by May Sarton
I have come disarmed.
I have come for good
Among you, my friends;
I am greatly charmed
By this neighbourhood
Where my story ends.
So be gentle, do
And accept my state
For I will not fight
Whatever you do,
I’m a gentle cat
And it is my right
To sit in the sun
On this lovely street
On a fine June morning
And to anyone
I may chance to meet
I give this warning:
I’m a Gentle Cat
And I will not FIGHT.
Almost at once a beautiful fat fluffy cat with a bell on its neck ran across and gave Tom Jones a friendly greeting, nose to nose. And just to show his gratitude Tom Jones ran halfway up the convenient maple just by the door, and down again. Pretty soon the black and white fluffy cat was joined by a gray kitten, who lay down and rolled over and asked the Fur Person to play in such a confiding and seductive way that he forgot all about dignity and chased it for quite some moments, and felt himself becoming a kind of jocular Uncle who would indulge an adopted nephew with many a tender mock battle. But all of a sudden the kitten made a huge tail and began to say some terrible words and Tom Jones turned round like lightning, just in time to meet the sinister black and white face he had observed from the window, leering at him.
Well, it was a rather tense moment. No time really to explain about being a Cat of Peace, or to sing his song. Instead he gave a wild look around and could hardly believe his eyes when he saw that just by the door of his own house, just under the newspaper window, a convenient window box, apparently designed for this very purpose, invited him to take refuge. With hardly a look behind him he had jumped up the three cement steps and found himself rather like a sailor in a boat, rather like a lighthouse keeper in a lighthouse, rather like a bird in a nest, rather like a flowerpot in a window box quite safely ensconced and looking down in a lordly way at the sinister cat, sitting below.
“I wish it to be quite clear,” snarled the sinister cat, “that I’m King of the Cats about here, and you will keep your place. If anyone plays with that foolish kitten, I do. If anyone sits in the best patch of sun on any of the porches, I do. These gardens, these houses, this street, and all these cats are subject to me,” growled the sinister cat, lashing his tail in a very menacing way.
The Fur Person sat straight up in his Window Box and looked down rather like an Admiral of the Fleet, rather like a Lighthouse Keeper, rather like a Very Old Wise Owl. He hummed to himself
I’m a gentle cat
And I will not fight.
Then when he was perfectly in control of himself, and his whiskers had stopped trembling, he did two yoga exercises. The sinister cat was so astonished by this lack of the usual response that he had to sit down. After several seconds of silence he could not believe his ears when he heard the peculiar new cat say:
“Very well, if you do not wish to be my friend, you may be my semi-friend.”
The jingling of the fluffy cat’s bells sounded like laughter, and the kitten ran up the tree and looked back rather saucily, so the sinister cat did not know where to look nor how to deal with such unexpected forgiveness. He did not even know for sure who had won in this first of many semi-friendly skirmishes.
But the Fur Person learned then and there that it is better to be a philosopher than to be a king and that, all things considered, wisdom was to be preferred to power. Sometimes he lay on his back in the window box, one paw languorously resting on its edge and looked up at the leaves and said over to himself The Commandments of the Gentleman Cat, and tried to get them into a proper sequence. For he had learned them in a rather helter-skelter way through all the experiences of his life and now that he had a house of his own and had become an Official Philosopher, it was high time that he put his ideas in order. Perhaps, he thought (on a rather warm afternoon, when he had nothing better to do), they might be arranged like this:
The Ten Commandments of The Gentleman Cat
I. A Gentleman Cat has an immaculate shirt front and paws at all times.
II. A Gentleman Cat allows no constraint of his person, even loving constraint.
III. A Gentleman Cat does not mew except in extremity. He makes his wishes known and waits.
IV. When addressed, a Gentleman Cat does not move a muscle. He looks as if he hadn’t heard.
V. When frightened, a Gentleman Cat looks bored.
VI. A Gentleman Cat takes no interest in other people’s affairs, unless he is directly concerned,
VII. A Gentleman Cat never hurries toward an objective, never looks as if he wanted just one thing: it is not polite,
VIII. A Gentleman Cat approaches food slowly, however hungry he may be, and decides at least three feet away whether it is Good, Fair, Passable or Unworthy. If Unworthy, he pre-tends to scratch earth over it.
