Some Dogs, and a Cat or Two
I
WE have a new kitten. I brought her in a fish-basket from Cornwall. She put her little gray face against the oblong opening in the lid, and mewed miserably, all the way. She is gray all over — eyes and nose and fur and the skin on the small pads of her feet. She stops purring only for the time to sleep and play. If she is roused ever so little from sleep, the returning consciousness starts the purr going automatically. She is a ball of expressive contentment. She is inquiring about everything. She sits on your shoulder and smells delicately at each mouthful of food you put in your mouth; sometimes she reaches out a soft, cold little paw and touches your hand in a gentle effort to deflect the morsel into her own pink mouth.
She just took the top of my pencil and boxed with it a few times, spoiling the word ‘delicately.’ Did you notice? The Lord is kind and provides for her all that is satisfactory. I have a new shirt-waist, and its buttons, thanks to a kitten providence, are not the ordinary tame, flat affairs. They arc globular, and stand out boldly right in the path of a kitt en climbing up to sit on my shoulder. Of course, she stops to nibble appreciatively at each one. When Hgoes for his bath in the morning, she gets down out of the warm bed and tries to thrust her diminutive nose beneath the door to join him, mewing in a plaintive half-tone all the time. A warm bed and one person to love her are not sufficient. There are two in this family, she says, and both must love her all the time.
We want tremendously to send her to you, but her claws are sharp, and as she spends a large part of her time walking up and down or around on us, the pleasure of her company is punctuated by anything but pleasurable pricks. Would you like her? Her manners are charming and innate. Her name is Mordkin.
The new English bull-dog puppy has been brought home. Age, about ten weeks. Appearance, a genial clown, mostly head and paws. General characteristics, optimism in believing himself desired by everyone, alternating with wailing pessimism when left alone for a second. Chief activities, chewing, licking, and wriggling.
Because of the latter he has been promptly christened Rigoletto.
He adores Mordkin, the kitten, who mistrusts and despises him.
Here’s some more about Wriggles. He loves best of anything in the way of diversion to run with a stick in his mouth, and have me pretend to take it away. The difference between pretence and reality is very clear to him, showing that he recognizes this particular form of activity as play. He runs with the stick — I circle about him, reaching for the stick and saying I shall take it away. He growls ferociously every time I make the sham effort to snatch it, and tosses his head and shakes the stick, prancing and curvetting like a spirited horse. But when I say, ‘Wriggles, give me that stick,’ and walk up to him, he drops down and lays the stick between his paws, with such a dejected air, and such pleading eyes. So you see he realizes, as I said, the difference between pretence and reality, and that pretence is a form of play. Strange, is n’t it? because pretending is one of the commonest expressions of play in children, too.
When I refuse to play with him (a self-control that he fails to understand), he takes his ball in his mouth and races round and round in big circles with it. Then he will stop and let it fall suddenly. If it does n’t roll, he will nudge it with his nose or strike it with his paw. If it still remains quiet, he takes it in his mouth again, runs a little way with it, and then tosses his head and throws it backward into the grass, so that he does not see where it goes. And then — such a panting fury of search for it. When he recovers it, the game starts all over from the beginning, and continues until he is so exhausted that he collapses, with the ball between his paws and his head resting on it.
I got that far when a diversion was created by Wriggles, who appeared at the door with mournful complaints about being on the wrong side of it. Betty let him in, and in the next succeeding two seconds he had scratched Betty’s leg by jumping up on her, frightened the kitten by a lunge in her direction, eaten a mysterious and irresistible something that he found on the floor, jumped on the couch and down again, and is now chasing an eczema around his hind-quarters.
