For push of nose, for perseverance, there is nothing to beat a cat. The kitten, Mary Anne, was born with amazing push and perseverance. It was but natural that she should be born so, for both her parents were “stickers”. Mamma was a most persistent ratter. Papa, an itinerant vocalist, held his note on the back fences till every shoe and tin can in the neighbourhood lay at his feet.
Cats sum up life by feels; all the feels of Mary Anne’s kittenhood were hard. At a very tender age she fell out of the basement coal-scuttle which had been her bassinet. She did not, like her brothers and sisters, emerge from her cradle creepingly, but, scrambling boldly up the coal-scuttle’s spout, launched herself squarely from its mouth, landing on her four paws. Immediately, she began to look for something higher to climb, wiggling her pink nose in the air. In the air she was always smelling for something a little higher than herself.
The kitchen steps lured, liver-and-bacon was frying, whiffs tantalized her inquisitive nose. Up the steps ran the pink nose to poke around the open door. It was met by a cruel leather shoe and a stern “Shoo-cat” uttered in a harsh voice. Mary Anne then learned the feel of kick and spank, and how hard the pavement could hit back when you struck it. The kitten righted herself and, sitting down, lashed the world with her tail—most expressive organ that a cat has.
Next she mounted an apple tree that grew so close to the house-of-frying-liver that she was able to spring from it into one of the upstairs windows, landing on so soft a bed that it woke a queer crackling sensation in her throat, a rumbling creak that returned all through life whenever Mary Anne was happy. This time the happy crackle was cruelly cut short, and Mary Anne was introduced to her own scruff by a hard gripping hand. Again Mary Ann hurtled through space—again earth hit back when her pliant little body struck, again Mary Anne’s tail lashed in angry protest, but undaunted she rounded the house and came to its front door.
The house-of-fried-liver was the home of several bachelors. The hard hand and cruel shoe belonged to their housekeeper—she fried the liver.
At the very moment that Mary Anne rounded the corner of the house the youngest bachelor was returning at the unusual hour of mid-morning, stricken with an attack of measles. He felt too awful to heed a kitten leaping over his foot, darting in the door and up the stairs ahead of him. A door opened below and the voice of the dreadful one who kicked and hurled called out, “What’s up, Mister—’olidayin’?”
“I got measles.”
“Lor’ to goodness! I ’in’t ’ad ’em.” The door shut with violent haste.
Mary Anne hid under the bed until she heard it creak under Mr Measles’ weight. Then she jumped boldly onto the measled stomach.
“Drat you, cat!” A spotty hand lunged. The cat dodged. “Then catch ’em.” That was the worst Mr Measles could wish for anyone for the moment.
“ ’Ere’s grool.” The bedroom door opened three inches’ worth of squeak. A steaming basin slid over the polished floor. The door shut with a snap. Measles did not stir, but Mary Anne did. Gruel was good eating. Measles was grateful to the cat for disposing of the gruel. Measles was a bad enough disease without being gruelled by housekeepers.
Quarantined convalescence is duller than ordinary recovery. He was glad of the company of the cat. He called her “Mary Anne”, tickled her under the chin and rubbed her ears to make her purr—it sounded companionable.
“I tell you, Mary Anne, this measle disease is humiliating for a business man. Why didn’t Mother give it to me when I was a baby?”
He returned to the office lank and peevish; the boys chaffed. “Look,” they said, “if he hasn’t brought his kitty to the office!”
There was Mary Anne, sure enough: extra humiliation for him—rubbing, purring, notifying everyone that she was particularly his cat. He gave her hurried exit, but Mary Anne was not disheartened. Every time a customer came in she rushed in too and leaped onto Measles with purring joy. She overturned waste-baskets, chased papers, jumped on ledgers; when finally she upset an ink-well the boss said, “Leave that cat of yours at home, boy.”
How could he? His home was a trunk. Every inch of the house-of-liver was ruled over by the housekeeper, and she hated cats. Sticks and stones directed at Mary Anne flew behind him from house to office; she slunk just out of range, but followed steady as a shadow. He took detours through by-ways, but suddenly out of a doorway ahead she would pounce, delighted at doubling back to meet him. He gave her to a newsboy, saw the bulge of her body under the boy’s coat for three blocks, but back she came. He lidded her into boxes and left her meowing in back lanes. She always pushed the lids off and would arrive at the office amid the tittering boys and hail him with delight. There was only one sure way to peace. The thought of it made the boy sick.
The night was black, rain poured. He dared not hug the sack against himself, feel the warm throbbing love of her body. He dangled the meowing sack from his fingertips and ran. When he came to the bluff above the sea the sack hurtled through space and blackness. He put his fingers in his ears and tore away fearful of hearing the splash. After all, the poor little beast, she had only loved him too hard. All the wet on the “business man’s” cheeks was not rain—he despised himself.
Shock and wet but invigorated Mary Anne’s persistency. Measles’ shaky hand had made a poor tie. Mary Ann’s push undid it. She swam out of the sack, spat water, battled among the drift, slithered through slime and kelp, beached, crawled up the bank—yowled!
If there is one wet that is wetter than salt water it is rain. Salt bites, rain soaks. The shivering cat shook the brine from her coat. The rain chilled her bones. Her yowl was weak; but galoshes splashing through puddles stopped to listen for the feeble wail of cat-distress.
“Kit, Kit!”
The cat crawled towards the galoshes and the voice—was gathered beneath an old grey cape—hugged against warmth.
“Cat, what will the Elder say?” The girl’s hand was on the kitchen door-knob. (The “Elder” was Grey Cape’s big sister.) The Elder said plenty when the dripping pair stood before her.
“Out with her! There is the Persian and the barn cat—enough to mouse our family. Throw her out!”
“She’ll finish drowning in the rain.”
“So much the better.”
Mary Anne knew again the sensation of flying and of wet, but the small-waisted egg-timer on the kitchen shelf could not have half poured her sand into the other end before Mary Ann was again under the grey cape and being hurried up a rickety stair hanging on the outside of a barn. “Studio” was painted on the door. Grey Cape raked the embers in a stove and was soon drying and comforting the half-drowned cat.
Mary Anne found life in the old studio completely satisfactory. Love, mice, a skirted lap, instead of Measles’ bony knees.
“I must find you a name, Kit.” But that very evening Grey Cape heard the kitten already had a name, for Measles came to call. The kitten stole and rolled spools of thread from Grey Cape’s work-basket across the floor. Fast as the girl took one away, the cat got another.
“Pesky, persistent beast!” scolded the girl.
“Persistent, I’ll say!” Suddenly the boy sat up and looked earnestly at the cat. “It’s Mary Anne! By Jove, it is Mary Anne, the cat I drowned a week ago—one toe missing on left forepaw!”
“Isn’t it rather beastly to do things by halves?”
“Mary Anne doesn’t—Mary Anne, that is the name I gave her; see, she remembers. Mary Anne! Mary Anne!”
The cat turned at the call of her name but would not come to Measles’ proffered hand.
“Perhaps she remembers too much,” said Grey Cape. “Why did you want to drown her?”
“A business man can’t be tagged by a cat!” The business man blushed. He was very young.
Spring sprouted all ways at once. It sprouted mouse-nests in the studio wall and sparrow-nests under the studio eaves. Domestic fowls clucked their broods across the yard. Persistent searching found Mary Anne a mate. Soon she too was hunting cuddly corners. The Elder kept her eyes open and all doors and windows shut. Mary Anne got ahead of her every time. Grey Cape provided a cosy box in the studio; Mary Anne, the coal-scuttle kitten, scorned a barn cradle for her firstborn. She broke the studio window, jumped from the barn roof, climbed the house roof, found Grey Cape’s window open—the door of the cupboard in which hung the old grey cape ajar. The cat stole in, sprang onto a flimsy hat-box just to reach her cheek to the cape and rub. The box-top gave, spilling Mary Anne onto a bed of soft felt and velvet violets. Grey Cape found her there in the ecstatic state which newly kittened cats affect. “How could you, Mary Anne? My very best hat!”
“Mary Anne! Mary Anne! Where is that cat? Somebody bring me Mary Anne quick. There is a nest of mice in my drawer—that Persian fool is not even interested. Takes these common tabbies—who’s seen Mary Anne?”
“Mary Anne is in my cupboard. She has five kittens on top of my best hat.”
“Fetch her!” The Elder’s tongue did not even click annoyance at the kittens on the hat. “Fetch Mary Anne quick!” she repeated.
No wonder Mary Anne’s purr was so proud, no wonder she held her tail up so straight, a tail with tabby rings running round it like the rings of honour on an Indian chief’s high hat—a ring for every exploit.
Mary Anne, common tabby, had brought tears to the eyes and blushes to the cheeks of a “business man”, she had overthrown the Elder’s antipathy to stray cats. Climb by climb, persistence had hoisted this coal-scuttle kitten till she had achieved the producing of a family upon the very headpiece of that particular human divinity on whom she had heaped the affectionate devotion of her whole being. There, pinnacled in ecstasy, we leave her. . . . Bravo, Mary Anne!
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