May Sarton - The Fur Person

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Text originally published in 1957 under the same title.

Pickle Partners Publishing 2014, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publishers Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

The Fur Person

By

May Sarton

Illustrations by Barbara Knox

Contents

When he was about two years old, and had been a Cat About Town for some time, glorious in conquests, but rather too thin for comfort, the Fur Person decided that it was time he settled down. This question of finding a permanent home and staff was not one to be approached lightly of a May morning like his casual relationships with various grocers in the neighborhood, kind but vulgar people who did not know how to address a Gentleman Cat. Not at all. This was to be a systematic search for a housekeeper suitable in every way. Every cat knows that the ideal housekeeper is an old maid, if possible living in a small house with a garden. The house should have both an attic and a cellar, the attic for fun and games, the cellar for hunting. Children, I regret to say, are to be avoided whenever possible. They are apt to distract the housekeeper from her duties, and their manners leave much to be desired.

The Fur Person owed his life to a small freckled boy, but he was very good at forgetting things he wished to forget, and this was one of them. It was quite true that the boy named Alexander had howled so loudly when a man from the Animal Rescue League came with a black bag that his mother had relented and said, looking down at the litter, Well, you may keep just one, Alexander. But youll have to choose quickly.

The one with the rather long tail, Alexander said without a moments hesitation, and dived into the box to rescue the small wobbly velvet pillow who was to turn into the Fur Person, but who was still so small that his ears were not yet unbuttoned and he could barely see out of vague blue eyes. The discomfort of having no mother but only an awkward boy was considerable, but his own proper mother, who would have licked him into shape and provided warm milk whenever he so much as murmured, had disappeared shortly after giving birth to five kittens with very high desperate voices. Instead, Alexander came (when he remembered it) with a medicine dropper and some inferior cows milk, carried the kitten around inside his leather jacket and was apt to squeeze him rather too tight; that may be why the Fur Person grew into a somewhat long and straggly cat. He slept on Alexanders bed and on very cold nights sometimes wound himself round Alexanders neck, and thus came to be known as Alexanders Furpiece. He bore with Alexander and Alexanders whims until he was nearly six months old. Then one fine summer day, having licked his shirt front into white splendor and examined with pride the white tip of his tail, and seen that every stripe was glossy along his tiger back, he swaggered out like any young dandy, and what began as an extended rove and ramble ended in a way of life, for he never came back.

As a Cat About Town he developed a stiff hippy walk; he had a very small nick taken out of one ear; and sometimes he was too busy to bother about washing for days at a time. His shirt front became gray, the white tip of his tail almost disappeared, and his whiskers sprang out from his cheeks with the strength and vitality of porcupine quills. He learned a great variety of street songs, how to terrify without lifting a paw, how to wail a coward into retreat, how to scream a bully into attacking just a fraction of a second too soon, how to court a gentle middle-aged tabby as well as many a saucy young thing; he was kept extremely busy right on into the fall, and, I am afraid, he forgot all about Alexander. His expeditions and conquests took him far afield and when he did, at an off moment, remember the soft bed of his kitten-hood he was not quite sure where to find it again. I am myself, he thought, lashing his tail back and forth, a formidable, an irresistible Cat About Town, and that is enough to be. It was a full-time job. The question of food, for instance, continually interrupted other and more interesting pursuits. A Cat About Town must be wily as well as ferocious, must know every inch of a territory for the wobbliest garbage-can lids, must learn the time when local grocers are apt to fling a few tasty haddock heads and tails to anyone who may be about just then; he must learn how to persuade old ladies into handing out bowls of milk, or even an occasional saucer of cream, without ever allowing himself to be captured, must in fact hunt out kindness with ruthless self-interest, but never give in to any such dreams of comfort as might involve a loss of Independence. It is an arduous life and the Cat About Town is a lean mocking character for whom human beings are to be used for what they are worth, which is not much.

The Fur Person, at this time of his life, was no exception; he conformed to type, except when he was curled up into a tight ball under a hedge and sometimes made a small whirring noise which resembled a purr, and sometimes even opened his paws and closed them again as if he were remembering something delicious, but when he woke up he had always forgotten what it was. Only once in a while he felt rather wistful and gave his face and shirt front a lick to cheer himself up, and swaggered down the street a fraction more aggressively than usual, and then stopped, looked back, seemed for a moment not to know where he was, or even perhaps who he was.

By the time he was two years old, he was still a Cat About Town, but he was a Cat About Town who had strange dreams, dreams of an open fire and himself with his paws tucked in sitting in front of it, of a gentle hand quite unlike a small boys hand, of a saucer of warm milkvery strange dreams indeed. They required concentrated yoga exercises to forget, and sometimes he was haunted by one for as much as a whole day.

And one morning when he woke up purring from his dream, he washed his face very carefully and decided that it was time he settled down. His whiskers shone in the sun. He stretched, yawned, and then amused himself for a few moments by scaring the pigeons waddling under an elm a few yards away. But in the middle of this childish game, he suddenly sat quite upright, narrowed his eyes, then opened them very wide and looked at nothing for a long time. It was here at this very spot that he realized that he was an orphan. His face grew quite pointed with self-pity and it was all he could do to maintain his dignity and not utter the long wail of loneliness which he felt rising within him.