by May Sarton
This edition is published by PICKLE PARTNERS PUBLISHING—www.picklepartnerspublishing.com
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Text originally published in 1957 under the same title.
© Pickle Partners Publishing 2014, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Publisher’s Note
Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.
We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.
The Fur Person
By
May Sarton
Illustrations by Barbara Knox
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I — Alexander’s Furpiece and the Cat About Town
CHAPTER II — An Adventure
CHAPTER III — An Escape
CHAPTER IV — A Dish of Haddock
CHAPTER V — A Home-coming
CHAPTER VI — The Fur Person Gets a Name and Fights a Nameless Cat
CHAPTER VII — Tom Jones Keeps Everything Under Control
CHAPTER VIII — Poor Jones Has A Hard Time
CHAPTER IX — Glorious Jones or The Catnip Hangover
CHAPTER X — The Mouse Is at Large!
CHAPTER XI — The Great Move
CHAPTER XIII — The Eleventh Commandment or the Reflections of a Window-box Cat
REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER
CHAPTER I — Alexander’s Furpiece and the Cat About Town
When he was about two years old, and had been a Cat About Town for some time, glorious in conquests, but rather too thin for comfort, the Fur Person decided that it was time he settled down. This question of finding a permanent home and staff was not one to be approached lightly of a May morning like his casual relationships with various grocers in the neighborhood, kind but vulgar people who did not know how to address a Gentleman Cat. Not at all. This was to be a systematic search for a housekeeper suitable in every way. Every cat knows that the ideal housekeeper is an old maid, if possible living in a small house with a garden. The house should have both an attic and a cellar, the attic for fun and games, the cellar for hunting. Children, I regret to say, are to be avoided whenever possible. They are apt to distract the housekeeper from her duties, and their manners leave much to be desired.
The Fur Person owed his life to a small freckled boy, but he was very good at forgetting things he wished to forget, and this was one of them. It was quite true that the boy named Alexander had howled so loudly when a man from the Animal Rescue League came with a black bag that his mother had relented and said, looking down at the litter, “Well, you may keep just one, Alexander. But you’ll have to choose quickly.”
“The one with the rather long tail,” Alexander said without a moment’s hesitation, and dived into the box to rescue the small wobbly velvet pillow who was to turn into the Fur Person, but who was still so small that his ears were not yet unbuttoned and he could barely see out of vague blue eyes. The discomfort of having no mother but only an awkward boy was considerable, but his own proper mother, who would have licked him into shape and provided warm milk whenever he so much as murmured, had disappeared shortly after giving birth to five kittens with very high desperate voices. Instead, Alexander came (when he remembered it) with a medicine dropper and some inferior cow’s milk, carried the kitten around inside his leather jacket and was apt to squeeze him rather too tight; that may be why the Fur Person grew into a somewhat long and straggly cat. He slept on Alexander’s bed and on very cold nights sometimes wound himself round Alexander’s neck, and thus came to be known as Alexander’s Furpiece. He bore with Alexander and Alexander’s whims until he was nearly six months old. Then one fine summer day, having licked his shirt front into white splendor and examined with pride the white tip of his tail, and seen that every stripe was glossy along his tiger back, he swaggered out like any young dandy, and what began as an extended rove and ramble ended in a way of life, for he never came back.
As a Cat About Town he developed a stiff hippy walk; he had a very small nick taken out of one ear; and sometimes he was too busy to bother about washing for days at a time. His shirt front became gray, the white tip of his tail almost disappeared, and his whiskers sprang out from his cheeks with the strength and vitality of porcupine quills. He learned a great variety of street songs, how to terrify without lifting a paw, how to wail a coward into retreat, how to scream a bully into attacking just a fraction of a second too soon, how to court a gentle middle-aged tabby as well as many a saucy young thing; he was kept extremely busy right on into the fall, and, I am afraid, he forgot all about Alexander. His expeditions and conquests took him far afield and when he did, at an off moment, remember the soft bed of his kitten-hood he was not quite sure where to find it again. I am myself, he thought, lashing his tail back and forth, a formidable, an irresistible Cat About Town, and that is enough to be. It was a full-time job. The question of food, for instance, continually interrupted other and more interesting pursuits. A Cat About Town must be wily as well as ferocious, must know every inch of a territory for the wobbliest garbage-can lids, must learn the time when local grocers are apt to fling a few tasty haddock heads and tails to anyone who may be about just then; he must learn how to persuade old ladies into handing out bowls of milk, or even an occasional saucer of cream, without ever allowing himself to be captured, must in fact hunt out kindness with ruthless self-interest, but never give in to any such dreams of comfort as might involve a loss of Independence. It is an arduous life and the Cat About Town is a lean mocking character for whom human beings are to be used for what they are worth, which is not much.
The Fur Person, at this time of his life, was no exception; he conformed to type, except when he was curled up into a tight ball under a hedge and sometimes made a small whirring noise which resembled a purr, and sometimes even opened his paws and closed them again as if he were remembering something delicious, but when he woke up he had always forgotten what it was. Only once in a while he felt rather wistful and gave his face and shirt front a lick to cheer himself up, and swaggered down the street a fraction more aggressively than usual, and then stopped, looked back, seemed for a moment not to know where he was, or even perhaps who he was.
By the time he was two years old, he was still a Cat About Town, but he was a Cat About Town who had strange dreams, dreams of an open fire and himself with his paws tucked in sitting in front of it, of a gentle hand quite unlike a small boy’s hand, of a saucer of warm milk—very strange dreams indeed. They required concentrated yoga exercises to forget, and sometimes he was haunted by one for as much as a whole day.
And one morning when he woke up purring from his dream, he washed his face very carefully and decided that it was time he settled down. His whiskers shone in the sun. He stretched, yawned, and then amused himself for a few moments by scaring the pigeons waddling under an elm a few yards away. But in the middle of this childish game, he suddenly sat quite upright, narrowed his eyes, then opened them very wide and looked at nothing for a long time. It was here at this very spot that he realized that he was an orphan. His face grew qu
ite pointed with self-pity and it was all he could do to maintain his dignity and not utter the long wail of loneliness which he felt rising within him.
This experience was followed by a hard day, a day of aimless wandering and of painful encounters with fat sleek cats sitting on porches, whom he now regarded in an entirely new light; they had found housekeepers; they had snug warm beds. By the time dark was falling, the Fur Person was very tired, walking down a strange street alone, and he knew in his bones that the time for decision was at hand.
Then he heard a gentle human voice calling, “Here kitty, kitty, kitty,” from somewhere quite far away. Even a week ago this sound would not have concerned him at all. But now in an instant he was alert and trotted amiably along to reconnoiter. He could see a stout woman with gray hair standing in the lighted doorway of a house, all surrounded by a garden. There was no little boy in sight, and the Fur Person felt strongly drawn to the place. He ran around a barberry bush and sat down where he could observe matters, and he was about to make up his mind, when a very peculiar-looking cat suddenly raced up the steps and disappeared inside as the door closed. The cat was beige colored with dark brown paws and ears and—was the Fur Person in a slightly hallucinated state?—seemed to have blue eyes like a human being.
It was a moment of bitterness even to a nature as philosophical, as used to Hard Knocks as the Fur Person. Another cat was already in possession! Another cat was lord of the garden, the little pear tree, the beautifully soft earth in the flower beds (just right for certain purposes), and above all of the kindly old woman with the gentle voice. He had found this perfect haven too late.
The Fur Person raced up the pear tree just to give himself confidence, and then raced down again, without even stopping to sharpen his claws. On an impulse he ran to the back door, for there were lights in what must be the kitchen. Then gently and politely he scratched a little at the screen door. There was no response. He began to miss Alexander. He even thought without distaste of the boring food from a can with a stupid-looking cat face on it, which was all Alexander ever fed him. He was, in fact, ravenously hungry and exhausted. He scratched a little again and gave a very polite mew, a restrained mew, considering the violence of his feelings, considering that only a day before he had been a wild and wily Cat About Town. He imagined the peculiar cat lifting a paw toward some delicious lamb or beef liver being cut up at this very moment by the kind old lady into convenient small pieces and lightly sautéed in bacon fat. It was really too much, and now suddenly under the full force of emotion he found himself singing an entirely new song, a song he made up himself. It went something like this:
Dear Lady, please Open the door.
Do not keep me any longer
Faint from thirst and hunger
But have pity
On an orphan kitty,
Hear my mews!
It was not too bad a song, he felt, for a first try and when it was finished, because he was a Gentleman Cat, he turned his back and sat down, as if perfectly indifferent, though his heart was beating very fast, and one ear could not be persuaded to stay pointed forward, but turned backward, rather inelegantly, to listen. Sure enough, the door opened.
“Well,” said a not very pleased voice, “where did you come from? Hungry, are you?”
The Fur Person, according to the First Commandment of the Gentleman Cat (“When addressed, do not move a muscle. Look as if you hadn’t heard.”) just gazed soulfully in the opposite direction.
“You’d better go home now,” the voice said, not unkindly. Unfortunately at this moment a cloud of scent, the scent of fresh cod boiling on the stove, came and settled around the Fur Person like a nimbus. He was after all, still a young cat, and at this instant karma was stronger than any rule or regulation. He really did not know how it happened, but the next thing he did know was that he was in the kitchen, spirited there as Odysseus into the arms of Circe by the ineffable cod (sacred, as you all know, and hence having perhaps some attributes of a mystical kind). He was also, unfortunately, spirited into the furious presence of the peculiar cat, who sprang at him and succeeded in scratching him on the small cinnamon square of his nose in the tenderest place. This was no time for poetry; the Fur Person gave a scream of outrage and shot out into the night. “Hear my mews” indeed, he said to himself, growling. And he went on his way shouting in a very piercing voice, so the whole neighborhood was alarmed:
May your milk turn sour;
May your fish taste queer,
And your meat look strange,
From this very hour;
May your blue eyes blear;
May you get the mange.
It was such a good curse that he repeated it, making a few changes in the inflection, just to try it out. He was so pleased with it that he forgot to be hungry and lonely any more and curled up in some delicious wood shavings in a basket outside the grocery store, and slept the sleep of satisfied anger.
CHAPTER II — An Adventure
EARLY in the morning he was still curled up into a ball, one paw clasping his nose» so he was perfectly airtight and warm, when he was roused from a delicious dream about some affectionate and playful mice by an infernal noise, a noise so tremendous that it sounded as if several houses were collapsing, and all the china and saucepans in them being hurled violently about by a giant. The Fur Person sprang up without even opening his eyes and vanished behind the grocery store. When he was able to open his eyes —they seemed to be glued together—he crept back to see if there was anything left of the world, but just then there was another huge crash and bang. Luckily this time his eyes were open and he saw that this earthquake was merely the ashman emptying the barrels. So, like any Gentleman Cat who has just been badly scared (Second Commandment: “When frightened, look bored/’), he sat very erect and still and did some yoga exercises to calm himself down.
This meant sitting with his paws tucked in and forcing himself to think of nothing at all; it is quite hard to do.
What with the events of the night before and the fact that his bed had now disappeared into the ashman’s truck and was on its way to the town dump, what with the cold gray morning light and the thought of that horrible blue-eyed cat having a sumptuous breakfast no doubt at this very moment, the Fur Person felt very depressed. He lifted one paw in hesitation, looked at it thoughtfully and then became absorbed in washing it, so that all decisions were put off for the time being. For the first thing a Gentleman Cat does in the morning is to be sure that his suit is thoroughly pressed and damped, and his shirt front immaculate. While busy with this absorbing job, he considered himself with an impersonal and thoughtful eye. Perhaps he was rather too thin and his tail a trifle long, but after all, he reminded himself, it does have a small white tip. That is quite a distinction. And no one could deny that a white shirt front and white paws went very well with a glossy tiger coat and set off the wide black bands looped across his breast, rather like a Lord Mayor of London’s chains. He told himself that he was not the handsomest cat in town, but reasonably distinguished as cats of his family went, and he gave his whiskers a good deal more than a lick and a promise. In fact his right front paw had been moistened and rubbed his face at least fifty times that morning, and his tongue was quite tired.
He had just stopped to rest, giving a long stretch first of his front legs then of his back, so that he looked longer than ever, when the grocer drew up in a big black car, got out, swinging his keys in a rather cheerful way, and began to open the various locks on the door of his shop. The Fur Person instantly thought of milk, even a small piece of cheese perhaps, or some hamburger, and explained his plight to the grocer by rubbing against the doorjamb and then slipping in, his tail straight up in the air like a flag, and every bit of his person saying, “Thank you very much, nice morning, isn’t it?”
“I haven’t seen you before, have I?” said the grocer. “Hungry?”
It was delicious to feel the low thunder of purrs rumbling inside him. During his years of being a Cat Abo
ut Town he had only purred in his sleep, but now he began to roar with pleasure like a little stove. He could feel every hair of his fur coat trembling with the force of these purrs; he swayed slightly as he sat down, lifting his head in pure hope to the grocer’s face. Of course the grocer, a simple fat man of no graces, could hardly appreciate the refinement of ecstasy which he was witnessing. But he did seem to get the crude point even if he did not appreciate its nuances. In a very few moments, he had poured out some milk in a saucer and laid beside it on a piece of newspaper some hamburger, of uncertain age. The Fur Person approached the milk, breathed above it for a few seconds, and then actually settled down, wrapping his tail around him, his two front paws close together. When the saucer was empty he moved over to the hamburger with eager anticipation. Alas, it was not worthy of a Gentleman Cat, and though he was still very hungry, he rose up with immense dignity and scratched at the newspaper as if to cover up this unfortunate meal, that it never be seen again.
“Not as hungry as you look, eh?” said the grocer cruelly. The Fur Person gave him a long indignant look, his green eyes as wide open as they could be, then slowly shut them on the vulgarity of the grocer. Still, it was not to be supposed that he would find the perfectly suitable establishment on the very first day of his search, and, all things considered, the grocer’s shop might be as good a base camp as he could find. So the Fur Person assumed his usual habits; as it was now time to read the newspaper, he jumped up into the big window and settled down comfortably, his paws tucked in, to see what was going on in the world. Clever cats know that this time in the morning is dogtime and generally sit indoors looking out. It is very thrilling to learn the news in this way. The Fur Person opened his eyes wide when a St. Bernard sauntered past, and then a poodle went by like lightning. But when Hannah came into sight, he was quite beside himself with excitement and pressed his nose to the pane, for Hannah lived on Alexander’s street. Every morning she ran the whole length of the street announcing the morning news in a series of loud excited barks and thus she was known as “the barky dog,” She was a beagle and very much too fat, the Fur Person thought; being so thin himself, the fat of others disgusted him. It lacked elegance. He was amazed to see Hannah so far from home. Whatever could she be doing? She stood by the window and seemed to recognize him, for she became very barky indeed. The Fur Person, offended by so much noise, withdrew and turned his back on her. The only sign that he was paying attention was a slight raising of the fur along his spine (he could not prevent this though Hannah was beneath such notice* noisy gossip that she was). His long thin tail had suddenly become enormous.
