'It is time they were taught to lap!' said Auntie May.
'Oh, Auntie May,' cried Rosamond, 'how dreadfully exciting! I was wondering when you were going to begin that! It will be dreadfully exciting, won't it?'
'It will be dreadfully messy,' answered Auntie May. 'I must do it in an old frock and my art pinafore.'
'Oh, Auntie May, I shall love to see you in a pinafore! You will look like a big French doll—that one of mine that Kitty spoiled.'
'Hush2, don't speak ill of the absent. I daresay Kitty enjoyed the destruction of Wilhelmina very much, as much as Petronilla liked mumbling3 my white satin shoes last year. I forgave her. One must pay for one's pets.'
'And I forgave Kitty,' said Rosamond; 'besides, I am twelve now and past dolls. When shall we begin to feed the kittens?'
'Wait a bit!' mother said; but, of course, once having got the idea into Their heads, they took no notice. Auntie May got the big pinafore she had when she was an art student, out of a box, and put it on. Then she fetched a tiny china spoon with forget-me-nots all over it, and sent Rosamond down for some milk and some hot water. Then Rosamond and she squatted4 down on the floor beside our bed, and mother eyed them scornfully over the edge of it.
'Now, you silly old Petronilla, we are going to relieve you of some of your work. Four kittens are too much for you. You are beginning to look rather fagged in spite of Beef-tea and Kreochyle and Hovis food. Children, dear, you cost a pretty penny.'
These were the names of some of the messes They were continually bringing up in saucers and planting out by mother's bedside, and which she hopped5 out and licked up and came back again saying that Auntie May had a feeling heart and that she adored her, since, as every one ought to know, the way to a cat's heart is through its stomach, whatever may be the cause of affection afterwards. And mother did love Auntie May quite desperately6 much, and Auntie May could always see it in her eyes, though mother was not otherwise demonstrative.
Well, as I was saying, they managed to unhitch Fred's claws and mouth, and laid him in Auntie May's lap, and put the point of the little china spoon in between his teeth. He sputtered8 and choked, and he seemed to have a white beard when they let him alone again.
'He isn't taking any this time!' said Auntie May. There were white streams wandering through the rucks of her pinafore.
'Of course he is not taking any of your extraordinary preparation,' said mother. 'You are in too great a hurry to have him lap. He won't do it a moment before he is ready, and that will be when I decide to begin to wean him. You can try every day and you won't do him any harm, but you will only wet your pinafore.'
It was quite true. We none of us felt as if we could touch Auntie May's mixture, we so very much preferred mother's. Auntie May put us all back again, and stood up and shook herself, and the milk we hadn't taken ran down the creases9 of her pinafore on to the floor. They both went away, and Rosamond, as she went out of the door, recommended mother to tidy it by licking it up, partly in joke—at least mother took it that way, for, as she said, she was not a common cat, to eat up slops, and they would have to send Mary to wash it away with a cloth.
Next morning They tried us again, but still we couldn't, and Rosamond seemed so terribly disappointed that we asked mother to tell us how it was done.
'You have to put your tongue over the milk and catch some of it up in the curve of it, and flick11 it into your throat in the same movement. That's all there is!'
'And quite enough,' sighed lazy Freddy.
'Dogs do it differently,' mother continued. 'They put their tongue under the milk or water, or whatever it is they want to drink, but they toss it into their mouths in precisely12 the same way.'
'I shall never do it,' poor Zobeide complained. 'You will have to nurse me all my days, mother.'
'You great fat podge!' I said. (Zobeide was very roundabout.) 'Mother can't nurse you when you are taken away from her and sold, as you are sure to be. Then you will get thinner and thinner, till you starve, unless they feed you with a stylographic penholder, like poor Blanch13; but she was an invalid14.'
'Don't jar, children,' mother said, 'but give your minds to business. To-morrow, when they begin teaching you again, don't sputter7 so much, but try and make a start. It comes all at once, and once gained you never lose the art. You try and you seem no nearer, and suddenly—you find you can do it! Now I will tell you as a fact that I shan't be able to feed you exclusively for much longer. I don't know about looking fagged, but I certainly begin to feel it. I can't, for all the trouble I take, keep my coat as nice as I should like to, and that is a sure sign that the fatigue15 is beginning to tell on me. Four great kittens! They ought to have got a foster-mother—and I should not have liked that altogether! But I tell you that the time has come when you must all try to reinforce me and supplement what I can give you from extraneous16 sources.' Mother did use nice long words.
So next day, when they brought the whole set-out, I thought I would really have a good try, and I swallowed down the spoonful of milk without sputtering17. But that wasn't lapping, mother called loudly from the bed. I was stung by that, so when Auntie May put a little milk in a very flat saucer and ducked my head in it, I stayed in a minute and worked my tongue about. When I could positively18 bear it no longer, I came up again spitting and sputtering, not a drop of milk having gone down my throat. But I found that if she didn't roughly shove my head in, but let me bend over the saucer myself, and not go deep in, but skim about on the top, I could manage to flick up a little; though perhaps I only fancied I had done that, from the milk that got on to the fur about my mouth. It really was not at all bad stuff. Auntie May still went on putting the point of the little spoon down my throat, and I got a certain amount of milk into me that way, and wasn't so hungry afterwards. Fred, I must say, had no perseverance19. He sulked and tossed his head, jibbed, as Auntie May called it, and would have nothing to say to the spoon; while as for the saucer, he walked straight across that and out on the other side. I couldn't do the things Freddy does; he has a 'cheek,' Auntie May says, and Rosamond says he is like Kitty, whom I have never seen, but, judging from all they say of her, she must be the naughtiest kitten in Yorkshire. When Freddy has walked right through the saucer and is all whitened, he sits down and drinks the milk off his toes, showing that he knows quite well it is meant to eat, not to bathe in, and, as Auntie May says, simply defies her.
The bad example of my brother made me somehow determine I would accomplish lapping, and, sure enough, next day I did. You should have heard the noise They all made!
'Loki can do it! Loki has done it! He's lapped three laps! He is getting some into his mouth! He has lapped first! Hooray! Bravo, Loki!'
I heard Them, but I did not look round till I had lapped right down to the pattern on the saucer. Then I raised my head proudly. Everything looked quite different now somehow. I felt another kitten. Yet nothing really was changed. Rosamond's moonface was as round as ever, Auntie May was still sitting there with her apron20 full of great pools where Fred and Zobeide and Admiral Togo had let it run down out of the corners of their mouths, mother was purring away and looking at us all with her great big mournful eyes.
In less than a week I was no better or cleverer than everybody else. The others could do it too, but they hated the bother of it. The other way is really so much more convenient. And mother prefers it; she says that it brings us together. She says:
'As long as I nurse you children, I shall be devoted21 to you. I shall cosset22 you and shield you and watch over you, and get miserable23 if you are in a draught24 or let people handle you or tease you, and so on; but once you can look after yourselves, it will be a very different pair of paws, I warn you! That is cat rule all the world over. I shall not, I hope, be actually unkind, but I shall take the very slightest notice of you. Out of the nursery, out of mind. Lost to sight, to memory you will not be dear, for if I allowed myself to become unduly25 fond of any one of my children, how could I bear to have that child taken from me? One has to steel oneself. They under whom we live are responsible, though, perhaps, in a state of nature, in that jungle of which I have visions and of which I dream at night as if it were my kingdom, it would be the same—I cannot tell.'
We all said politely, 'Oh, mother, I am sure you would never be unkind,' but indeed afterwards we found she spoke26 quite truly. She could not help it; it was the way she was made. Cats have the softest outsides, but the hardest hearts of all animals. Later on, nobody would have known that she was my mother from the way she bullied27 me, and let out with her paws when I passed her sometimes, without the slightest warning, and didn't seem to care when I hurt myself at all. There was the time when I was ill and fed out of that very forget-me-not spoon that ought to have stirred up tender recollections. I bit a piece out of that spoon in a fit of temper one day when I felt particularly bad, and was in a blue rage in consequence. I damaged the spoon, of course, as mother pointed10 out, but I hurt myself far more. I bled, and the spoon did not. It had a rivet28 put in it and was as well as ever again.
