Part 29

Emilius!

HUDSON'S CAT

"This night our cat ranne crying from one side of the ship to the other, looking overboord, which made us to wonder; but we saw nothing."

--Juet's Journal.

What did you see, O pussy-cat-mew, Pet of the Half-Moon's turbulent crew? Who taught them mew-tiny? Wasn't it you?

Juet kept journal of storm and fog And the mermaid that set them all agog, But what has become of the cat-a-log?

Henry Hudson, the master sage, Writ large his name on history's page, But you, you too, were a purr-sonage.

Shall the tale slight you, whose tail was a-quiver As you and Hudson sailed up the river Made only his by Time the giver?

Why did you take to adventuring, Puss-illanimous fireside thing? What was the cargo you hoped to bring?

Did you dream of multitudinous mice Running about the Isles of Spice In a paradoxical Paradise?

Were you not homesick where monsters swam, Dolorous dolphin and clamorous clam, For your sunny stoop in Amsterdam?

Months at sea, while the billows roared, And the Milky Way not a cupful poured; No wonder Tabby looked over-bored.

You had your feelin's, as felines go, Poor little puss. What scared you so? O stupid sailors that didn't know!

Was it a dogfish struck the spark From your sea-green eyes with the quaint remark That you were sailing upon a bark?

Millions of happy pussies fall Into oblivion; still you call From the top of your ancient cater-wall,

Call on the centuries to concur In praise of Tabby the Mariner, Who discovered the Catskills, named for her.

CATASTROPHES

"And when Maeldune and his men went into the best of the houses they saw no one in it but a little cat that was in the middle of the house, and it playing about on the four stone pillars that were there, and leaping from one to another. It looked at the men for a short space, but it did not stop from its play."

--Lady Gregory's Book of Saints and Wonders.

People are people, and cats are cats. We do not know our pussies. We pet them but we cannot tame them. Landor's Cincirollo,

"wagging his dread jaw at every chirp Of bird above him on the olive branch,"

is latent in Wordsworth's

"kitten on the wall Sporting with the leaves that fall."

These charming fireside tenants of ours have their own concerns, which lie aloof from the human. Even nursery-lore bears witness to this:

"'Pussy-cat, Pussy-cat, Where have you been?' 'I've been to London, To see the Queen.' 'Pussy-cat, Pussy-cat, What did you there?' 'I frightened a little mouse Under her chair.'"

But if we cannot forego the consciousness of those tiger claws hid in the velvet daintiness of the light feet, neither can tabby put her trust in us. Race memory and, too often, individual experience accuse us. Her reticence with humankind, her stealth, her self-reliance, might well have been stamped deep into cat character by the monstrous cruelties she has suffered at our hands. Her reputed connection with witches, of whom it is estimated that Christendom put to death some nine million, involved the poor animal in their hideous tortures. Indeed, she caught it from all sides. Cats were flung into the bonfires to perish with the helpless old crones who had cared for them. A witch might be exorcised by whipping a cat, like the wretched puss long and solemnly flogged by twelve priests "in a parlor at Denham, til shee vanished out of theyr sight." And it was a cat, so confession on the rack declared, that after an accursed christening was cast into the sea to raise a storm that should drown James of Scotland, "the devil's worst enemy," on his wedding journey home from Denmark. This royal witch-hunter, who came thirteen years later to the throne of England, was not content until thirty human victims had paid by horrible deaths for the black art of that storm.

A few of these maligned cats have left a distinctive record on the blurred page of history. Rutterkin, the familiar of Agnes Flower, whose very name should have attested her innocence, was black as the soot of hell, but Mother Fraunces, who learned the secrets of sorcery from her own grandmother, had "a whyte spotted cat * * * to be her sathan," while the leader of the infernal chorus in the cavern scene of Macbeth was a tabby:

"Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed."