectly happy, for I feel much better than I ever did before in my whole life, and am twice as fat as when you went away. I try to be resigned to whatever may be in store for me, but it is very hard to look forward to being a fright all the rest of one’s days. I don’t suppose such a thing was ever seen in the world as a cat without any fur. This morning your grandfather sat looking at me for a long time and stroking his chin: at last he said, “Do you suppose it would do any good to shave the cat all over?” At this I could not resist the impulse to scream, and your mother said, “I do believe the creature knows whenever we speak about her.” Of course I do! Why in the world shouldn’t I! People never seem to observe that cats have ears. I often think how much more careful they would be if they did. I have many a time to see them send children out of the room, and leave me behind, when I knew perfectly well that the children would neither notice nor understand half so much as I would. There are some houses in which I lived, before I came to live with you, about which I could tell strange stories if I chose.
Cæsar pretends that he likes the looks of little spots of pink skin, here and there, in fur; but I know he only does it to save my feelings, for it isn’t in human nature—I mean in cat’s nature—that anyone should. You see I spend so much more time in the society of men and women than of cats, that I find myself constantly using expressions which sound queerly in a cat’s mouth. But you know me well enough to be sure that everything I say is perfectly natural. And now, my dear Helen, I hope I have prepared you to see me looking perfectly hideous. I only trust that your love for me will not be entirely killed by my unfortunate appearance. If you do seem to love me less, I shall be wretched, but I shall still be, always,
Your affectionate Pussy.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
AESOP (620?-564? BC) was a Greek writer from Asia Minor who wrote dozens of fables, many of them featuring animal characters. The details of his life are murky, but the popularity of his stories has remained constant, both in the ancient world and in modern times.
WILLIAM LIVINGSTON ALDEN (1837-1908), an American writer, penned numerous essays and humorous short stories for publications such as Scribner’s, Atlantic, New York Times, and other newspapers. He’s remembered today as the founder of the sport of canoeing in the United States, beginning in 1871.
E. F. BENSON (1867-1940) was an English writer famous for his romantic novels, biographies, and supernatural stories, many of which contained satirical or even humorous elements. His two brothers also penned works of fantastic literature.
AMBROSE BIERCE (1842-1914?), an American newspaper writer, is best-known today for his Civil War stories (“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”), supernatural stories, and his sardonic humor (The Devil’s Dictionary)—although his greatest tale may be his disappearance in Mexico at the end of 1913, never to be heard from again.
ALGERNON BLACKWOOD (1869-1951) was a British novelist and short story writer, best-known today for such chilling tales as “The Willows” and “The Wendigo.” “A Psychical Invasion” is taken from his series of weird stories about John Silence, one of very first serious investigators of supernatural phenomena depicted in modern weird literature.
SYDNEY J. BOUNDS (1920-2006) was an English author who penned some forty novels and hundreds of short stories, including popular science fiction, fantasy, horror, westerns, mysteries, suspense, and young adult fiction, both under his real name and under pseudonyms. His Borgo Press books include Boomerang (2012), Time for Murder (2012), and The World Wrecker (2011).
JOHN RUSSELL FEARN (1908-1960) was one of the first British writers to break into the American pulp science fiction magazine market of the 1930s and ’40s, but he also wrote 180 novels and hundreds of short stories of fantasy, horror, westerns, romance, crime fiction, and suspense, under numerous pseudonyms. His most popular series features the Golden Amazon, a future human woman having great physical powers and intelligence. Borgo Press has published over sixty of his novels and collections to date, including the twenty-one-volume Golden Amazon Saga, the five-volume Black Maria classic crime novel series, and many other mysteries, science fiction, horror, and even romance novels.
G. T. FLEMING-ROBERTS (1910-1968), an American writer, penned at least 300 detective and mystery stories for the pulp magazines during the 1930s and ’40s, many of them under pseudonyms.
THE BROTHERS GRIMM (Jacob Grimm [1785-1863] and Wilhelm Grimm [1786-1859]) were German scholars and writers famous today for collecting and reworking and publishing such classic fairy tales as “The Frog Prince,” “Hansel and Gretel,” “Cinderella,” and “Rapunzel,” among many others.
ROBERT E. HOWARD (1906-1936) is best-known today as the father of sword-and-sorcery fiction, with his creation of Conan the Barbarian, Kull, and several other larger-than-life characters. He also penned dozens of stories for the pulp magazines, including fantasy, SF, horror, suspense, mystery, and even boxing tales.
