The Fur Person (Illustrated Edition) by May Sarton

Author:May Sarton [Sarton, May]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: QM Classics
Published: 2014-10-02T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VII — Tom Jones Keeps Everything Under Control

WHEN Gentle Voice came home, he was still lying under the canvas bed, for the fact was that he was feeling rather ill.

“Oh dear,” she said, “how awful! I expect he will get into one fight after another. And look at his poor mouth—he’ll never be the same again.”

This was not a very encouraging way to speak, after all, and Tom Jones kept his eyes closed with shame.

“We could take him to the hospital; they might stitch up his wound,” Brusque Voice was saying.

“It’s that cat next door, that Nelly,” Gentle Voice said. “She’s the troublemaker. Every Tom for miles around will be after her, and Tom Jones will have to fight them all.”

They seemed very much upset. It was, he decided, hard on two such tender-hearted old maids to take in Terrible Jones, But what could he do? Even dignified Mr. Jones must become Terrible Jones when a gutter-snipe came and put his nose within two inches of that dignified face and whiffled at it.

He lay on the porch for two days, considering all this, and accepting some special convalescent meals, a plate of the best tuna fish, and some scraps of roast beef, warmed over with gravy. He was very thirsty, too, and drank several saucers of warm milk. Finally after two days and nights, he felt well enough to get up and jump through the window and look around for a soft place to get well in. It was there, lying on a cashmere shawl at the foot of one of the beds, that he realized that he was still the subject of serious concern on the part of his housekeepers. Perhaps because he was feeling rather seedy, the Fur Person was unusually aware of his house-keepers; he had an idea that they were up to mischief, were concealing something from him. They were really rather too attentive, even taking into account that they were two old maids who had obviously been in need of having a Gentleman Cat as lodger for a long time. But they did use the word “hospital” rather a lot considering that he was beginning to feel quite fit and his lower lip had sewn itself together without any help at all, and they allowed him to sleep on the cashmere shawl, clearly a luxury, though one to which he had now become accustomed.

Like any self-respecting cat, Tom Jones took not the slightest interest in other people’s affairs unless he was himself concerned in them. So he had hardly paid sufficient attention to the foibles and follies of these two odd and endearing creatures who had taken him in. Now he found himself sometimes considering them when he really should have been doing his yoga exercises, sitting on the cashmere shawl with his paws tucked in and his tail wound round him very carefully, so the white tip (there were certain advantages to such a very long tail) stood straight up beside the curve of his back leg.

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