by May Sarton
“Just make yourself at home,” said the voice he liked best. “Just look around.”
His tail went straight up so they would understand that he was out for a rove and did not intend, at the moment, to catch a mouse, that in fact he was looking around, and not committing himself one way or another. The house, he discovered, was quite large enough, quite nice and dark, with a long hall for playing and at least three sleeping places. He preferred a bed, but there was a large comfortable armchair that would do in a pinch. Still, he reminded himself, one must not be hasty. Just then he walked into a rather small room lined with books and with (this was really splendid) a huge flat desk in it. There are times in a Gentleman Cat’s life when what he likes best is to stretch out full length (and the Fur Person’s length was considerable) on a clean hard place. The floor is apt to be dirty and to smell of old crumbs, but a desk, preferably with papers strewn across it, is quite the thing. The Fur Person felt a light elegant obbligato of purrs rising in his throat.
Neither of the old maids had, until now, touched him. And this, he felt, was a sign of understanding. They had given him a superior lunch and allowed him to rove and ramble in peace. Now he suddenly felt quite curious to discover what they were like. It is amazing how much a cat learns about life by the way he is stroked. His heart was beating rather fast as he approached the table. One of the two old maids had almost disappeared in a cloud of smoke, the brusque one; he did not like smoke, so he made a beeline toward the other, gazing out of wide-open eyes, preceded by his purrs.
“Well, old thing, do you want a lap?” the gentle voice inquired very politely. She did not reach down and gather him up. She leaned forward and ran one finger down his head and along his spine. Then she scratched him between the ears in a most delightful way. The purrs began to sound like bass drums very lightly drummed, and the Fur Person felt himself swell with pleasure. It was incredibly enjoyable, after all he had been through, to be handled with such savoir-faire, and before he knew it himself he had jumped up on this welcoming lap and begun to knead. The Fur Person, you remember, had lost his mother when he was such a small kitten that his ears were still buttoned down and his eyes quite blue, but when he jumped up onto this lady’s lap, he seemed dimly to remember kneading his mother like this, with tiny starfish paws that went in and out, in and out.
“I wish he’d settle,” the gentle voice said, “his claws are rather sharp.”
But the Fur Person did not hear this for he was in a trance of home-coming and while he kneaded he composed a song, and while he composed it, it seemed as if every hair on his body tingled and was burnished, so happy was he at last.
“He actually looks fatter,” the brusque voice said, “he must have been awfully hungry.”
The Fur Person closed his eyes and sang his song and it went like this:
Thank you, thank you,
You and no other
Dear gentle voice,
Dear human mother,
For your delicate air,
For your savoir-faire
For your kind soft touch
Thank you very much.
He was so terribly sleepy that the last line became inextricably confused in a purr and in his suddenly making himself into a round circle of peace, all kneading spent, and one paw over his nose.
There was an indefinite interval of silence; but it must not be forgotten that the Fur Person had led a hectic and disillusioning life, and while he slept his nose twitched and his paws twitched and he imagined that he was caught and being smothered, and be- fore he even quite woke up or had his eyes open he had leapt off the kind lap, in a great state of nerves.
It is all very well, he told himself severely, but this time you have to be careful, Remember Alexander, remember the grocer, remember the lady and her suffocating apartment. It was not easy to do, but without giving the old maids a parting look, he walked in great dignity down the long dark hall to the front door and sat down before it, wishing it to open. Pretty soon he heard footsteps, but he did not turn his head, I must have time to think this over, he was telling himself. Never be hasty when choosing a housekeeper. The door opened and he was outside. Never be hasty, he was telling himself, as he bounded down the steps and into the sweet May afternoon. But at the same time, quite without intending it, he found that he had composed a short poem, and as he sharpened his claws on the elm by the door and as he ran up it, just to show what a fine Gentleman Cat he was, he hummed it over. It was very short and sweet:
East and West
Home is best.
And though he spent several days coming and going, it was very queer how, wherever he went, he always found himself somehow coming back to the two old maids, just to be sure they were still there, and also, it must be confessed, to find out what they were having for supper. And on the fourth day it rained and that settled it: he spent the night. The next morning while he was washing his face after eating a nice little dish of stew beef cut up into small pieces, he made his decision. After all, if a Gentleman Cat spends the night, it is a kind of promise. I will be your cat, he said to himself, sitting on the desk with his paws tucked in and his eyes looking gravely at the two old maids standing in the doorway, if you will be my housekeepers. And of course they agreed, because of the white tip to his tail, because he hummed such a variety of purrs and songs, because he really was quite a handsome fellow, and because they had very soft hearts.
CHAPTER VI — The Fur Person Gets a Name and Fights a Nameless Cat
UNTIL he had made up his mind where he was going to live and with whom, the Fur Person, although he minded being an orphan, had not ever stopped to think that he had no name. It was all very well to think of himself as a Cat About Town, or Gentleman Cat, but after all there were other Cats About Town, and a great many Gentlemen Cats in the neighborhood, so he was delighted when he heard the gentle-voiced housekeeper say, just as she was pouring her third cup of tea, “I think we should call him Tom Jones —after all, he was a foundling—and so was Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones.”
“Plain, but distinguished and notable in the history of English letters,” Brusque Voice answered, stooping down to give him a small piece of buttered scone which he enjoyed very much.
His name seemed to give his housekeepers almost as much satisfaction as it gave him, and after that he al-ways managed to be present whenever guests came to the house so that he could have the pleasure of being formally introduced. Once, when he had decided to reward Gentle Voice for a particularly good breakfast by accompanying her to the comer, he was delighted to hear a neighbor inquire, “And how is Mr. Jones this morning?”
He walked back from the corner so aglow with self-respect that he did not notice that he was being sneered at by a nameless gray cat behind the snowball bush, that in fact the nameless cat was out for revenge, that he had registered Tom Jones’s sleek appearance and obvious narcissism and was going to take him down a peg.
“Think you’re somebody, do you?” sneered the nameless cat,
Tom Jones stopped where he was and took in the situation. The snowball bush was just beside the porch. Well, it is beneath my notice to answer this sort of gutter talk. I’ll just go the long way round, he thought, pretend that I didn’t hear that rude remark—pure jealousy of course and best ignored. Under these circumstances a Gentleman Cat’s walk becomes a thing of poise and art. His legs seem a bit stiffer than usual and he walks with extreme gravity and slowness. It takes courage to do this, to ignore an insult from a nameless cat who is prepared to throw dignity to the wind, and pounce. But Mr. Jones of course did not need lessons in deportment. The slowness, the primness, the self-sufficiency of his walk would have silenced any ordinary nameless cat. This one, however, was mad with love for the tortoise shell next door, called Nelly. And in his madness he paid not the slightest attention to being ignored. In fact he rose up, swelled to huge proportions by rage, and stalked after Tom Jones, rank pride stiffening his legs so that he looked as if he were a giant on stilts. Tom Jones
felt this, but he did not of course deign to look back. He walked on down the path, only stopping once to nibble his leg, just to show how perfectly indifferent he was.
“Oh no, you don’t,” said the nameless cat, and began to sing a rude song. He sang it at a high pitch so that it came out piercingly, a very intense song indeed. Tom Jones, who had respect for poetic invention even when used against himself, turned right round, and crouched down, his eyes thin slits of attention.
You’re thin and lanky,
You’re underbred;
Though you may feel swanky,
You’ve a common head.
Hoity-toity, frowsy-browsy,
You’ve been spoiled rotten,
Your fur is lousy.
No one has forgotten,
Though you have a name
You’re an orphan cat
And a gutter bum
For all of that.
So here I come,
And look out, Jones,
For I’ll break your bones!