I am trying to train him in a new trick as a surprise to you when you get home. But it is hard work. Not because he is stupid, but because he has an idea that beguilings, in the shape of barks, and kisses, and wiggling, and beseeching paws, will serve his purpose better, and secure an immediate return of dog-biscuit! Poor dear clumsy creature — so full of infantine airs and graces, and so lumbering in their use. Last night we went out for a walk, with a happy bounding puppy alongside. As we passed the house next to us on our way home, a collie appeared, and from his expression I knew trouble was pending. At first Wriggles was charmed. He twisted and barked and ran toward the collie — who at once made a grab at Wriggles’s throat. You never saw such a change of expression. What had been all eager expectation changed to the most abject and astonished humility. He tucked up his hind-quarters, and went tearing down the road, with only one idea in the world — to get home, to the safe harbor of front porch and a bed of burlap, smelling comfortably of the tried and known.
He is such an exuberant puppy. We never had another just like him. I think he must be in a constant state of bewilderment as to why happy ideas and intentions of the utmost good-will should be so sharply curtailed by the strange race of two-legged creatures who exert such power over him. Helen said last night that she wished that she could know how it was that I felt about dogs. She can’t understand it at all, and of course I can’t explain. I wish that I could, because then she might perhaps like dogs. It is just like any other love — a shade more of understanding than we feel for other creatures. Understanding is always a kind of happiness. Do you remember that time when Binks woke up in front of the fire, and as he stood up, I said, ‘He’s going over to chew the knot on that log’ —and he did?
Well, it is that kind of thing that makes us love any creature — when we share its feelings and thoughts.
Did I tell you where Wriggles sleeps by preference, now? He has discovered his own lair, and apparently its ownness outweighs all qualities of warmth or softness possessed by any other. He gets down into the wood-shed, and by flattening himself unbelievably, he manages to squeeze under the flooring of the piazza, whence he emerges in the morning when I go for wood, with sounds of internal revolution (literal revolution) which denote the furious character of his efforts to face out. Finally, as if pushed from behind, inch by inch, that intensely serious and enormous head of his appears with the most agonized expression, — eyes bulging, ears back, — and then a pause, as he gathers strength for his last expulsive spurt. That shoots him from under the sill as if by escaping steam, panting and victorious.
I am sitting down by the mail-box writing this. Dan’l is standing by me, his whole body eloquent of smells that allure, and of the possibilities latent in those horizons — his head turning gently to follow the wind as it shifts, his nostrils quivering. Every once in a while he paces a few feet down the road and back, hoping and hoping that I may come too. Once he had a distinct, sudden purpose come to him. He pricked his ears and trotted off toward the Bogles, his nose on the ground. About fifty feet away, all the purpose left him, for he suddenly remembered me sitting here so strangely indifferent. He stopped, turned to look, saw that I was still inert, and then droopingly turned back.
Wriggles has been obtrusive, and philosophic about rebuffs, as usual, and has finally settled down to a noisy, slobbering pursuit of ants in the long grass behind me.
It is always strange to me that we know so little about these dog-beings who live with us. They know so infinitely more about us. They are so expressive, too. One day I was walking up Prospect Street and met Chief, a setter belonging to the M-s. Chief nodded, as it were, but no more. It was plainly to be seen that he was on no idle stroll. He had a purpose of a most compelling and none too pleasurable nature. His destination was known to him, and he was surely reluctant to go there.
When I got to Emily’s, I spoke of Chief’s cool greeting and his evidently disagreeable preoccupation. Emily said, ‘Yes, he came to see us and we had just sent him home with a scolding.’
No one who loved dogs could ever have mistaken the character of Chief’s enterprise that day.
We have had finnan haddie for lunch, and the result has been maddening for the cats, and dogs, too! The two cats have both been trying to get into the kitchen. The bitingest kitten, with her nose in the crack, and the littlest kitten, so desirous of having her nose in the crack that she had inserted herself between the bitingest kitten and the screen door, and the two of them so flattened against it that they looked as if they had been blown and held there by a high wind! Wriggles, with his nose also against the crack, over the top of the kittens.
The dogs and I had samp for lunch, which you don’t like, so I am eating it up because I do. So do the dogs. Poor souls — their dog-biscuit went to Williamsville, so they have had very little to eat to-day. I found Wriggles incredibly flattened under the ice-box, trying to lick from the drain-pipe a few drops of salad oil that had spilled inside.
That Mordkin cat is shut into the back room downstairs every night; but she always appears at our door in the morning, very early, and makes pitiful sounds at being outside it instead of in. I used to be annoyed, because I thought someone must have been careless and left the door insecurely fastened. So I fastened it myself — and the next morning she was there outside as usual. She has discovered that, by jumping up, she can press down the thumb-latch and open the door herself. She does n’t wholly understand the system, however, for she tries frequently now to open the front door in the same way, and of course never succeeds. That is very trying, for all outdoors is beyond that front door, and she is exceedingly anxious to see what outdoors is like. She has smelt of it once or twice, and one night actually found herself shut out in it. But she got frightened and rang the bell, and I let her in.
When she gets into our room in the morning, she makes a satisfied little sound, not quite a purr and not quite a meow, and jumps on H-’s bed, and eats a little of his hair. She is let to do it until she drools too much in her ecstasy, and then by main force is hauled under the covers and is kept there until he gets up. She still keeps on purring, though it plainly is not so pleasant as licking a furry head of hair that feels much like an almost-forgotten mother. We have decided, lacking any proof of perpetual motion, that her purring arrangement is like a typewriter tape. When it has rolled off one wheel, it takes only a moment’s adjustment to set it rolling off the other — not what you would call an appreciable interruption at all. She signs herself always,
Yours drooly,
MORDKIN.
II
The room is so peaceful. I wish you were here. The fire dead down to a few soft embers. I put some logs on, and they refuse to burn, but the heat is coaxing one of them to give off at least the most delicious fragrance of pine, which is more than compensation for the wit hheld blaze. We arc four — as to people. Wig-wag under the sofa — where he spends a large part of his time lately, as he has been subject to discipline. Dan’l Boggs at my feet, of course. And an extremely small and spunky kitten curled up in a chair beside me. The kitten is resting, and storing energy for future engagements with Wig-wag. They find each other enthralling —
Just here the kitten sat up, stretched, and then jumped down precisely in front of Dan’l Boggs’s nose — where she stopped and stretched again with great deliberation, and, I am sure, with an internal ecstasy of fright; for Dan’l does really try to bite her at times. She then advanced with tense indifference for a few steps, cocked her head at sounds of Wig-wag under the sofa, and reflectively sharpened her claws in the rug. However, she changed her mind and started to play with Dan’l’s paws. At once our peace was destroyed: Dan’l snapped at her, and almost caught her this time, — her poor little neck was quite wet, — and at the same moment old Wig-wag appeared, snorting, and the fire burst into flames and sent a great cloud of sparks and embers all over the room! Now the situation is this: Dan’l, having been beaten for snapping at the kitty, has retired under the table; Wig-wag is at my feet, evidently completely conscious of the altered balance of values in my affection for the time being; and the kitty is wild with excitement, dashing at anything, — a button on my coat, the pencil, her own tail, — and rushing at a piece of charcoal, leaping backwards through the air in a great arc — only to attack again. Now she is pensively licking one of Wriggles’s toes, while she lies extended on her side between his paws.
Dear, funny, clumsy, great-hearted Wriggles! Nothing could make him hurt her except out of sheer blundering ignorance. He was playing with her this afternoon and rolled over on her and never knew it, until her wee, halfsuffocated wails set him wondering! He has just nosed her off the arm of my chair because he wanted to be patted — but all in a big friendly way.
I wish his faults were as unobtrusive as his virtues are unmistakable. What a dear he would be.
Did I tell you that, in spite of the kitten’s affection for Wriggles, she can’t abide his smell? She will be lying on her back between his paws, clawing and biting his cheeks and ears, and suddenly she will stop and sniff him, and then leap away, spitting furiously. In a second she is back again, playing happily.
She is so contemptuously affectionate toward him. He is so clumsy and so slow, and she knows so well how impossible it is for him ever to foresee anything she does.
Dan’l is contemptuous of Wriggles too — but without affection. He looks upon him as a low vulgarian. The ot her night Dan’l sat with one paw on my knee, gazing at me with his most beguiling and most high-bred gravity and steadfastness. That Wriggles absolutely did n’t know any better than to come up and sniff at Dan’l’s chin at such a moment of communion. I knew instantly what would happen, for I felt just as Dan’l did. He drew back his lips, showing all his teeth, and made one quick reach for Wriggles, without taking his paw from my knee or even glancing away. That penetrated even Wriggles’s tough consciousness, and he hurriedly went out of the room, leaving us to our quiet exchange.
Dan’l is the ‘beguilingest’ dog, and the kitten is the ‘ bitingest’ kitten. Her little red mouth is almost always open for a nip at somebody or something.
And it does n’t interfere in the least with her other chief activity, which is purring. Did you know that they can purr with their mouths open?
When we go out, Wriggles bounds off and races around us and away again in wild excitement. Dan’l stands quietly for a minute, with lifted head, savoring and enjoying the whole story of the country as it comes to him on the wind. He makes one or two little leaps at us, and then says to Wriggles, ‘Oh, running, are you? Why, as for that—’ And then he starts, and you never saw anything so beautiful as his movements while he gives Wriggles an exhibition of what running really is. He is just a flowing line of gold and white, round and round Wriggles, who makes vain and inglorious attempts to catch him. Dan’l will run straight up to Wriggles, touch him delicately with his nose, and before poor clumsy Wriggles can ever turn, Dan’l is fifty feet away. Then Wriggles becomes excited and lunges at Dan’l; whereupon he turns on old Wig-wag, snaps at him, and immediately stops running, as it is evident that he cannot show the slightest recognition of this underbred creature without his presuming on it and trying to become intimate. You know he really is an aristocrat. All of his appreciations are so keen, and he himself never presumes.
He sleeps in our room. In front of the windows at the foot of the bed is a cotton rag rug. Beside the bed is a lovely thick wool rug, very soft and fluffy and warm.
Of course, both windows are open, but Dan’l always lay on the the rug by the windows. I would call him, and he would come to the side of the bed, rest his chin on it while I stroked his head, and then go back and lie down. One very cold night, after this performance, I got up, lifted him in my arms, carried him over to the warm rug, and laid him down on it. Ever since that, he has slept there. You see? He really likes it better, but he felt that it was an intrusion to take it for granted.
Dan’l must bark at anyone who comes up to the house, and at some, even, who do not come up, but merely go by on the road in clothes that to Dan’l betoken lack of respectability. It is not valor — nothing of the kind, I assure you. It seems to have no meaning; but he just does bark, that’s all. There is some inner compulsion, which has no relation with any purpose that I can see, and Dan’l has to obey. When his mistress is very hot and tired, to punish him his nose sometimes gets tied around by a piece of tape, which goes back and ties into his collar or about his neck. This prevents Dan’l from rubbing off the subduing noose. He then goes immediately into the house and lies down in a dark hall, where his ignominy may not be observed. He rests his head against the wall, and as his mistress passes, he rolls his eyes to follow her passing and keep her in sight; but he can’t turn his head, because he has to hide the noose by keeping his nose against the wall. Even in the midst of this punishment, if any stranger approaches, he gives half-strangled moans of disapproval; and when he is not thus muzzled, but only admonished by his mistress and told, ‘No — no,’ he just has to bark a little and growl a great deal, his tail meanwhile wagging a deprecatory apology, and his eyes beseeching forgiveness. He does n’t really want to bark, because he knows what an offense it is. That is, Dan’l the person does n’t want to bark. But Dan’l the dog is compelled to. I know how he feels, because I do the very things that I most hate, even while hating them.
Yesterday afternoon I went off to the woods with Ruth, to pick hepaticas. Dan’l and Wriggles came along, of course, and after a time Dan’l was lost. I called and called to him, Wriggles watching each path; and when finally Dan’l came back, Wriggles ran up to him and kissed him on the nose, and frisked back to me in the most joyous way, as if to say, ‘It’s all right now; we can go on.’ He really does love Dan’l, but Dan’l behaves shamefully to him. Yesterday Wriggles was in my way, and I pushed him violently off the porch, just as Dan’l came up in full time to receive Wriggles’s hurtling form against his chest. Dan’l instantly was all outraged feeling. He snarled and snapped at Wriggles, and poor Wriggles had his usual air of not knowing what in the world was the matter with us anyway — either Dan’l or me.
At night — Late and dark! — I wish that you could see Wriggles the Protector! The dogs down the road began barking, so I stirred Wriggles up by a few whispered questions: ‘ Who’s t here? What is it? Woo-woo-woo!’ Wriggles got out of the fireplace, looking stealthily and apprehensively around the room, gave two or three valiant barks, and then hurried behind my chair so as to place it between himself and the door. After peering round my knees for some minutes, he crept under the table, put forth a large frightened-looking face, draped by the red-silk table-cover, gave one or two more barks, and hastily tried to climb into my lap! Having failed, for lack of room, he is lying at my feet, with a reminiscent shiver now and then over the experience. What do you suppose he would do if anyone really did come? Climb into my lap? It is too absurd, for he is enormous. Never did anyone see a bull-dog of such dimensions, or so timorous.
Wiggle-Waggle is tied near me on the porch, so that he can’t get down to the shore. He’s perfectly demented when he gets down there. He is afraid to jump off the wharf because he goes under water; so every time a child screams, he runs up and down the dock, yapping wildly, until his excitement pitches him in; then he rushes at each child, biting its heels and trying to climb on its back for safety
To-day, having planted nothing at all, I feel without adventure. To be sure, Dan’l and Wig-wag had a fight. I rushed out and parted them, and took a stick and tapped both of t hem, not being absolutely certain who started it, although suspicions always point to Dan’l. Whereupon Dan’l at once showed me a hind leg which he was unable to straighten out at all, until I had patted and comforted him. He then put foot to floor and trotted off, quite normal again. Wig-wag as usual was all apology for his share. I must say he had slobbered up Dan’l’s leg pretty well, so I think his intentions were sufficiently belligerent. But when I arrived on the scene, Dan’l, with his sure scientific instinct, was on top of Wriggles, and had him by the throat. He never attacks any other place. A curious left-over inheritance of his wolf ancestry.
Wriggles’s race, however, has been bred to other purposes for so long (’way back in sixteen-forty or so they had the perfect type in Spain), that he always jumps for his opponent’s nose. Every bull-dog we ever had did this, and woe to the unsuspecting cow who thrust a greedy nose through the pasture fence when a bull-dog was around. There was no resisting such an invitation; and in due time cows’ noses became less greedy.
Mocha in this slush is delightful. Her ever-ready enthusiasm and curiosity lead her to endless exploration of the garden; but one can’t deny that it is wet, and cold too, to the feet; so she trots as usual with her fore-paws, but her hind-paws gallop, and are lifted off the ground with a kind of hunch of her body, which balances her on her forepaws for two or three steps and lifts her hind-paws into the air — so she does really save herself a little. When she finds a bone, she snatches it and is forced to run away with it. Of course, no one is after her; but just the natural dog instinct of secreting herself makes her take the unpleasant journey across the yard. She then starts to sit down and enjoy the bone at leisure, but bethinks herself just in time, how wet it is; so she straightens up and nibbles a little. Again she finds her hind-legs bending, and again saves herself. After repeating this manœuvre several times, she at last compromises by making a rest out of her tail to balance herself, as a kangaroo does, and then partially squats, her haunches supported by her elbows.
I must go to work now — I really want to write a long letter, for I have a lot of talk to you about.
I might just as well have gone on, for I accomplished nothing, and was interrupted by a guest who brought her sewing and stayed all the afternoon. Mocha was much interested. She sniffed delicately all around the edges of the guest’s spats; she then followed the line of her shoes, and then took a good long contemplative smell of the soles. From there she went to the edge of her skirt, and then pushed an inquisitive nose determinedly into her work-bag. All this activity was punctuated at intervals by raising her head and taking a general and comprehensive sniff at the whole aura of the guest.
I suppose all this is to her what a good exciting novel is to us. She has never been out in city streets, or in any houses but mine and Carrie’s, and she has very little experience with which to correlate her impressions; but they seem not to pall upon her because of that.
Dan’l lies on the newly turned sod north of the asparagus-bed, and watches me work in the forbidden land of the garden. If he can (unseen), he pulls himself along until he is on the asparagus-bed, whence he is driven by shouts and objurgations. He goes immediately, but looks so lonely and humble that I have to walk round the garden to comfort him each time. It makes gardening an extra-special long process!
This morning, while I was working, there was a rustling in the syringa bush, but no visible cause. Of course, I raised my voice and called, ‘Wriggles, get out of the garden!’ I then saw Dan’l emerge quietly, and furtively sneak off, pretending he was Wriggles, and never looking back at all!
Once Julie said to me, with a touch of disapproving asperity, ‘Of course, I can’t feel as you do about dogs. I love babies.’
At the time I was amused, but also a little annoyed, and said, ‘Well, one can love both.’ But she really was justified, because puppies have a special significance for me, and I ’m afraid babies have not — certainly not until they become personalities.
I went to the Bull-dog Club show one spring, and saw there a most enchanting young thing, a few months old. He was extraordinarily well developed in bull-dog characteristics, and I was quite wild about him; but of course he was unobtainable. The next February, at the Westminster Kennel Club show, I saw my friend and recognized him instantly. I turned to the catalogue and verified the recognition, or else I would not dare to tell the tale, even to doglovers, for bull-dogs are generally very different in puppyhood and young-doghood. However, there he was, and Blackberry was his name, if I remember correctly. How many babies would have that much individuality in the first few months of their existence?
The mere sight of a dog creates a special intensity of living for the moment. All your senses have memories, which wake and concentrate as you look at him. You know how each kind of dog feels under your hand, the texture of his coat, the silky places behind his ears, even if he is the roughest of Airedales, the wet, cool tip of his nose, the firm roundness and ripple of muscle in a terrier’s haunch, the sinewy hollows in his leg, the delicious earthy smell of the paws, the flowing finished lines of a thoroughbred English setter, and the ineffable look of meekness that crowns his head — all these are sensations of a delicious intensity to the doglover.
I think I could be pretty nearly happy if I could spend all my time with them and have a piano and books thrown in.
Sunday. I am just back from a lovely walk up the valley, I took a slice of bread and butter and a tomato and a piece of gingerbread, and started off to Newfane; but when I was in the middle of that hill on the sharp curve this side of Newfane, I saw that there was a river road; so I turned back and followed it up the river, until I seemed so far from civilization that I became a little frightened. So then I climbed down the bank to the river’s edge, and ate my lunch. I threw the stem-end of my tomato into the water, and Wriggles was most anxious to eat it. He followed it as it floated along, and every once in a while would bite at it! Of course, it would sink a little and he would get a mouthful of water instead! He was so persistent and plucky about it that I finally fished it out and gave it to him! He then sat beside me on a rock, and would occasionally reach out and paw the water a little — the reflections in it interested him deeply. What must they think of things that have such a visual reality, and vanish at a touch?