The Fur Person (Illustrated Edition)

by May Sarton

  But the toy mouse had such bright eyes that for just a second Tom Jones thought it winked at him. He put out a soft paw and touched it tentatively. The tail trembled in a rather inviting way and he batted it off the bed with one masterly swing of his paw. And— Tom Jones could have sworn this—it actually bounded off, ran away and hid under the radiator. This was really more like it. The Fur Person crouched on the bed, his whiskers bristling and held well forward, his cinnamon nose trembling slightly, his eyes fixed on the mouse though not a muscle of his body moved. He could feel small electric currents running up and down his spine, and then, as the pupils of his eyes opened wide with the excitement of not pouncing, his hindquarters began to shiver and shake and his tail to lash back and forth, and suddenly he was in the air. His tail lifted in a great arc as he landed, and with one furious exact swat of a paw he sent the mouse scurrying right across the room. This time he leaped after it without even waiting to see where it would land. He ran to it, joyfully, and began to bat it along the floor, first with one paw then with the other, in a swift glide like a hockey player with a puck. Then he did a sideways dance, his four paws very close together, his back arched, and then suddenly leapt into the air, caught the mouse between his teeth as he landed, and carried it out into the hall.

  There he laid it down and sat for a while, catching his breath, and pretending that he had forgotten all about it. Once he looked at it out of the corner of an eye, found it irresistible and threw it high into the air, caught it with one paw, threw it again and began the hockey game once more, bat and glide, glide and bat, all down the hall.

  His housekeepers applauded all this and he felt very gay and good and beautiful indeed. For now that he had changed into Gentle Jones, now that he would not fight, now that he had accepted that the housekeepers were faithful whatever happened, and even if he lost his fur, he felt the need of human admiration more than ever before. In fact he had not needed it at all when he was a Gentleman Cat About Town. But he did now feel the need of being told how handsome he was, to be applauded and praised. And because of this he was ready to give the housekeepers a little more of his real cat self than he had ever yielded to anyone or anything before. When they went out, he sometimes spent hours not even doing his yoga exercises, just waiting for them to come home, because the house did not feel quite like home if they were absent. And sometimes he made up little songs about this to console himself, because the house was so very silent:

  When you go away

  I forget how to play.

  When you’re not there

  I forget how to purr.

  Your voice in the house

  Means “food,” means “mouse,”

  And your kind lap

  Is my warm soft sleep.

  I make starfish paws

  For your applause,

  And I had no name

  Until you came

  So for all these things

  Jones sits and sings

  And for all these ways

  Tom is filled with praise.

  Of course there were times when perfect peace did not reign in this well-run loving household. For instance Tom sometimes got bored with his mouse and left it way under the daybed in the parlor, or hidden behind a radiator and then the next day couldn’t be bothered to find it. So when the housekeepers came home, eager to play, the mouse was not to be found.

  “The mouse is at large,” Gentle Voice would cry out, as if the mouse were some Very Large Terrible Tiger who might leap out upon them from behind a door. Then the Fur Person watched them with a faintly cynical expression in his tender green eyes, while they got down on their hands and knees and searched under beds and under chairs and under radiators—and sometimes it was days and days before the elusive mouse turned up. But after all, Tom Jones had now and then to show his independence. He had to keep his dignity, even if he had given such a large part of his life into human keeping—or perhaps just because he had done so, he must not lose his dignity. So, every now and then, he went on a rove and a ramble all by himself, and stayed away for hours, climbing a tree or two, or exploring a back yard several streets away, or paying a brief call at one or other of the grocers’ in the neighborhood, just in case a small piece of raw liver might be about. Besides he had to keep a census of the local cats, and to know what was going on, even though he chose to have no part in the ludicrous wars for position and power which ungentle, terrible cats kept up for appearance’s sake. Then for a few hours at a time he forgot about his obligations and responsibilities at home and became a catly cat again. It was a great relief to dash up a tree and down again, with no one at all to watch or applaud. It was a great relief to be a cat and nothing but a cat, and to be busy with his own affairs. However, after a long ramble and several small adventures—such as coming face to face with a huge barking black dog, making a very fat tail and spitting until the dog was routed—after all this he would begin to feel a queer tug in his breast, a tug which said, “Home, Jones,” a tug which made him feel rather tight inside and just a little anxious. “How are they?” the tug said, and his heart began to beat rather fast. And sometimes he was forced to run the whole way back because the tug became so strong and he was suddenly afraid that he had missed Something.

  One day when this happened and he bounded up onto the porch and, forgetting all about the Commandment about never mewing, actually climbed up to the window and gave a loud cry to say “I’m home again. Where are you?”, nobody came. They had gone out.

  His heart was beating so fast in panic that he had to sit down at once and tuck his paws in and do his yoga exercises with immense concentration, to keep out the woe which was growing inside him like a balloon. The exercises helped a little, but he could not get rid entirely of the woe.

  His ears were pricked for every step along the brick pavement. He had learned long ago to listen for the click-click of Gentle Voice’s feet along the walk and for Brusque Voice’s longer stride. The balloon of anxiety was growing so big that he got up and walked up and down, his tail laid out on the air straight behind him in a way that suggested pure melancholy.