I felt mother's unkindness very much, and it was of a piece with many other bits of her conduct. I have got over it now; indeed, I have had my revenge if I had wanted it, when I saw her making a slave of herself over another lot of kittens just as she had done over us. She began to be grateful to me then, for I made myself useful taking her place in the basket sometimes, and keeping the little wretches29 warm while she took a turn and stretched her legs, and went to look if Auntie May had been given or had bought anything new. Mother always took notice of that sort of thing; nothing new that came into the house ever escaped her for long. She even knew when Mr. Graham was engaged on a different picture, at least he said she did. She used to stand on her hind30 legs and plant her fore1 paws on the ledge31 of the easel and look at the painting he was doing quite gravely. The artist himself was certain that she knew, and he used to tickle32 her neck with his brush or his mahl-stick and say, 'Well, Petronilla, do you approve of my new subject?' That is how mother ascertained33 that it was new, for if he had covered all the canvas up, without leaving one little weeny corner white, how on earth could a poor cat tell? While she was away on these voyages of discovery, I curled round the kittens, and they liked me for about ten minutes till they found I was not their mother. I could not feed them, only wash them, and that I did very nicely and thoroughly34, so that mother said when she came back that she could not have done it better herself.
But this state of things was not until much later; for the present we four were the kittens of the hour, and she petted us, and was the dearest, sweetest little mother in the world.
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1
fore
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| adv.在前面；adj.先前的；在前部的；n.前部 | |
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2
hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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3
mumbling
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| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的现在分词 ) | |
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4
squatted
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| v.像动物一样蹲下( squat的过去式和过去分词 )；非法擅自占用（土地或房屋）；为获得其所有权；而占用某片公共用地。 | |
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5
hopped
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| 跳上[下]( hop的过去式和过去分词 )； 单足蹦跳； 齐足（或双足）跳行； 摘葎草花 | |
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6
desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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7
sputter
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| n.喷溅声；v.喷溅 | |
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8
sputtered
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| v.唾沫飞溅( sputter的过去式和过去分词 )；发劈啪声；喷出；飞溅出 | |
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9
creases
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| （使…）起折痕，弄皱( crease的第三人称单数 )； （皮肤）皱起，使起皱纹 | |
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10
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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11
flick
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| n.快速的轻打，轻打声，弹开；v.轻弹，轻轻拂去，忽然摇动 | |
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12
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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13
blanch
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| v.漂白；使变白；使(植物)不见日光而变白 | |
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14
invalid
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| n.病人，伤残人；adj.有病的，伤残的；无效的 | |
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fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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16
extraneous
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| adj.体外的；外来的；外部的 | |
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17
sputtering
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| n.反应溅射法；飞溅；阴极真空喷镀；喷射v.唾沫飞溅( sputter的现在分词 )；发劈啪声；喷出；飞溅出 | |
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18
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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perseverance
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| n.坚持不懈，不屈不挠 | |
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20
apron
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| n.围裙；工作裙 | |
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21
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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cosset
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| v.宠爱，溺爱 | |
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23
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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24
draught
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| n.拉，牵引，拖；一网（饮，吸，阵)；顿服药量，通风；v.起草，设计 | |
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25
unduly
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| adv.过度地，不适当地 | |
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26
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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27
bullied
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| adj.被欺负了v.恐吓，威逼( bully的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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rivet
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| n.铆钉；vt.铆接，铆牢；集中(目光或注意力) | |
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29
wretches
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| n.不幸的人( wretch的名词复数 )；可怜的人；恶棍；坏蛋 | |
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30
hind
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| adj.后面的，后部的 | |
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31
ledge
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| n.壁架，架状突出物；岩架，岩礁 | |
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32
tickle
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| v.搔痒，胳肢；使高兴；发痒；n.搔痒，发痒 | |
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33
ascertained
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| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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