HELEN HUNT JACKSON (1830-1885) is famous today as the author of the classic AmerIndian romance novel, Ramona, which was one of a series of works which highlighted the systematic oppression faced by America’s indigenous population. She also penned many short stories for the popular U.S. magazines of her time.
ANDREW LANG (1844-1912) was an enormously prolific Scotch writer of criticism, poems, and fiction, but is best-known today for his classic series of twelve “color” compilations of fairy tales, beginning with the Blue Fairy Book (1889).
H. P. LOVECRAFT (1890-1937), an American writer, is generally regarded as the creator of the modern tale of weird and supernatural fiction, primarily through his “Cthulhu Mythos” tales, many of them set in his native New England.
GARY LOVISI is an American writer of mystery, suspense, horror, western, and noir stories, and the influential editor of the magazines Hardboiled and Paperback Parade. His recent Borgo Press books include The Great Detective: His Further Adventures (editor; 2012), Battling Boxing Stories (editor; 2012), Driving Hell’s Highway (2011), Murder of a Bookman (2011), Violence Is the Only Solution (2011), Mars Needs Books! (2011), Gargoyle Nights (2011), and the forthcoming collection, Attitude. He’s been honored with the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America.
A. R. MORLAN, an Ameri
can writer, is best-known for her two riveting novels of horror, Dark Journey and The Amulet, and the horror collections, The Chimera and the Shadowfox Griefer and Other Curious People, Ewerton Death Trip: A Walk Through the Dark Side of Town, The Fold-O-Rama Wars at the Blue Moon Roach Hotel and Other Colorful Tales of Transformation and Tattoos, The Hemingway Kittens and Other Feline Fancies and Fantasies, Of Vampires and Gentlemen: Tales of Erotic Horror, ’Rillas and Other Science Fiction Stories, and The Second Most Beautiful Woman in the World and Other Fantastic Ladies, all available from Borgo Press. More collections of her unique visions of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and tattoos are forthcoming.
ANDRE NORTON (1912-2005) was an American librarian and writer of popular science fiction and fantasy series, especially the Witch World novels and the Time Traders sequence, plus a number of historical novels penned earlier in her career.
ELLIOTT O’DONNELL (1872-1965) wrote dozens of supernatural short stories and novels early in his writing career, but later became a well-known (and very popular) “ghost-hunter,” giving well-attended lectures on the topic, and producing numerous books claiming to document actual encounters with ghosts and similar phenomena.
EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809-1849) was an American author, poet, editor, and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story, and is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre.
MARCEL PRÉVOST (1862-1941) was a French writer, novelist, and dramatist who focused much of his attention on the plight of women in modern European society.
LORD REDESDALE (Algernon Freeman-Mitford [1837-1916]) served as Second Secretary in the British Legation at the time of the Meiji Restoration in Japan, and wrote a number of books about his experiences in the Far East. He was created a Baron in 1902. He was the great-uncle of writers Jessica and Nancy Mitford.
ROBERT REGINALD was born in Japan, and lived in many different places in his youth. A retired academic librarian, he now edits the Borgo Press imprint of Wildside Press (1,300+ books), and is the author of 140 volumes of history, criticism, and popular fiction, among them The War of Two Worlds Trilogy, the Nova Europa fantasy saga, two Phantom Detective novels, two Human-Knacker War Series novels, The Paperback Show Murders, and several story collections (including The Elder of Days: Tales of the Elders).
SAKI (H. H. Munro [1870-1916]) wrote clever and satirical stories of British society, such as the tales of Reginald and Clovis, two debonair men-about-town, as well as a future-war novel, When William Came. He is best-known today for such biting tales as “The Open Window,” “Sredni Vashtar,” “Gabriel-Ernest,” and “The Interlopers.”
PAMELA SARGENT is an award-winning American science fiction, fantasy, and historical writer. Her best-known work is the “Venus Trilogy,” comprising Venus of Dreams (1986), Venus of Shadows (1988), and Child of Venus (2001). Her Borgo Press book, Dream of Venus and Other Science Fiction Stories (2012), collects together the separately-published short stories in this award-winning series.
ERNEST THOMPSON SETON (1860-1946) was a well-known American writer, naturalist, artist, and founder of the Boy Scouts of America. He penned numerous short stories, novels, and nonfiction accounts of animal wildlife.
HENRY SLESAR (1927-2002), an American writer, was best-known for his hundreds of television scripts and short stories, particularly those tales penned for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. His work is wry, satirical, humorous, and incisive.
MARK TWAIN (1835-1910) is best-known today for his classic American novels, Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, but he also wrote hundreds of short works for the popular magazines of his day.