dawn or twilight, flashing like a streak of black-barred gold through the tall grass, or gliding phantom-like through the mesquites. The fire in her elemental eyes was undimmed, the muscles rippling under her fur unsoftened by age. That was nearly twenty years ago. It would not surprise me to learn that she still lives among the cactus-grown valleys and the mesquite-clad hills. Some things are too elemental to die.
Just now I am uncertain as to the number of cats I possess. I could not prove my ownership of a single cat, but several have come and taken up their abode in the feed shed and beside the back step, allowed me to feed them, and at times bestowed upon me the favor of a purr. So long as no one claims them, I suppose I can look on them as my property.
I am uncertain as to their numbers, because there has been an addition to the community, and I do not know how many. I hear them squalling among the hay bales, but I have not had an opportunity to count them. I know only that they are the offspring of a stocky, lazy gray cat, whose democratic mongrel blood is diluted with some sort of thoroughbred stock.
At one time there were five. One was a black and white cat whose visits were furtive and soon ceased. One was a grey and white female, undersized, as so many good mousers are, and like a good killer, possessed of a peculiarly thin whining voice. Because of her preference to the sheds and feed stalls, she bore the casual name of Barn-cat. Another was a magnificent image of primitive savagery—a giant yellow cat, plainly half-breed, mongrel mixed with some stock that might have been Persian. So he was referred to as “the Persian.”
I have found that the average yellow cat is deficient in courage. The Persian was an exception. He was the biggest, most powerful, mixed-breed I ever saw, and the fiercest. He was always ravenous, and his powerful jaws crushed chicken bones in a startling manner. He ate, indeed, more like a dog than a cat. He was not indolent or fastidious. He was a lusty soldier of fortune, without morals or scruples, but possessed of an enviable vitality.
He was enamored of Barn-cat, and no woman could have acted the coquette with greater perfection. She treated him like a dog. He wooed her in his most ingratiating manner, to be rewarded by spitting abuse and scratches. A lion in dealing with members of his own sex, he was a lamb with Barn-cat.
Let him approach her in the most respectable manner, and she was transformed into a spitting, clawing fury. Then when he retired discouraged, she invariably followed him, picking at him, teasing him, and giving him no peace of mind. Yet if he took hope and attempted any advances on the ground of her actions, she instantly assumed the part of an insulted virgin and greeted him with bared teeth and claws.
Her treatment of him was in strong contrast with her attitude toward Hoot, a big black and white spotted cat whose coloring made him look as if he were wearing the nose guard of a football helmet. Hoot was too lazy to woo Barn-cat, and she tolerated him, or rather ignored him entirely. He could push her off his chosen napping-spot, step on her ear on his way to the feed pan, or even appropriate choice morsels from her personal meal, and she showed no resentment, whereas if the Persian attempted any of these things, she was ready to rend him. On the other hand, her contempt for Hoot was apparent, and she never accorded him either the teasing or the resentment she accorded the Persian.
Their romance was not so very different from some human romances, and like all romances, came to its end. The Persian was a fighter. So much of his time was spent recovering from wounds, that he was always gaunt, and there were always several partly healed scars on his head and body. Finally he limped in with fresh wounds and a broken leg. He lay around for a short time, refusing assistance, and then disappeared. I think that, following his instincts, he dragged himself away somewhere to die.
Barn-cat’s career was short. Soon after her lover met his end, she appeared one morning with her tail almost chewed off close to her body. Doubtless she had internal wounds. She was the only one of the crew worth her salt as a mouser, and while she normally avoided big grey rats, I believe they were at last responsible for her doom. And any rate, she too vanished with her wounds and did not return.
The grey cat and her kittens remain, with Hoot, who still sleeps in the sun, too lazy even to keep himself clean. He is the only cat I ever saw which allowed its fur to remain dusty. After a sandstorm he is a disreputable sight for days. Perhaps he catches mice at night, but he shows no enthusiasm for anything but loafing during the day.
The life of a cat is not numbered by nine. Usually it is short, violent and tragic. He suffers, and makes others suffer if he can. He is primitive, bestially selfish. He is, in short, a creature of awful and terrible potentialities, a crystalization of primordial self-love, a materialization of the blackness and squalor of the abyss. He is a green-eyed, steel-thewed, fur-clad block of darkness hewed from the Pits which know not light, nor sympathy, nor dreams, nor hope, nor beauty, nor anything except hunger and the satiating of hunger. But he has dwelt with man since the beginning, and when the last man lies down and dies, a cat will watch his throes, and likelier than not, will gorge its abysmal hunger on his cooling flesh.
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