They never fought again, but it was a miserable fortnight that followed, and all the misery was poor Puss-cat’s. Agag, in spite of his beauty, had no heart, and did not mind how many cats I kept, so long as they did not molest him, or usurp his food or his cushion. But Puss-cat, though she understood that for some inscrutable reason she had to share her house with Agag, and not fight him, was a creature of strong affections, and her poor little soul was torn with agonies of jealousy. Jill, it is true, who was always treated with contemptuous unconsciousness by Agag, was certainly pleased to see her friend again, and had not forgotten her; but Pusscat wanted so much more than Jill could give her. She took on her old duties at once, but often when she escorted the fish into the dining-room and found Agag asleep on his chair, she would be literally unable to go through with them, and would sit in a corner by herself, looking miserably and uncomprehendingly at me. Then perhaps the smell of fish would wake up Agag, and he would stretch himself and stand for a moment with superbly-arched back on his chair, before he jumped down, and with loud purrings rubbed himself against the legs of my chair to betoken his desire for food, or even would jump up on to my knees. That was the worst of all for Puss-cat, and she would often sit all dinner through in her remote corner, refusing food, and unable to take her eyes off the object of her jealousy. While Agag was present, no amount of caresses or attentions offered to her would console her, so that, when Agag had eaten, we usually turned him out of the room. Then for a little while Puss-cat had respite from her Promethean vulture; she would go her rounds again to see that everybody was pleased, and escort fresh dishes in with high-stepping walk and erect tail.
We hoped, foolishly perhaps, that in course of time the two would become friends; else, I think, I should have at once tried to find another home for Agag. But indeed, short of that, we did all we could do, lavishing attentions on dear Puss-cat, and trying to make her feel (which indeed was true) that we all loved her, and only liked and admired Agag. But while we still hoped, Puss-cat had had more than she could bear, and once again she disappeared. Jill missed her for a little while, Agag not at all. But the rest of us miss her still.
THERE AROSE A KING
Agag, though of undoubtedly royal blood, was never a real king. He was no more than one of the Hyksos, a shepherd-king, bound by the limitations of his race, and no partaker in its magnificence. Naturally, he did not work as the late housekeeper had done (and no one expected that of him), but he had neither the splendour nor the vivacity, possessed, let us say, by Henry VIII. or George IV., to make up for his indolence in affairs of state. Henry VIII., anyhow, busied himself in marriages, whereas Agag was merely terrified at the idea of wooing, not to say winning, any of the princesses that were brought to his notice; and they, on their part, only made the rudest faces at him. Again George IV., though unkingly in many respects, used to plunge about in the wild pursuit of pleasure, and was supposed to have a kind heart. Agag, on the contrary, never plunged: a cushion and some fish and plenty of repose were the sum of his desires, and as for a kind heart, he never had a heart at all. An unkind heart would have given him some semblance of personality, but there was not the faintest room to suppose that any emotion, other than the desire for food and sleep and warmth, came within measurable distance of him. He died in his sleep, probably of apoplexy, after a large meal, and beautiful in death as in life, was buried and forgotten. I have never known a cat so completely devoid of character, and I sometimes wonder whether he was a real cat at all, and not some sort of inflated dormouse in cat’s clothing.
There followed a republican regime in this matter of cats. We went back, after Agag, to working cats, who would sit at mouse-holes for hours together, pounce and devour, and clean themselves and sleep, but among them all there was no “character” which ever so faintly resembled even Martha, far less Pusscat.
I suppose the royalty of Agag, stupid and dull though he was, had infected me with a certain snobbishness as regards cats, and secretly—given that there were to be no more of those splendid plebeians, like Puss-cat—I longed for somebody who combined royal descent (for the sake of beauty and pride) with character, good or bad. Nero or Heliogabalus or Queen Elizabeth, or even the Emperor William II. of Germany would have done, but I didn’t want George I. on the one side or a mere mild President of a small republic on the other.
Just after Agag’s death I had moved up to London, and for a time there was this succession of unnoticeable heads of the state. They were born—those presidents of my republic—from respectable hard-working families, and never gave themselves out (though they knew quite well that they were the heads of the state) to be anything else but what they were: good, hard-working cats, with, of course, not only a casting, but a determining vote on all questions that concerned them or anybody else.
We were democratic in those days, and I am afraid “freedom broadened slowly down” from president to president. We were loyal, law-abiding citizens under their rule, but when our president was sitting at the top of the area steps, taking the air after his morning’s work, it used to be no shock to me to see him tickled on the top of his head by people like tradesmen coming for orders, or a policeman or a nursery-maid. The president, in these circumstances, would arch a back, make poker of a tail, and purr. Being at leisure and unoccupied with cares of State, he did not pretend to be anything but bourgeois. The bourgeoisie had access to him; he would play with them, without any sense of inequality, through the area railings. There was a nursery-maid, I remember, whom our last president was very much attached to. He used to make the most terrific onslaughts at her shoelaces.
But now all that regime is past. We are royalist again to the core, and Cyrus, of undoubtedly royal descent, is on the throne. The revolution was accomplished in the most pacific manner conceivable. A friend, on my birthday, two years ago, brought a small wicker basket, and the moment it was opened the country, which for a month or two had been in a state of darkest anarchy, without president or any ruler, was a civilized state again, with an acknowledged king. There was no war; nothing sanguinary occurred. Only by virtue of the glory of our king we became a great Power again. Cyrus had arranged that his pedigree should come with him; this was much bigger than Cyrus, and, being written on parchment (with a large gold crown painted at the head of it), was far more robust than he whose ancestors it enumerated. For his majesty, as he peered over the side of the royal cradle, did not seem robust at all. He put two little weak paws on the edge of his basket and tried to look like a lion, but he had no spirit to get farther. Then he wrinkled up his august face, and gave a sneeze so prodigious that he tumbled out of the basket altogether, and by accident (or at the most by catarrh) set foot in the dominions where he still reigns. Of course, I was not quite so stupid as not to recognize a royal landing, though made in so unconventional a manner; it was only as if George IV., in one of his numerous landings on some pier (so fitly commemorated by the insertion of a large brass boot print), had fallen flat on his face instead, and was commemorated by a full-length brass, with top-hat a little separate.
Babies of the human species, it is true, are all like each other, and I would defy any professor of Eugenics or of allied and abstruse schools of investigation to say, off-hand, whether a particular baby, divorced from his surroundings, is the Prince of Wales or Master Jones. But, quite apart from his pedigree, there was never any question at all about Cyrus. There was no single hair on his lean little body that was not of the true and royal blue, and his ears already were tufted inside with downy growth, and his poor little eyes, sadly screened by the moisture of his catarrh, showed their yellow topaz irises, that were never seen on Master Jones. So he tumbled upside down into his new kingdom, and, recovering himself, sat up and blinked, and said, “Ah-h-h.” I took him up very reverently in both hands, and put him on my knee. He made an awful face, like a Chinese grotesque instead of a Persian king, but anyhow it was an Oriental face. Then he put a large paw in front of his diminutive nose and went fast asleep. It had been a most fatiguing sneeze.
Royal Persian babies, as you perhaps know, must never, after they have said good-bye to their royal mammas, be given milk. When they are thirsty they must have water; when they are hungry they have little finely chopped-up dishes of flesh and fish and fowl. As Cyrus slept,