Of course there was no question of the nameless cat’s actually coming for a long while yet. This would have been a sign of weakness. He and the Fur Person crouched down and settled in with about four feet between them while the insults flew all about and around them. The first song was really just the tuning up. Tom Jones listened to it in complete silence, partly because he was busy preparing an answer, and it would never do to run dry at such a moment. However, the words “gutter bum” sent a shiver of rage through his whiskers, and he gave a low growl. Otherwise he was perfectly motionless. Then slowly and in quite a gentle voice he made his answer with withering scorn.
You’re wasting your time
With that clumsy rhyme
And your pompous verse
Just couldn’t be worse
For it’s terribly clear
That you’re jealous, my dear.
Why not wash your face
(It’s a public disgrace)
And leave poetry
To the likes of me
And the breaking of bones
To Terrible Jones.
The last two lines of this verse were made effective by the fact that the whole first part was sung in a minor key, in a sneering tone, but at the very end on “Terrible Jones” the Fur Person achieved a piercing and terrible scream, which made the hackles rise on his own back and produced a quite extraordinary effect on the enemy. For the nameless gray cat now slithered forward, his stomach close to the ground, making himself as long as possible until his bright pink nose was only one inch from Tom Jones’s cinnamon nose. Just here, with terrifying self-control, he stopped dead and glared his answer. Confronted with this bristling angry face, with two torn ears above it and the look of furious contempt which leapt out of the gray cat’s eyes like lightning, Tom Jones was suddenly aware that he had got himself into a real fight. There was no way of backing down now, and he began his serious moan (rather like bagpipes played by a Scottish Regiment as it goes into battle), which is the sign that the time for words is rapidly drawing to a close. The gray cat accompanied this moan with his own version of it and then whiffled once. The whiffle was a warning: Tom Jones sprang right up into the air just as the gray cat pounced so they actually bumped into each other and came down screaming with rage, biting whatever seemed handy. The gray cat got hold of Tom Jones’s lower lip, and hung on. All this time they were both hurling insults at each other and the concatenation of screams, growls and yells of pain (for Tom Jones’s lip was spurting blood now and he had a bad scratch on his tender nose while the gray cat felt a whole patch of fur being torn out of his neck) was dreadful to hear. It was quite impossible to tell who was winning at this point, and no one will ever know, for just then Brusque Voice came out on the porch and threw a whole pail of water at them, and added her voice to Tom Jones’s, shouting, “Go away, you horrible cat!” The gray cat had received most of the water right in his face and he flew off down the street, still growling and cursing all housekeepers and Gentleman Cats who could rely on such unfair methods to win a fight.
Tom Jones was up on the porch before he knew what had happened. He just caught a glimpse of the tip of the gray cat’s tail flying round the next-door fence. Now that it was all over, he felt a bit shaken, it must be confessed.
“Poor pussin,” said Brusque Voice, quite anxiously. “Oh, you’re so wet—and bloody—” she said, disappearing into the house and coming back with a clean warm towel with which she rubbed him very gently. And after a while Tom Jones lay down, quite exhausted, under a canvas bed the housekeepers had put on the porch. He could feel the sun through it, and there he laid his torn mouth on one paw and closed his eyes. He ached all over, but that did not prevent a purr of triumph from bubbling up in his chest and throat, of triumph and also of gratitude. For it was rather wonderful to have someone coming and going with saucers of warm milk, and a gentle solicitous manner. One does need a housekeeper on these occasions, he thought, and then fell asleep, his nose and paws still twitching now and then.
CHAPTER VII — Tom Jones Keeps Everything Under Control
WHEN Gentle Voice came home, he was still lying under the canvas bed, for the fact was that he was feeling rather ill.
“Oh dear,” she said, “how awful! I expect he will get into one fight after another. And look at his poor mouth—he’ll never be the same again.”
This was not a very encouraging way to speak, after all, and Tom Jones kept his eyes closed with shame.
“We could take him to the hospital; they might stitch up his wound,” Brusque Voice was saying.
