The Cat and the Captain/Chapter 2

by Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth

Chapter II

A good Cat at heart . . . .

ABOUT five o'clock the Captain came home. He was not a big man but he carried a very big umbrella. He had wrinkles around his eyes from looking long distances, and he walked as though the street were going up and down under him, because he had spent so much of his time on the decks of boats. Everybody loved the Captain the moment they saw him because he was so kind and so jolly.

The Cat loved him, too, but took a naughty pride in not showing it, except sometimes when they were alone together. Then he would jump on the Captain's knee and rub his head against the Captain's chin, and go to sleep curled in the hollow of his arm. And how careful the Captain would be not to move! They understood each other very well, and the Captain used to say that he had never shipped with a better shipmate than his black cat. But to-day the Cat was in a bad humor, as he walked out from under the veranda.

"Well, well, there you are, hey?" said the Captain, and he opened the door and waited for the Cat to come in. But the Cat only looked at him. He was being provoking.

"Don't you want to come in?" asked the Captain.

The Cat still looked at him.

"All right," said the Captain, "if you won't, you won't, my lad," and he started to shut the door.

But before he could get it shut the Cat came in.

It was a curious room, though neither the Cat nor the Captain thought so. It was both living room and dining room. There was a big fireplace of red brick with a Dutch oven at one side, and there were hooked rugs on the floor, some of them with designs of harbors or lighthouses on them. On the walls hung compasses and sea charts; and round glass balls (used to float fishing nets) shone in the windows like big blue and white bubbles. A model of the Captain's first ship, the Foam Flower, spread its sails high on the mantelpiece beyond reach of the Cat. There was a little boat in a bottle—it was a mystery how the masts and rigging ever got through the neck; and there were two pink conch shells from the West Indies.

In the window hung Jericho, the parrot. Poor Jericho had died a long time ago, before the Cat was so much as born. The Captain had been fond of Jericho, and couldn't bear to think of looking up and not seeing him in his place. So Jericho was stuffed and there he still hung in his cage. Once a week Susannah opened the door of the cage and took Jericho out and carefully dusted him.

And Susannah kept all the brass in the room shining brightly—the Captain was very particular about that. But neither the Captain nor Susannah noticed that sometimes a few crumbs were left under the table. Only the Cat knew it. When the Captain sat down and lit his pipe, the Cat sat down, too, but instead of jumping into his chair opposite the Captain, he sat on the floor and watched the crumbs. It was very still except for the tick-tock-ticking of the cuckoo clock, and the steps of Susannah getting supper ready in the kitchen. The Cat never stirred. After a long while, something moved along the edge of the floor; something ran out on the carpet; something began to nibble a crumb.

Before you could have said, "Jack Robinson!" the Cat had that mouse by the neck.

The door into the kitchen was open a little, so in walked the Cat and dropped the mouse at Susannah's feet. Some cats think that a mouse makes a nice present for the person they love, but this cat knew how Susannah felt about mice.

"Help! Fire! Murder! Police!" yelled Susannah, climbing onto a kitchen chair as fast as she could scramble.

"Why, what's the trouble?" asked the Captain, stumping into the kitchen in a great hurry.

"He's a-clamberin' up de chair!" yelled Susannah. "He's a-clamberin' up de chair!"

The Cat dropped the mouse at Susannah's feet

The mouse was far wiser than that. He had run back to his hole like lightning. But the Captain had to look under the chair, and up the chair legs, and then take a candle and hunt in all the corners of the kitchen before Susannah would come down. Even then she was very much upset. Said she to the Captain, "Boss, if I had a cat like this yere one, I wouldn't have him long!" and she began singing:

"I'se known a heap ob bad cats,
But he's the worstest I'se known.
If he was mine, I'd take him to the gyarden
And bury him like a bone——
Like a bone, like a bone, jus' like a wicked ol' bone!"

"He's really a good cat at heart," said the Captain sadly, for he always wanted the Cat and Susannah to be friends. He couldn't understand why they didn't get on better and he scolded the Cat a little when they sat in their chairs by the fire. But the Cat treated the whole thing as an accident, and stretched his paws and looked at the Captain with big sleepy eyes and purred to himself as he listened to Susannah singing crossly in the kitchen.