The Fur Person (Illustrated Edition)

by May Sarton

  He had been so busy not listening to Hannah and pretending not to mind her voice that he had not noticed the arrival of a customer,

  “Good morning, Mrs. Seaver, you’re an early bird,” said the grocer in the falsely jovial tone that grocers often employ. It was a tone the Fur Person recognized at once, the tone people used who said “Nice Kitty” but really did not like cats.

  “I ran out of coffee,” said Mrs. Seaver, helping herself to a bag on the shelf. “Want to grind this for me, percolator—” but she had hardly finished this sentence when she saw the Fur Person, glorious, every hair shining in the sun, his tail beautifully enlarged by his anger at Hannah, his green eyes observing her with obvious interest. “Ooooooh,” she crooned, “you have a lovely kitty. Where did you come from, Kitty?” she asked in a foolish tone of voice, as if he were feeble-minded or only a few weeks old. But she leaned over and scratched him under his chin and no Gentleman Cat can resist such an attention. He got up, arched his back and thanked her kindly.

  “He was out there, waiting at the door, like he belonged here,” said the grocer. “Not even hungry,” he lied without so much as batting an eyelash.

  The customer was stroking the Fur Person down his arched back now, in a way very consoling to an orphan. “Mmmm” she murmured in his ear as if she were contemplating a lobster dinner, “I do love cats.” The Fur Person should have been warned by something cannibalistic in this tone, but it must be remembered that he was young and inexperienced in the ways of human love, and besides he was very hungry. The ecstasy began to thrum inside him again and before he knew it, he was purring away, and even lifting one paw into the air and spreading out the claws, out and in, out and in, from sheer pleasure.

  “Will you look at that? Isn’t he the cutest thing?” the lady crooned. “You wouldn’t let me have him, would you?” she asked the grocer.

  “He ain’t mine to give. Take him along if you like him.”

  The Fur Person had no time to consider this proposition or to get a word in edgewise. Before he knew what had happened, he was lifted up into the air and hanging down awkwardly over the lady’s arm. He struggled, but she put a hand over his nose and said, “Oh no, you don’t.” Very well, he thought, wait and see. Maybe she had a little house with an attic and a cellar and garden with neat beds of flowers and good earth, and maybe she had lobster every day for lunch. He kept very quiet, but his eyes were enormous with expectation, and his long tail hanging down under her arm, twitched back and forth with excitement.

  He leaned way out to see where they were going. His ears pricked as they approached a dear little house and a garden, but they passed it by. He was rather disconcerted, and made a half-hearted attempt to jump down when the Lady turned in before a huge brick apartment house. By now it was too late. He looked up into the Lady’s soft foolish face with alarm, for she had suddenly become a jailer. But he really did need some breakfast, and after breakfast he would try to make a discreet withdrawal. So he told himself, as she finally set him down in a tiny dark hall.

  CHAPTER III — An Escape

  THE Fur Person raised his head and took in a terrible series of smells, the smell of a small stuffy apartment, of overheated radiators, of cheap perfume, of talcum powder, of yesterday’s bacon; he stood there, his tail standing out straight behind him in amazement* his nose trembling slightly in dismay. Then he cast a quick glance behind him, but the door was shut tight. No escape. The lady meanwhile had not stopped talking since she set him down. He could hear her while she ran water in the kitchen and rattled the dishes, telling him over and over (almost as bad as Hannah she was) how much she loved kitties, how much she loved him, and what he would have for breakfast. The Fur Person could not pay attention right away to this. He had first to explore the apartment and any possible avenues of escape. He had first to sniff at every inch of the dirty pink carpet stretched from wall to wall, with moldy crumbs, as he soon discovered, concealed along the edges. He had never been in a human house with so many objects in it, and he was only about a third of the way through, had in fact just reached a stand with three potted ferns on it, had stood up on his hindlegs to feel the quality of a green velvet armchair (for claw-sharpening purposes), had taken a quick look at the bed, almost entirely covered with small satin pillows and with, of all things, an imitation cat sitting on it, when the lady suddenly pounced on him from the back and hauled him ignominiously into the kitchen, setting him down in front of a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon. Now, no Gentleman Cat likes to be plunked down in front of his food. The law is that he shall approach it slowly from a distance, without haste, however hungry he may be, that he shall smell it from afar and decide at least three feet away what his verdict is going to be: Good, Fair, Passable or Unworthy.

  If the verdict is Good, he will approach it very slowly, settle himself down in a crouching position and curl his tail around him before he takes a mouthful. If it is Fair, he will crouch, but leave his tail behind him, stretched out along the floor. If it is merely Passable, he will eat standing up, and if it is Unworthy he will perform the rite of pretending to scratch earth over it and bury it.

  The Fur Person backed away, ruffled and indignant, and had to put his clothes in order before he would even look at the food. Then he very carefully extracted the bacon, bit by bit, and ate it with considerable relish. Scrambled eggs were considered “Unworthy” and were left on the plate.

  When the lady saw him performing the usual rite demanded by Unworthy food, she clapped her hands with delight and said he was a terribly clever cat (little she knew!), she had never seen anything so sweet in her life, and he should have a can of crab-meat for his lunch.

  Then she picked him up and tried to fold him together onto her lap. Foolish woman! Though a little crumbled bacon is not a heavy meal for a Gentleman Cat who has spent the night out, it is enough of a meal to require at least fifteen minutes of solitary meditation after it. The Fur Person jumped down at once and went as far away from her as he could get, as her smell of cheap narcissus or rose (he was not quite sure which) made him feel rather ill. The farthest away he could get was under the bed; there he stayed for some time, licking his chops, for the slightest sensation of oiliness or fat around his whiskers is something a Gentleman Cat cannot endure. Then he sat, crouching, but not in any way “settled” and thought things over. He did not fancy the lady, but she had mentioned crabmeat for lunch. Also there was at present no way of escape that he could see. By now, it should be clear that the Fur Person was a philosophical nature, capable of considerable reflection. He had waited six months before making up his mind to leave Alexander and two years before deciding to settle down, and after all, he had only been here for half an hour. Sometimes first impressions could be misleading. Also he was very susceptible to flattery, and the lady’s admiration was unstinted. Although he was completely concealed from her under the bed, she was still talking about him and to him. Things could be worse.

  The trouble was, as he soon found out, that as soon as he came into reach, the lady could not resist hugging and kissing him with utter disregard for the dignity of his person. There are times when a Gentleman Cat likes very much to be scratched gently under his chin, and if this is done with savoir-faire he may afterwards enjoy a short siesta on a lap and some very refined stroking, but he does not like to be held upside down like a human baby and he does not like to be cooed over, and to be pressed to a bosom smelling of narcissus or rose. The Fur Person struggled furiously against the ardent ministrations of the lady and took refuge behind the garbage pail in the kitchen when he could. It was crystal clear that he was in jail, and, even at the risk of not having crabmeat for lunch, he must escape. His eyes behind the garbage pail had become slits; he did not tuck his paws in but sat upright, thinking very fast. While he was thinking he nibbled one back foot—he had observed before that there was nothing like thinking to make one itch all over—then he had to bite a place rather difficult to reach on his back, and then his front paw, and soon he
was quite absorbed in licking himself all over. It is best to be clean before attempting to escape, and—this thought occurred to him suddenly—it is also best to have sharp claws. From behind the garbage pail he could see the green velvet armchair, and as soon as the lady disappeared for a moment into the bedroom, he emerged from his hiding place and stretched, then walked sedately to the chair, sat up and began to sharpen his claws on the thick plush, a very satisfactory claw-sharpening place indeed.

  “Oh,” screamed the lady, and swooped down and picked him up, “you naughty cat. Stop it at once!” She even shook him quite violently. This, on top of all he had suffered that morning, was suddenly more than the Fur Person could endure. He turned and bit her arm, not very hard, but just enough so she dropped him unceremoniously and gave a penetrating yell.

  “You’re not a nice cat at all,” she said, and she began to whimper. “You don’t like me,” she whimpered, “do you?”

  But this last remark was addressed to his back. He was sitting in front of the door. It is a known fact that if one sits long enough in front of a door, doing the proper yoga exercises, the door will open. It is not necessary to indulge in childish noises. Commandment Four: “A Gentleman Cat does not mew except in extremity. He makes his wishes known and then waits.” So he sat with his back to the lady and wished with the whole force of his fur person; his whiskers even trembled slightly with the degree of concentration. Meanwhile the lady grumbled and mumbled to herself and said “Nobody loves me.” But the Fur Person’s whiskers only trembled a little more violently, so huge had become his wish to get away. By comparison with this prison, the grocery shop looked like Heaven. He might even bring himself to eat day-old hamburger if only he could get away from this infernal apartment. He noticed also that it was much too hot and his skin was prickling all over, but he schooled himself not to move, not to lick, not to nibble. He became a single ever-more-powerful WISH TO GET OUT.

  “Very well,” said the lady, blowing her nose. He gave her one last cold look out of his green eyes, and then she opened the door. She even followed him down-stairs, his tail held perfectly straight like a flag to show his thanks, and opened the front door. The Fur Person bounded out and ran all the way up the street, sniffing the fresh air with intense pleasure. He ran halfway up an elm tree and down again before you could say “Gentleman Cat,” and then he sauntered down the street, his tail at half-mast, and his heart at peace.

  CHAPTER IV — A Dish of Haddock

  ON HIS roves and rambles, on his rounds and travels, he had never found himself exactly where he now found himself, on the border of a dangerous street —very dangerous, he realized after a short exposure to the roar of cars, the squeaking of brakes, the lurching, weaving, rumbling, interspersed with loud bangs and horns of a really incredible amount of traffic. It was quite bewildering, and the Fur Person looked about for a place where he could withdraw and sit awhile. He was rather tired. It was time, he considered, for a short snooze, after which the question of Lunch might be approached in the proper frame of mind. And there, providentially indeed, he noticed that he was standing in front of a house bounded on one side by a porch with a very suitable railing running along it. He took the porch in one leap, sat for a second measuring the distance to the square platform on top of the railing post, then swung up to it rather casually, and there he was, safe and free as you please, in a little patch of sunlight which seemed to have been laid down there just for him. He tucked in his paws and closed his eyes. The sun was delicious on his back, so much so that he began to sing very softly, accompanying himself this time with one of his lighter purrs, just a tremolo to keep things going.

  And there he sat for maybe an hour, or maybe even two, enjoying the peace and quiet, and restoring himself after the rather helter-skelter life he had been leading for two days, since his metamorphosis into a Gentleman Cat in search of a housekeeper. He was so deep down in the peace and the quiet that when a window went up right beside him on the porch, he did not jump into the air as he might have done had it not been such a very fine May morning or had he been a little less tired. As it was, he merely opened his eyes very wide and looked.

  “Come here,” a voice said inside the house, “there’s a pussin on the porch.”

  The Fur Person waited politely, for he had rather enjoyed the timbre of the voice, quite low and sweet, and he was always prepared to be admired. Pretty soon two faces appeared in the window and looked at him, and he looked back.

  “Well,” said another voice, “perhaps he would like some lunch.”

  The Fur Person woke right up then, rose, and stretched on the tips of his toes, his tail making a wide arc to keep his balance.

  “He is rather thin,” said the first voice. “I wonder where he belongs. We’ve never seen him before, have we?”

  “And what are we having for lunch?” said the second voice.

  “There’s that haddock left over—I could cream it.” The Fur Person pivoted on the fence post and stamped three times with his back feet, to show how dearly he loved the sound of haddock.

  “What is he doing now?” said the first voice and chuckled.

  “Saying he likes haddock, I expect.”

  Then, quite unexpectedly, the window was closed. Dear me, he thought, won’t I do? For the first time, he began to be really anxious about his appearance. Was the tip of his tail as white as it could be? How about his shirt front? Dear me, he thought, won’t I do? And his heart began to beat rather fast, for he was, after all, tired and empty and in a highly emotional state. This made him unusually impulsive. He jumped down to the porch and then to the ground below and trotted round to the back door, for as he expected, there was a garden at the back, with a pear tree at the end of it, and excellent posts for claw-sharpening in a small laundry yard. He could not resist casting a glance at the flower beds, nicely dug up and raked, in just the right condition for making holes, and in fact the thought of a neat little hole was quite irresistible, so he dug one there and then.

  When he had finished, he saw that the crocuses were teeming with bees. His whiskers trembled. He crouched down in an ecstasy of impatience and coiled himself tight as a spring, lashed his tail, and before he knew it himself was in the air and down like lightning on an unsuspecting crocus. The bee escaped, though the crocus did not. Well, thought the Fur Person, a little madness in the spring is all very well, but I must remember that this is serious business and I must get down to it. So he sat and looked the house over. It was already evident that there were innumerable entrances and exits like the window opening to the porch, that there were places of safety in case he was locked out, and that (extraordinary bit of luck) he had found not one old maid with a garden and a house but two. Still, his hopes had been dashed rather often in the last twenty-four hours and he reminded himself this time to be circumspect and hummed a bit of the tune about being a free cat, just to give himself courage.

  Then he walked very slowly, stopping to stretch out one back leg and lick it, for he remembered the Fifth Commandment: “Never hurry towards an objective, never look as if you had only one thing in mind, it is not polite.” Just as he was nibbling the muscle in his back foot with considerable pleasure, for he was always discovering delightful things about himself, he heard the back door open. Cagey, now, he told himself. So he went on nibbling and even spread his toes and licked his foot quite thoroughly, and all this time, a very sweet voice was saying:

  “Are you hungry, puss-cat? Come, pussin….”

  And so at last he came, his tail tentatively raised in a question mark; he came slowly, picking up his paws with care, and gazing all the while in a quite romantic way (for he couldn’t help it) at the saucer held in the old maid’s hand. At the foot of the back stairs he sat down and waited the necessary interval.

  “Well, come on,” said the voice, a slightly impatient one, with a little roughness to it, a great relief after the syrupy lady in the hot apartment from which he had escaped.

  At this the Fur Person
bounded up the stairs, and at the very instant he entered the kitchen, the purrs began to swell inside him and he wound himself round and round two pairs of legs (for he must be impartial), his nose in the air, his tail straight up like a flag, on tiptoe, and roaring with thanks.

  “He’s awfully thin,” said the first voice.

  “And not very beautiful, I must say,” said the second voice.

  But the Fur Person fortunately was not listening. He was delicately and with great deliberation sniffing the plate of haddock; he was settling down; he was even winding his tail around him, because here at last was a meal worthy of a Gentleman Cat.

  CHAPTER V — A Home-coming

  THE most remarkable thing about the two kind ladies was that they left him to eat in peace and did not say one word. They had the tact to withdraw into the next room and to talk about other things, and leave him entirely to himself. It seemed to him that he had been looked up and down, remarked upon, and hugged and squeezed far too much in the last days, and now he was terribly grateful for the chance to savor this delicious meal with no exclaiming this or that, and without the slightest interruption. When he had finished every single scrap and then licked over the plate several times (For if a meal is Worthy, the Sixth Commandment says, “The plate must be left clean, so clean that a person might think it had been washed.”), the Fur Person sat up and licked his chops. He licked them perhaps twenty or twenty-five times, maybe even fifty times, his raspberry-colored tongue devoting itself to each whisker, until his face was quite clean. Then he began on his front paws and rubbed his face gently with a nice wet piece of fur, and rubbed right over his ears, and all this took a considerable time. While he was doing it he could hear a steady gentle murmur of conversation in the next room and pretty soon he stopped with one paw in the air, shook it once, shook his head the way a person does whose hair has just been washed in the bowl, and then took a discreet ramble.