Mammy t.i.ttleback and Her Family.
by Helen Jackson.
I.
Mammy t.i.ttleback is a splendid great tortoise-sh.e.l.l cat,--yellow and black and white; nearly equal parts of each color, except on her tail and her face. Her tail is all black; and her face is white, with only a little black and yellow about the ears and eyes. Her face is a very kind-looking face, but her tail is a fierce one; and when she is angry, she can swell it up in a minute, till it looks almost as big as her body.
n.o.body knows where Mammy t.i.ttleback was born, or where she came from.
She appeared one morning at Mr. Frank Wellington"s, in the town of Mendon in Pennsylvania. Phil and Fred Wellington, Mr. Frank Wellington"s boys, liked her looks, and invited her to stay; that is, they gave her all the milk she wanted to drink, and that is the best way to make a cat understand that you want her to live with you. So she stayed, and Phil and Fred named her Mammy t.i.ttleback after a cat they had read about in the "New York Tribune."
Phil and Fred have two cousins who often go to visit them. Their names are Johnny and Rosy Chapman; and if it had not been for Johnny and Rosy Chapman, there would never have been this nice story to tell about Mammy t.i.ttleback: for Phil and Fred are big boys, and do not care very much about cats; they like to see them around, and to make them comfortable; but Johnny and Rosy are quite different. Johnny is only eight and Rosy six, and they love cats and kittens better than anything else in the world; and when they went to spend this last summer at their Uncle Frank Wellington"s, and found Mammy t.i.ttleback with six little kittens, just born, they thought such a piece of luck never had happened before to two children.
Juniper and Mousiewary had been born the year before. Phil named these.
Juniper was a splendid great fellow, nearly all white. At first he was called "Junior," but they changed it afterward to "Juniper," because, as Phil said, they didn"t know what his father"s name was, and there wasn"t any sense in calling him "Junior," and, besides, "Juniper" sounded better.
Mousiewary was white, with a black and yellow head. Phil called her "Mousiewary" because she would lie still so long watching for a mouse.
She was a year and a half old when Johnny and Rosy went to their Uncle Frank"s for this visit, and she had two little kittens of her own that could just run about. They were wild little things, and very fierce, so Phil had called them the Imps. But Johnny and Rosy soon got them so tame that this name did not suit them any longer, and then they named them over again "Beauty" and "Clover."
Mammy t.i.ttleback"s second family of kittens were born in the barn, on the hay. After a while she moved them into an old wagon that was not used. This was very clever of her, because they could not get out of the wagon and run away. But pretty soon she moved them again, to a place which the children did not approve of at all; it was a sort of hollow in the ground, under a great pile of fence rails that were lying near the cowshed.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "After a while she moved them into an old wagon that was not used."--PAGE 14.]
This did not seem a nice place, and the children could not imagine why she moved them there. I think, myself, she moved them to try and hide them away from the children. I don"t believe she thought it was good for the kittens to be picked up so many times a day, and handled, and kissed, and talked to. I dare say she thought they"d never have a chance to grow if she couldn"t hide them away from Johnny and Rosy for a few weeks. You see, Johnny and Rosy never left them alone for half a day.
They were always carrying them about. When people came to the house to see their Aunt Mary, the children would cry, "Don"t you want to see our six kittens? We"ll bring them in to you." Then they would run out to the barn, take a basket, fill it half full of hay, and very gently lay all the kittens in it, and Johnny would take one handle and Rosy the other, and bring it to the house. They always put Mammy t.i.ttleback in too; but before they had carried her far, she generally jumped out, and walked the rest of the way by their side. She would never leave them a minute till they had carried the kittens safe back again to their nest. She did not try to prevent their taking them, for she knew that neither Johnny nor Rosy would hurt one of them any more than she would; but I have no doubt in her heart she disliked to have the kittens touched.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "Johnny would take one handle, and Rosy the other, and bring it to the house."--PAGE 16.]
The children worried a great deal about this last place that Mammy t.i.ttleback had selected for her nursery. They thought it was damp; and they were afraid the rails would fall down some day and crush the poor little kittens to death; and what was worst of all, very often when they went there to look at them, they could not get any good sight of them at all, they would be so far in among the rails.
At last a bright idea struck Johnny. He said he would build a nice house for them.
"You can"t," said Rosy.
"I can too," said Johnny. ""Twon"t be a house such as folks live in, but it"ll do for cats."
"Will it be as nice as a dog"s house, Johnny?" asked Rosy.
"Nicer," said Johnny; "that is, it"ll be prettier. "Twon"t be so close.
Cats don"t need it so close; but it"ll be prettier. It"s going to have flags on it."
"Flags! O Johnny!" exclaimed Rosy. "That"ll be splendid; but we haven"t got any flags."
"I know where I can get as many as I want," said Johnny,--"down to the club-room. They give flags to boys there."
"What for, Johnny?" asked Rosy.
"Oh, just to carry," replied Johnny proudly. "They like to have boys carrying their flags round."
"Do you suppose they"ll like to have them on a cat"s house?" asked Rosy.
"Why not?" said Johnny; and Rosy did not know what to say.
Very hard Johnny worked on the house; and it was a queer-looking house when it was done, but it was the only one I ever heard of that was built on purpose for cats. It was about eight feet square; the central support of it was an old saw-horse turned up endwise, with a mason"s trestle on top; the roof was made of old rails, and had two slopes to it, like real houses" roofs; the sides were uneven, because on one side the rails rested on an old pig-trough, and on the other on a wooden trestle which was higher than the trough. This unevenness troubled Johnny, but it really made the house prettier. The s.p.a.ce under this roof was divided by rows of small stakes into three compartments,--one large one for Mammy t.i.ttleback and her six youngest kittens; Mousiewary and her two kittens in another smaller room; and the adopted kittens and Juniper in a third.
I haven"t told you yet about the adopted kittens, but I will presently.
These three rooms had each a tin pan set in the middle, and fixed firm in its place by small stakes driven into the ground around it. Johnny was determined to teach the cats to keep in their own rooms, and that each family must eat by itself. It wasn"t so hard to bring this about as you would have supposed, because Johnny and Rosy spent nearly all their time with the cats, and every time any cat or kitten stepped over the little wall of stakes into the apartment of another family, it was very gently lifted up and put back again into its own room, and stroked and told in gentle voice,--
"Stay in your own room, kitty."
And at meal-times there was very little trouble, after the first few days, with anybody but Juniper. All the rest learned very soon which milk-pan belonged to them, and would run straight to it, as soon as Johnny called them. But Juniper was an independent cat; and he persisted in walking about from room to room, pretty much as he pleased. You see he was the only unemployed cat in the set. Mammy t.i.ttleback had her hands full,--I suppose you ought to say paws full when you are speaking of cats,--with six kittens of her own and two adopted ones; and Mousiewary was just as busy with her two kittens as if she had had ten; but Juniper had n.o.body to look after except himself. He was a lazy cat too. He always used to walk slowly to his meals. The rest would all be running and jumping in their hurry to get to the house when Johnny and Rosy called them; but Juniper would come marching along as slowly as if he were in no sort of hurry, in fact, as if he didn"t care whether he had anything to eat or not. But once he got to the pan he would drink fully his share, and more too.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
II.
Now I must tell you about the adopted kittens. They belonged to a wild cat who lived in the garden. n.o.body knew anything about this cat. She was a kind of a beggar and thief cat, Johnny said. She wouldn"t let you take care of her, or get near her; and the only reason she took up her abode in the garden with her kittens was so as to be near the milk-house, and have a chance now and then to steal milk out of the great kettles. One day the children found the poor thing dead in the chicken yard. What killed her there was nothing to show, but dead she was, and no mistake; so the children carried her away and buried her, and then went to look for her little kittens. There were four of them, and the poor little things were half dead from hunger. Their mother must have been dead some time before the children found her. They were too young to be fed, and the only chance for saving their lives was to get Mammy t.i.ttleback to adopt them.
"She"s got an awful big family now," said Phil, "but we might try her."
"She won"t know but they"re her own, if we don"t let them all suck at once," said Johnny; "but it wouldn"t be fair to cheat her that way."
"Won"t know!" said Phil. "That"s all you know about cats! She"ll know they ain"t hers as quick as she sees them."
It was a very droll sight to see Mammy t.i.ttleback when the strange kittens were put down by her side. She was half asleep, and some of her own kittens had gone to sleep sucking their dinners; but the instant these poor famished little things were put down by her, two of them began to suck as if they had never had anything to eat before, since they were born. Mammy t.i.ttleback opened her eyes, and jumped up so quick she knocked all the kittens head over heels into a heap. Then she began smelling at kitten after kitten, and licking her own as she smelled them, till she came to the strangers, when she growled a little, and sniffed and sniffed; if cats could turn up their noses, she"d have turned up hers, but as she couldn"t she only growled and pushed them with her paw, and looked at them, all the time sniffing contemptuously.
Johnny and Rosy were nearly ready to cry.
"Is she "dopting "em?" whispered Rosy.
"Keep still, can"t you!" said Phil; "don"t interrupt her. Let her do as she wants to."
The children held their breaths and watched. It looked very discouraging. Mammy t.i.ttleback walked round and round, looking much perplexed and not at all pleased. One minute she would stand still and stare at the pile of kittens, as if she did not know what to make of it; then she would fall to smelling and licking her own. At last, by mistake perhaps, she gave a little lick to one of the orphans.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "Mammy t.i.ttleback walked round and round, looking much perplexed and not at all pleased."--PAGE 28.]
"Oh, oh," screamed Johnny, "she"s going to, she"s licked it;" at which Phil gave Johnny a great shake, and told him to be quiet or he"d spoil everything. Presently Mammy t.i.ttleback lay down again and stretched herself out, and in less than a minute all six of her own kittens and the two strongest of the strangers were sucking away as hard as ever they could.
The children jumped for joy; but their joy was dampened by the sight of the other two feeble little kittens, who lay quite still and did not try to crowd in among the rest.
"Are they dead?" asked Rosy.
"No," said Johnny, picking them up,--"no; but I guess they will die pretty soon, they don"t maow." And he laid them down very gently close in between Mammy t.i.ttleback"s hind legs.
"Well, they might as well," remarked Phil. "Eight kittens are enough.