On Cats. Doris Lessing

to go on the moors, I found black cat coming after me to the car, miaowing. It was not that she wanted to go in the car with me; she did not want me to go at all. I noticed that as I drove away, she climbed on a wall, or into a tree, with her back protected, and she did not come down until I returned. Grey cat was beating her up when I was away. Black cat was by then very pregnant, and this second litter was coming too soon after the first. Grey cat was much stronger than she. This time I smacked grey cat very hard; and I told her what I thought of her. She understood well enough. When I went off driving I put black cat in the cottage, and locked grey cat out. Grey cat sulked. Black cat was subdued; but, supported by us, took back the armchair and would not let grey cat near it.

      Grey cat therefore went out in the garden, which was now a half acre of low stubble. She caught some mice and brought them in, leaving them in the middle of the floor. We were not pleased, and threw them out. Grey cat removed herself from the cottage and spent her days in the open.

      Down a tiny path between stone walls is a little glade, which, once we had cut the grass that filled it shoulder-high proved to have set in its depths a smooth silent pool. Over the pool hangs a great tree; around it grass, then shrubs and bushes.

      There is a stone near the edge of the pool. Grey cat sat on it and looked at the water. Was it dangerous? An expanse of water was as new to her as fire had been. A wind made ripples, which washed at the stone’s edge and wetted her paws. She let out a petulant complaint and chased back to the house. Where she sat outside the door, ears moving, looking down the path to the pool. Slowly, she made her way back – not at once: grey cat could never admit so quickly that she might be wrong about something. First she posed herself, licked herself, preened herself, to show indifference. Then she took a circuitous route to the pool, through the high patch of garden, and down over a rocky bank. The stone was still there, by the water. The water, slightly moving, was there. And over it, the low-hanging tree. Cat picked her way annoyedly through wet grass like an old lady. She sat on the stone and looked at the water. The boughs over her swung and moved in the wind; and again the water washed up to her paws. She withdrew them and sat upright, in a tight close pose. She looked up at the tree, which was in a flurry of movement – that was familiar to her. She considered the moving water. Then she did something I’ve seen her do with her food. Both grey cat and black cat, when offered food that is unfamiliar to them, will put out a paw and touch it. They prod it, pat it, lift the paw to their mouths and first smell, then lick the new substance. Grey cat stretched out a paw to the water, not quite touching it. She withdrew it. She nearly ran away then: her muscles tensed in an impulse of flight, but she decided not. She put down her mouth and licked at the water. But she did not like it. It was not like the water she drinks from my glass beside the bed, at night; nor like the drops that fall from a tap which she puts her mouth sideways to catch. She put a paw right into the water, held it there, brought it out, licked the paw. Water, right enough. Something she knew, or a variety of it.

      Grey cat crouched on the stone, face held over the pool, and looked at her reflection. Nothing odd about this: she is familiar with mirrors. But ripples washed back and forth and her reflection disintegrated. She put a paw to her picture in the water, but, unlike a mirror, her paw went through it, into wet. She sat up, obviously annoyed. All too much for her, she stalked daintily back to the house, through the wet grass. There, having told black cat with her eyes how much she hated her, she sat in front of the fire, back to black cat, who watched her, on guard, from the chair.

      Grey cat returned to the pool, to the stone. Sitting on the stone, she observed that the tree was a favourite place for birds, who, the moment she left the glade, swooped to the water, drank from it, played in it, flew across it, back and forth. Grey cat now visited the pool for the sake of the birds. But she never caught a bird there. She did not, I think, catch any birds at the cottage. Perhaps because there are so many cats around there and the birds know them?

      Driving around the lanes at night, the headlights are always picking up cats; cats in the hedgerows hunting mice, cats trotting along just out of the wheels’ reach; cats on gates; cats on walls.

      During the first week at the cottage, which is apparently a retreat, well tucked away behind trees and walls from the road and from other houses, several cats came to see who the new people were, and what new cats might have arrived.

      In the middle of a night, I saw a reddish tail disappearing out of the open window. I thought, a cat; and went back to sleep. Next day in the shop however, they said foxes came after cats off Dartmoor. All kinds of nasty stories about foxes and cats. But you can’t lock cats up in the country; a landscape so full of cats does not seem much evidence of danger from foxes, or from anything else.

      The red tail turned out to belong to a handsome reddish-brown cat, which was chased away from the cottage by grey cat, who by now had made the cottage her own. Soon she was chasing away visitors from the gate, which is a hundred yards from the house. The cottage and the fields around it was now grey cat’s territory; and we might come across her sunning herself in the long grasses of the little field above the house, or crouched in the long field below it, where there are boggy patches and the birds come to drink.

      Then – invasion. The fences on one side were down, and one morning I went to start the fire, and found both cats on the windowsill, temporarily in alliance because outside the window lumbered and crashed and bellowed great smelling beasts which they had never seen before. Black cat let out her sad hollow plaint: Everything is too much, what is this? I can’t manage, please help. And grey cat was shrieking defiance from the safety of the sill. The cattle from near fields had broken through the fences and were pouring down past the house to the pool and to the long field which, as it was obvious they knew, was ripe for grazing. There was no one to help me chase the cattle out, not till much later that day; and the farmer did not appear. About fifty beasts made themselves at home, and the cats were distraught. They ran from windowsill to windowsill, and then out of the front door, in short angry rushes, and they complained bitterly, until help appeared and the enormous threatening beasts were shooed back to their own fields. Safety. The cats had learned there was no danger from this sort of animal. For when, a couple of days later, the gate was left open and ponies came in off the moor, the cats did not complain, they were not frightened. Eight little ponies grazed in the old garden; and grey cat picked her way out to them, sat on the stone wall and watched them. She would not come down off the wall; but she was interested, and stayed until they decided to leave.

      Cats will watch creatures, activities, actions unfamiliar to them, for hours. The making of a bed, the sweeping of a floor, packing or unpacking a case, sewing, knitting – anything, they will watch. But what are they seeing? A couple of weeks ago, black cat and a couple of kittens sat in the middle of the floor and watched me cut cloth. They observed the moving scissors, the way my hands moved, the way the cloth was put in different heaps. They were there, absorbed, all morning. But I don’t suppose they were seeing what we think. What, for instance, does grey cat see when she watches, for half an hour at a time, the way motes move in a column of sunlight? Or when she looks at the leaves moving in the tree outside the window? Or when she lifts her eyes to the moon over the chimney pots?

      Black puss, meticulous educator of her kittens, never loses an opportunity for a lesson or a moral. Why should she spend a morning, a kitten on either side, watching the flash of metal in dark cloth, why does she sniff the scissors, sniff the cloth, walk around the field of operations and then communicate some observation to the kittens, so that they perform the same actions – interspersed, since they are kittens, with all kinds of tricks and games? But they sniff the scissors, sniff the cloth, do what their mother has just done. Then sit and watch. She is learning something and teaching them, there is no doubt of it.

       Chapter Eight

      Black cat was not well before her second litter. There was a large bald patch on her back, and she was thin. And she was overanxious: for the week before she did not like being left alone. The cottage was full of people, and it was easy to see she had company. Then, at the weekend, there were three women, and the weather was bad, and we wanted to drive to the coast and watch a cold and stormy sea. But black cat would not let us go. We were all irritable: