Toots And Boots
by
CHAPTER I.
My name is Toots. Why, I have not the slightest idea. But I suppose very few people–cats or otherwise–are consulted about their own names. If they were, these would perhaps be, as a rule, more appropriate.
What qualities of mind or body my name was supposed to illustrate, I have not to this hour a notion. I distinctly remember the stage of my kittenhood, when I thought that Toots was the English for cream.
“Toots! Toots!” my young mistress used to say, in the most suggestive tones, creeping after me as I would creep after a mouse, with a saucerful of that delicious liquid in her hand.
“Toots is first-rate stuff,” I used to think, and I purred accordingly, for I never was an ungrateful cat.
This was in the dining-room, and in the morning. Later in the day, “Toots” was served in the drawing-room. It was between these two periods, I remember, that one day I found myself in the larder. Why I went there, puzzled me at the time; for if there is anything I hate it is a chill, and there was a horrid draught through a window pierced with tiny holes, which seemed to let in a separate blast for every hair of one’s fur. I followed the cook, it is true; but I did not follow the cook as a rule–not, for instance, when she went out to the coal-hole in the yard. I had slipped in under her dress. I was behind the potato-tub when she went out, shutting the door after her. For some mysterious reason I felt on the tip-claw of expectation. My nose twitched with agreeable sensations. An inward voice seemed to murmur, Toots! Regardless of the draughts, I sprang on to the shelf close under the window. And there was such a dish of cream! The saucers in which one got it at breakfast did not hold a twentieth part of what this brimming pan contained. As to the five o’clock china, in which visitors give you a tepid teaspoonful, with bits of old tea-leaves in it–I grinned at the thought as I drew in tongueful after tongueful of the thick yellow cream.
At this moment I heard my young mistress’s voice in the distant passages.
“Toots, Toots!” said she.
“I’ve got plenty,” purred I, lifting my head to speak, by a great effort.
“Toots, Toots!” she miowed on, for she wasn’t much quicker-witted than the rest of her race.
“No, thank you,” thought I; “and if you want five o’clock toots for yourself, I advise you to come here for it.” I thought this, but speak I really could not–I was too busy lapping.
It was delicious stuff! But when the dish was about three-parts empty, I began to feel as if I had had a good deal, and to wish I had more appetite for the rest. “It’s a shame to leave it, though,” I thought, “when a few more laps will empty the dish.” For I come of an ancient and rough-tongued cat family, who always lick their platters clean. So I set to work again, though the draught was most annoying, and froze the cream to butter on my whiskers.
I was polishing the glazed earthenware with the family skill, when I became conscious that the house was resounding to the cry of “Toots!”
“Toots, Toots!” squeaked the housemaid, in the servants’ hall.
“Toots, Toots!” growled the elderly butler, in the pantry.
“Toots, Toots, cock-a-Toots!” yelled that intolerable creature, the Macaw.
“Toots, Toots!” snapped the cook.
“Miow,” said I; for I had finished the cream, and could speak now, though I confess I did not feel equal to any great exertion.
The cook opened the door. She found me–she did not find the cream, which she had left in the dish ready for whipping.
Perhaps it was because she had no cream to whip, that she tried to whip me. Certainly, during the next half-hour, I had reason to be much confused as to the meaning of the word “Toots.” In the soft voice of my mistress it had always seemed to me to mean cream; now it seemed to mean kicks, blows, flapping dish-cloths, wash-leathers and dusters, pokers, carpet brooms, and every instrument of torture with which a poor cat could be chased from garret to cellar. I am pretty nimble, and though I never felt less disposed for violent exercise, I flatter myself I led them a good dance before, by a sudden impulse of affectionate trustfulness, I sprang straight into my mistress’s arms for shelter.