“It’s that cat next door, that Nelly,” Gentle Voice said. “She’s the troublemaker. Every Tom for miles around will be after her, and Tom Jones will have to fight them all.”
They seemed very much upset. It was, he decided, hard on two such tender-hearted old maids to take in Terrible Jones, But what could he do? Even dignified Mr. Jones must become Terrible Jones when a gutter-snipe came and put his nose within two inches of that dignified face and whiffled at it.
He lay on the porch for two days, considering all this, and accepting some special convalescent meals, a plate of the best tuna fish, and some scraps of roast beef, warmed over with gravy. He was very thirsty, too, and drank several saucers of warm milk. Finally after two days and nights, he felt well enough to get up and jump through the window and look around for a soft place to get well in. It was there, lying on a cashmere shawl at the foot of one of the beds, that he realized that he was still the subject of serious concern on the part of his housekeepers. Perhaps because he was feeling rather seedy, the Fur Person was unusually aware of his house-keepers; he had an idea that they were up to mischief, were concealing something from him. They were really rather too attentive, even taking into account that they were two old maids who had obviously been in need of having a Gentleman Cat as lodger for a long time. But they did use the word “hospital” rather a lot considering that he was beginning to feel quite fit and his lower lip had sewn itself together without any help at all, and they allowed him to sleep on the cashmere shawl, clearly a luxury, though one to which he had now become accustomed.
Like any self-respecting cat, Tom Jones took not the slightest interest in other people’s affairs unless he was himself concerned in them. So he had hardly paid sufficient attention to the foibles and follies of these two odd and endearing creatures who had taken him in. Now he found himself sometimes considering them when he really should have been doing his yoga exercises, sitting on the cashmere shawl with his paws tucked in and his tail wound round him very carefully, so the white tip (there were certain advantages to such a very long tail) stood straight up beside the curve of his back leg.
What were they really like? he asked himself. The one he liked best was Gentle Voice because it was her voice which had first caught his ear and it was her way of caressing him which had made it plain that he had found a home and the proper care. She disappeared every day for a very long time and came home tired, and wh
ile she was away the other housekeeper was sometimes quite absent-minded and even forgot his lunch once or twice because she sat for hours and hours in front of a typewriter, tapping out messages with her fingers—but to whom these messages were addressed he could not figure out. Sometimes when he was feeling friendly he came and sat on the desk and watched her fingers for a while, and had a little talk about what might be for lunch. But sometimes she was talking to herself about something and he would sit down beside her chair and do his yoga exercises and be quite happy just because they were not trying to communicate. In fact he liked her best when she stayed quiet for hours at a time and he could come and go as he pleased.
And of course he was very busy keeping everything under control in the household. After breakfast he had to read the newspaper. This meant going way down the hall to the parlor, a room he avoided at all other times. However, at about nine each morning when Gentle Voice was ready to go out, he climbed up in the front window and sat on a pile of books and found out what was happening in the world, From here he could note which dogs had gone for their morning walks and were safely out of the way, and whether any half-friends or enemies among the cats in the neighborhood were likely to be about. This sometimes meant reading the newspaper for an hour or more. By then he had digested his breakfast and was ready to begin the serious business of his morning toilette. There seemed to be a great deal of soot about in this neighborhood and it was quite a problem to keep his paws, his shirt front, and the white tip of his tail clean, as well as the soft teddy-bearish brown fur on his stomach of which he was so proud. Then he must lick down each broad black stripe on his back, and, finally, though his tongue was often quite tired, he must clean his whiskers, get the sleep out of his eyes, and especially rub very hard behind his ears. About then he usually felt the need of a midmorning snack; sometimes there was a little leftover breakfast which might just do. But sometimes not. Then he came very softly into Brusque Voice’s room and stared at her back until she was mesmerized into turning around, and even (when she had written a great many messages and needed a morning snack herself) perhaps letting him escort her to the kitchen and see what might be around for elevenses: a small piece of cake crumbled up, or even a dry biscuit would do very well.