  And when they did come home at last, not on foot, but roaring up in the car and slamming the doors, he ran as fast as he could and rubbed against their legs and purred and purred, so they were quite astonished.

  “He must be starving,” Gentle Voice said. “He’s been out for hours.”

  But he could not explain that it was not hunger this time that made him tremble with joy and go round and round looking up into their dear human faces, but only that he was so very happy that they had come home at last, and that he had missed them very much. It was really hardly worth going off on a ramble when it made him so anxious, and he decided there and then to stay near by. There must be other ways to maintain his dignity. There must be less costly ways.

  CHAPTER XI — The Great Move

  THE Fur Person was now so thoroughly settled and at home that sheer peace of mind made him grow quite fat, and no one ever stopped to say “Poor Puss,” any more, but instead they admired his glossy coat and actually called him “A HUGE CAT.” The question of maintaining his dignity and yet staying at home was solved by sheer bulk. It was not a matter of making expeditions at all. It was a matter of being the Lord of the House and keeping a firm paw on the housekeepers, exerting his will now and then by refusing to eat unless they remembered that he required the first quality stew beef and only the very best fresh haddock: as long as it was quite clear in everyone’s mind who was Master, the question of dignity did not occur. He was even able to accept that the housekeepers did need an occasional holiday and when this happened must delegate a substitute to see that the Fur Person was well looked after in their absence. So it happened that over the years a young man spent part of the summer at the house and the housekeepers went away. The Fur Person rather enjoyed making the acquaintance of this gentle young man, came and went on his business as usual, read his newspaper, and was altogether patient and polite, for he knew that
sooner or later the housekeepers would come back and all be as before.

  But wise and fat though he had grown, the Fur Person had never imagined the possibility that his housekeepers might be asked to move away, that they would no longer be able to walk down to the end of the garden with him and look at the pear tree, or kneel in the flower plot with baskets of pansies and forget-me-nots beside them, that they would in fact be forcibly uprooted from this ideal house and garden and have to find another place to live. Yet this is just what did happen; it happened when Brusque Voice was away and Gentle Voice all alone to search and find, to pack and go, to tie up bundles, to roll up blankets, to take down hundreds of books from the bookcases while the Fur Person watched her with his green eyes very wide open and his tail a question mark trembling in the air. For some time he thought perhaps Gentle Voice was in a fury of summer cleaning and that everything would be unpacked again pretty soon: in that case he would go out and He under a lilac bush until it was all over. But when he saw that an enormous van had come to the door and some terrible men with loud voices were actually carrying his own bed into it, as well as the big armchair and the couch from the study, so that literally he would have nowhere to lay his head, the Fur Person became very much alarmed.

  He crept away and hid under the window seat in the parlor, no question now of reading the newspaper. It was a moment of terrible decision. If only he knew where they were going! In order to compose his mind he licked both back paws for a long long time and gave his ears and whiskers a thorough going over, and all the time he was trying to remember a commandment which had grown rather dim through these years of comfort. It seemed to go something like this: “A Gentleman Cat Attaches Himself to Places Rather Than to People,” He brought his whiskers forward and looked judiciously at them down his nose. He had never questioned a commandment before in his life, for the commandments were not something he made up all by himself like his songs: they welled up inside him and contained the wisdom of generations of Gentlemen Cats. When in doubt, remember the Commandments, had until now seemed a safe solution to almost any problem. Stay here and let the housekeepers go on their way without him? His whiskers trembled a little and his green eyes became thin hard slits.

  After all, it was not to be supposed that ever again would he find himself in a house with such a perfect pear tree to climb in, or such lovely round posts for sharpening his claws, or that wherever the housekeepers went there would be such a convenient safe porch where he could sit in the sun. But then he remembered the laps, where he had lain so cozily for so many years, being caressed with such great savoir-faire; and he remembered that first dish of warm haddock, so fresh and white and altogether delicious, and the catnip hangover and the playful mouse. And he remembered the time when his fur came out and he was so very ill and the housekeepers had served him faithfully and never complained. That was too much. He crept out from under the window seat and walked through the empty rooms, his tail held high, looking for Gentle Voice.

  He purred, winding himself round her legs, and this meant I am going where you go. Of course she had no idea that he had decided to break one of the commandments nor what heart-searching had just been going on under the window seat. She was very busy carrying armloads of coats out to the van, and she hardly paid any attention at all.

  It was clear that if he did not do something right away he would begin to feel terribly lonely and sad, now he was sitting in the middle of an empty bedroom with nowhere at all to lay his head. So he sat upright and hummed a rather long and ragged self-justifying song to himself and the world at large:

  If you break the law

  You’ll have itching paw

  And anxieties

  Will behave like fleas

  Biting here or there

  But you can’t find where;

  All of this I sense

  From experience,

  But for all of that

  I’m a free wise cat

  True philosopher

  And I’ll make my purr

  And I’ll take my stand

  With humankind,

  Paw in your hand,

  Mine to command,

  I won’t let you go.

  I am coming too.

  Perhaps he would not have had the courage to make up such a brave song if he could have foreseen how he would spend the greater part of that terrible day, nor what humiliations lay in store for a Gentleman Cat who had broken the commandment about places rather than people. For the time came when there was nothing left in the house at all, except some piles of rubbish and Tom Jones, and after that the even worse time came when he was picked up by Gentle Voice and thrust into a taxi with her and rushed off through strange streets with not a moment in which to prepare himself for the Great Change, and not even a saucer of milk in his gullet, so his desperate miaow came out thin and scratchy, and it occurred to him that he was actually losing his voice!

  And as if all this treatment, so offensive to his dignity and trust, were not enough, he was ignominiously thrust into a cold dank garage, which smelled of gasoline and peat moss and old dirty rags and lumber, and the doors were locked. There was no window he could reach, so he could not even discover where he was. The need to explore, to orient himself by nose, paw and eye, was completely frustrated, and he suddenly became furiously angry, more angry than he had ever been in his life. He lashed his tail and paced up and down this prison, shouting his rage and despair at the walls and hearing his words echo back at him. No one came. No one paid the slightest attention or seemed aware that the Lord of the new house was a prisoner. He was so terribly angry that all he could do was swear; he could not even turn the swears into a song, which might have given him some satisfaction. He was so terribly angry that he stepped right into a pool of grease and got his white paws coal black and disgusting. He was so angry by then that he did not feel he could stop to clean up—that would have been to appear to be resigned. He was so angry that he felt he was twice his normal size, and he prepared to leap at anyone who opened the door and give them a piece of his mind in no uncertain terms. His voice grew hoarse with so much unaccustomed screaming and yelling, but still he kept on, and even took a couple of running jumps at the big garage doors and banged himself against them.

  It was dark by the time Gentle Voice came to let him out. He had been sitting with his nose pressed to the crack, too tired to speak, in a state of despair. But as soon as the door opened, he became a ball of lightning and flew out without a word, not knowing where he was bound except to get away, to climb a tree, to assert himself as a free animal again. And, oh, the air was sweet, and the maple by the door, as he raced past, inviting!

  This is my tree

  And you won’t catch me

  he sang hurriedly as he sprang into the air, caught the trunk in a furious embrace and ran up it so fast, he thought himself he might suddenly have learned to fly. Then, way up on nearly the topmost branch, he stood up and glared around him, and looked down with hard black eyes at Gentle Voice, a tiny feeble human being standing by the trunk, saying how sorry she was and begging him to come down right away, and she would give him some supper.

  For answer he lashed his tail three times and bounded to an even more perilous branch, which swayed under his weight so that he almost lost his balance.

  He did not come in for a long time. After all, it was now or never; it was absolutely necessary that it be made clear, once and for all, who was master. He had chosen to come with Gentle Voice to the new house of his own free will, and then he had been treated like a foolish kitten who might run away and get lost and who would not know the law about complete exploration of every nook and cranny of a new neighborhood. So off he went, down the street, the strange street, mighty in his anger, ready to growl and pounce on anyone who might try to stop him. He swaggered the whole length of the street and discovered a huge playground with almost an acre of long grass, trees and wildness to wander in just around the corner. From there he could hear Gentle Voice calling a
nxiously in the dark,

  “Here puss, here puss—please come home!”

  Had she been punished enough? No, but he was rather too hungry, and a Gentleman Cat always sees that his own needs come first. So at long last, he stood at the open door and allowed himself to be caressed and cajoled and led through the house to the kitchen where Gentle Voice laid before him, very humbly, a large dish of fresh white steaming haddock, as a peace offering.

  Much later on when he was lying on her bed, with his paws tucked in, looking at her in rather a sentimental way and purring very softly, she told him, “This is our house, you know, and we shall never have to move again.”

  CHAPTER XIII — The Eleventh Commandment or the Reflections of a Window-box Cat

  THE next morning bright and early, while Gentle Voice was still fast asleep, Tom Jones made a thorough exploration of the house (after all it is something to be presented with a house even if you are a very distinguished Gentle Cat) and was well satisfied with all that he found. There was, in the first place, a quite magnificent cellar with several different rooms in it, a delightful coalbin, a woodpile, and just the right musty earthy smell. Best of all, a quite perfect newspaper-reading place had been arranged on the corner of the piano, in the parlor. Yes, it really would do very well, thought the Fur Person, sitting upright, feeling dignified indeed as he considered the morning news.

  There seemed to be a great many cats in this neighborhood, a fact which he noted with some alarm. Some had collars and bells; one had rather a sinister black and white face and sneered up at the window as he went past. But at least they were not ruffians; they were all catly cats with homes and names, and no doubt they would pay a neighborly call and he could then inform them that he was a Cat of Peace and did not intend to fight for position in the community. Still, when Gentle Voice came down at last and opened the door to let him out into the warm summer air, he did feel a slight prickling in his spine; he did hope he found himself in a genteel neighborhood where his convictions would be respected. And just to give himself confidence he sang a gentle song to the world at large: