A QUESTION OF ANIMAL ETHICS.
HOW it got into the room was a mystery that has never been solved. It might have come down the chimney, or np through the floor; either mode of entrance would have been appropriate to its black and impish aspect. It appeared all at once, from somewhere, in the midst of the assembled family one February evening. Nobody owned it. The situa- tion of parlour cat was just then vacant: there was a stable cat, but she clearly had nothing to say to this thing, which was not exactly a kitten, though from its size it should still have been under guardianship. It was very small, but its face, like a slum-baby's, wore an air of incalculable age, lined and worn as you could not conceive a cat-face worn, and half- human in its expressiveness, with the dreary, sad patience of extreme poverty. An animated discussion about something or other was going on when all at once somebody caught sight of the Brown Brother's face, not, as usual, intent on the conversation, but petrified in a stupefaction of horror. He had caught sight of the black thing and was for the moment thunderstruck. A strange cat in his parlour paralysed the springs of action ; the effrontery was incredible. For a few seconds he could not move. The family, too, were at first too sur- prised to interfere. The Brown Brother was the first to act. He rose without haste, opening wide, toothy jaws, prepared to make one gulp of the intruder, and waiting, dog fashion, for the first movement to come from the offender. The black thing looked at him, consideringly and without alarm, ignoring the human mortals in the room (the dog was its only interest). It stood within a yard of him, quite composed and looking up with an uncanny elfin face, like a rickety child's ; then it walked across to the dog and reared itself on two inadequate legs to rub a scarred black head against the large-toothed destruction gaping above.
The Brown Brother, aghast, sat down suddenly on end and remained bolt upright, nose uplifted to heaven as if in appeal, while be regarded the black intruder with a horrified sidelong glance. Such a thing had never happened to him before ; his universe rocked on its foundations. Dogs and men have their moral code (different in either case), that of the former com- prising cats and such. Violation of it produces on both the same effect of stupefaction, the foundations of things shake, and moral dizziness ensues.
The black thing found it difficult to reach the dog's jaws, and was rubbing itself round his fore-legs, rigid with disgusted embarrassment. How was he to bite a thing that walked into his mouth P His moral equilibrium sustained a shock, and he sat shivering with the whites of his eyes turned inside. At this point the family took action. Somebody made a dive and picked up the black thing which now, for the first time, paid attention to the fact that other people were in the room. This circumstance did not disturb its composure. It appeared to have a mild system of philosophy to the effect that " that which is, is," and submitted itself for inspection without protest. It was certainly the oddest creature ever classed under the heading cat, being more like a black bag on sticks with a head attached—a shabby bag with bald patches in its fur, as though it were moth-eaten, and, worse than baldness, with hard skin here and there where it had been sore and was healing. Its legs were stiff and its figure sagged in the middle as though its backbone were feeble. There was a bit off its tail and pieces out of its ears ; its nose was misshapen and its eyes weak. It had no beauty, poor waif, and none of the pretty cat-airs that make the grace and weakness of luckier pussies so urgent a claim on the protection of the strong. It was a straight- forward cat, unfeline in that, for the cat is by nature the subtlest of diplomatists, and when she does happen to be act- ing candidly manages to convey the impression that she has an ulterior motive, which is, after all, the aim of the best international diplomacy.
From its size you would have guessed the black thing four or five months old, but from the pitifully wise face as many centuries. It must have had a dismal pre-existence to get all that amount of sad knowledge into its small misshapen head, and, whatever it might have been, it had made another bad shot at reincarnation when it struggled into being in this derelict form. No normal cat was ever so destitute. But though it was desperately poor it seemed to cherish no special grudge against fate, which was probably what kept it alive. When you resist you are crushed. One must have learned an immense deal of passiveness to keep on living as this thing bad lived.
It had a kind of humble philosophy, and was not craven though it bad clearly been ill-used. It had no fear of people ; it was quite indifferent to them and expected nothing. When, later, it learned to associate them with meals and good dis- positions, it acknowledged these politely, but its affection was reserved for the Brown Brother, who, poor gentleman, neither desired nor encouraged attentions by which he was plainly embarrassed, but which were none the less unremitting. The thing persecuted him with marks of a devotion which he did not want. It followed him, sat beside him, lay by him, extended itself upon him when he sat down, which he did sheepishly and with reluctance, knowing a demonstration was sure to follow which he could not pre- vent, and which clearly made him feel a fool—as what mule thing would not ! The kitten quickly discovered the uses of a fire, and when the dog spread himself before one would lay itself across his waistcoat, its own back warmed by the blaze and the front of its person comforted by his largo brown one. He disliked this, but argument was useless ; he knew this persistent admirer would follow him everywhere, and he did not want to leave the fire. He would survey it for a disgusted minute through a half-open eye, and then snore, hoping his family might possibly be deceived into supposing he did not know it was there. When he waked up it would play with him, solemnly patient of his affronted unwillingness, and per- sisting as though he were a dull kitten whom it was a duty to teach. It ate off his plate, and this, after the first indigna- tion, he also bore. It mattered the less, he found, in that his portion disappeared in half-a-dozen gulps before the kitten's mouth was full, and she afterwards never resented his raids on her plate, though the family did. These raids were frequent for the starveling ate prodigiously, as though it had centuries of, starvation to make up for. After a while the Brown Brother, not only got used to his kitten, but condescended to take an interest in it, carrying it about by its head (which it never objected to) and licking its scars, no doubt to their benefit. By-and-by he gradually drifted—male fashion—into the superior attitude, and began to assume that the kitten was his foundling, regardless of fact. This view of things made him feel better, his self-esteem revived, and he began to like the kitten. The wee thing's attitude towards life was very pathetic. It was pitifully unobtrusive and assumed no rights. Life had made no place for it ; it had bad to take what it found ; and it was very, very small, without even the protection of a normal self-conceit. Its absence of vanity was one of the moat pitiful things about it. Nature has provided that defence for helpless creatures in a hard world, and a she-thing destitute of this—the last protection—is in hard case. The stable cat, a resourceful and prolific person, holding repre- sentative views, disapproved of the newcomer, probably because of its helplessness, and spat vigorously when they met. The black kitten seemed afraid of her; also it very much disliked to be alone in the dark—these were the only protests its meek soul ever offered.
After a good many weeks the black kitten developed a kind of croupy cough and seemed very ill all at once. It was wrapped up and nursed, but grew worse, and sat choking in a great chair, the pitifullest mite, with closed eyes and a strip of red flannel round its throat. It looked such a forlorn waif, this speck among the charges of omnipotence ; its smallness and patience made it heartrending. The family doctor pre- scribed with a serious face, the household gathered, concerned and unavailing, round the meek, red-flannelled atom choking there unreproachful, oppressed by ill-luck from the start, wholly piteous in the face of imminent dissolution. The Brown Brother had to be kept away because he could not understand that his kitten was ill, and still wanted to carry it about by its head. It was too ill to show its nurses any signs of gratitude, a quality for which it had never had any use until too lately. It seemed to die, only because the weight of this great world was too much for its little body, and so it made an unobtrusive exit from a place where it had been reeled badly from the beginning.
The Brown Brother missed his kitten. It would be too much to say that he sorrowed profoundly, but he was thought- ful for some weeks and appeared to regret a loss. There was another change in his moral (or unmoral) nature, which he regretted, too, and this was an inability to go for oats in
the wholehearted fashion of yore. Not that he had ever been known to worry a cat, but he was accustomed to dash at any and every one with a great pretence of murderous dispositions, and all the admonitions of his owner never kept him from doing it again next time. Now the zest seemed gone, he charged without rapture, and came back to his mistress's skirts with an air of puzzled injury. Imagine a Mephistopheles getting converted and regretting it, thinking of all the bad things he would like to do and could not do. The Brown Brother, no Mephistopheles but a plain dog, had got himself somehow encumbered with a new sense, a kind of moral sense which he did not want in the least because it hampered his enjoyments and fettered his freedom. The black kitten episode bad demoralized his canine ethics, his theories sustained a. reversal, and he has never been his own dog since. Once only did the unregenerate dog within him triumph in a brief moment of ecstasy. It happened like this. The stable- cat, passing in the sun, said or looked opprobrious things at the Brown Brother dozing at a distance. He made a dash and got her by the leg. The stable-cat clawed his nose with fervour and precision, using stable-language the while until be let go. His mistress beat him with her gloves (to the joy of the stable-cat), and he feigned apology, but the memory of that dash kept green for months amid an arid layer of sancti- monious decorum.
More trials were impending for him. A brown Persian came to rule, impregnable in the possession of every charm of sophisticated cat-hood. She reigned with engaging tyranny and kept down the unhappy Brown Brother with a ruthless paw, the grace of her flatteries to the household masking her villainy to him. For four long years he threatened to have her blood, but refrained, hampered by a troublesome moral sentiment that he would rather have been without. Then Providence removed his enemy, and so far from showing indecent satisfaction he attended her funeral with every mark of regret on his honest countenance. There were those who accused him of base ulterior designs, but the forget-me-note on her grave have never been disturbed, she sleeps in peace. He is a changed dog, but not always a comfortable one. He drowses on his lawn, secure from insult; when strange cats appear he makes a fine pretence of frenzy, but subsides grumbling, a blighted dog, at a shrill summons from his mis- tress. Why does he subside P He is radically disobedient, he would like to chase those cats, and he knows the beatings do not really hurt. What compensation can dog-morals offer for the forfeited joys of the chase P And if he is subdued by some moral law within it does not seem to make him comfort- able. In. an endeavour to gauge animal ethics his owner has of late been perplexed over two points : Which is the more uncomfortable to support, one's own lack of moral sense or somebody else's P And how far is it possible to impose the moral standard of one person upon another P Especially when the other person is a beast. It becomes a difficult question.
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