IX. A Gentleman Cat gives thanks for a Worthy meal, by licking the plate so clean that a per-son might think it had been washed.
X. A Gentleman Cat is never hasty when choosing a housekeeper.
It had been rather hard work remembering all these commandments and putting them in proper order, so the Fur Person withdrew his paw and fell asleep, lying upside down and enjoying the little breeze that ruffled the soft teddy-bear fur on his tummy. He was woken by the voices of his housekeepers, as they came out for a little walk in the soft summer evening. For Brusque Voice had come back now and life was as it always had been.
For some reason the sound of their voices, which had over the years since they had served him, said such tender things, made him prick up his ears, yawn, and then pull himself to his feet and stand on tiptoe arching his back. His eyes grew black with the thought he was thinking, and he began to itch all over, as he always did when he had a Very Important Idea. After all, he was thinking, as he nibbled a place on his back, and then licked down his shirt front, and finally ran a paw over his ears, for they had begun to itch quite violently— after all, I am not just a Gentleman Cat, I am a far rarer thing, a Gentle Cat, a Cat of Peace, a Cat with a house and two housekeepers, and for me there is perhaps an eleventh Commandment which I should be sure to tell that unlicked kitten of an adopted nephew across the street. It was quite a hard commandment to think out, and to do it the Fur Person sat upright like an Admiral or an Owl for quite a while.
It had to do with dignity; it had to do with reserve; it had to do with freedom—and how these could be maintained when a fur person has given up part of his cat self into human keeping. For the Fur Person might still be the ineffable Mr. Jones walking down the street, greeting man and cat with equal dignity, but he was also an anxious tender personality who followed the two Voices up and down the stairs and round the house, begging for a lap. The Tenth Commandment stated coldly that one had to choose a housekeeper with extreme caution. It said nothing about what happens if and when the housekeeper becomes a true friend, to be trusted in sickness and in health, to be followed from house to house, repaid for the trouble she takes in providing excellent meals with songs and purrs, and in general properly provided with catly attentions. But of course the Eleventh Commandment would have to deal primarily with love—at this point Tom Jones’s eyes opened very wide and he stared in front of him with such fixed attention that he did not even notice the semi-friend observing him from behind a tree. His chin began to itch and he washed his face rather thoroughly and scratched his chin with his back foot several times. It is all in the name “Fur Person,” he decided then—not really a name at all, but a way of describing the relationship between a Gentle Cat and his true friends among the human people. For a Fur Person, he saw in his state of extreme concentration, is not just an ordinary cat. He is a cat who is also a person. And Tom Jones realized that he had called himself the Fur Person when he did not really know what a Fur Person is. For a Fur Person is a cat whom human beings love in
the right way, allowing him to keep his dignity, his reserve and his freedom. And a Fur Person is a cat who has come to love one or, in very exceptional cases, two human beings, and who has decided to stay with them as long as he lives. This can only happen if the human being has imagined part of himself into a cat (Tom Jones had noticed that Brusque Voice sometimes tried to purr) just as the cat has imagined part of himself into a human being. It is a mutual exchange. A Fur Person must be adopted by catly humans, tactful, delicate, respectful, indulgent; these are fairly rare, though not as rare as might be supposed. So thought Tom Jones, and it was the end of such a long think that he was quite exhausted, the Eleventh Commandment must go something like this: A Gentleman Cat becomes a Fur Person when he is truly loved by a human being.
It was not exactly a commandment, he realized, but it would have to do, for he was suddenly very sleepy.
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