CHAPTER IV

A FIVE O’CLOCK CATNIP TEA

When Purrington was started there were a great many who thought that it must fail. Cats who would not join the pilgrims to the new city sat on back fences and mewed over the certain disappointment awaiting those who went, sometimes spitting in their wrath that any cat should be so foolish as to go on such a wild-goose chase after happiness, just as human folk croak over other people’s experiments. It is too much to expect that cats can always be better than human beings, at least that all cats can.

But Purrington was not a failure; on the contrary it was a great success; and, when it had been built in two weeks, and everything was in running order, and the Purrers were quite sure that their plan was working well, Bidelia and Madam Laura resolved to give a tea to celebrate the founding of the city.

A great many ladies had come to the town by this time, so there was no trouble about getting together plenty of guests for the tea. Doctor Thomas Traddles’s school was by this time grown to thirty scholars, for most of the ladies who had moved to Purrington, like Bidelia, brought with them two or three children—and one came to town with five kittens!

The cards to the tea were issued three days in advance, and were delivered at each house—there were more houses built by this time to shelter all the new arrivals—by a small, gray cat called Posty, whose duty it was to deliver the mails and to keep the post-office.

The cards ran thus: “Mrs. Bidelia Purplay requests the pleasure of your company to tea on June 10th, from four to six. Music.”

There was not a cat omitted in these invitations, because the founders of Purrington had talked the matter over in private and had agreed that it would never do to allow any division and jealousy in the town such as is caused by social sets, and one person looking down upon another, and snubbing him. It was not easy for Ban-Ban, Kiku-san, Bidelia, and Tommy Traddles to bring themselves to treat everybody exactly alike, for there is nothing on earth so lofty by nature as a cat, and these four had been used only to fashionable society. However, they made up their minds that they must do whatever was for the general good, and treat all the Purrers of Purrington with the same neighbourly kindness.

Bidelia hoped that by having her tea continue from four to six she would escape crowding her parlour, in which there was not any too much room; but, by five minutes to four, there was a stirring in the streets, heads poking out of windows and doors to see if any one were starting, and before the French clock on Bidelia’s parlour cabinet had struck half-past four, all her guests had arrived.

Of course nobody would have missed this first social event in Purrington for their whiskers, but there had been a good deal said from one to another about Bidelia’s giving a tea. Nobody seemed to think that tea would be very enjoyable.

“It’s all very well to be fashionable,” said the mother of the five kittens—Daisy Bell was her name—“but tea! Whoever heard of a cat that would so much as smell of tea? I should have thought that Mrs. Bidelia Purplay could have found something better to have asked us to than tea! I told my eldest daughter not to be surprised if I came home down sick. Tea! Of all things!”

This was said as Daisy Bell came to the tea—one of the very earliest to arrive she was, too, in spite of her dislike for tea—and her neighbour, Mrs. Blotch, to whom she was talking, fully agreed with her.

Judge, then, the pleasure of these ladies when, on entering Bidelia’s house, a strong odour of catnip met their twitching noses. Here is where breeding tells; Daisy Bell’s manners were not proof against this surprise and the tempting odour.

“Dear me!” she cried, as she came in,—before she had so much as inquired after her hostess’s children, mind you,—“Dear me! How strong that catnip smells! Are you giving a catnip tea? I wouldn’t have dreaded coming if I’d have known that!”

“Did you dread coming?” inquired Bidelia, pleasantly. “I am very sorry. Of course it is a catnip tea. I never thought of stating it on my cards, because I thought everybody would understand. A Five O’Clock Catnip Tea. Why, of course it is. What other kind of a tea would I care to give, or you care to come to?”

“No other kind,” said Daisy Bell, promptly. “What do we do?”

“If you will go into my bedroom you will find Puttel there to take your things, and help you in any little way that you may need help; she acts as my maid to-day. Then, when your fur is arranged and you are quite ready, if you will be so kind as to come back to me I will take you to the dining-room. Madam Laura is good enough to pour for me to-day.”

Daisy Bell did not know what Bidelia meant by pouring for her, but she kept silent, for there was something in little Bidelia’s easy and gracious manner that made Daisy Bell, and Mrs. Blotch, too, conscious that they had not her advantages of education and social experience.

They had not got their things off and their fur smoothed down, and their ribbons retied, before other ladies came, and still others, until Bidelia’s small bedroom was crowded, and Puttel had to give the first comers a hint to go out to her mother, for everybody seemed to dread to make the first move to go back to the parlour.

In the meantime the gentlemen had been arriving, hardly less prompt than the ladies, which is not strange, because it was curiosity that brought them all so early, and cats are the most curious of creatures, the gentlemen just as curious as the ladies among them—wherein they are very different, you know, from human creatures.

Bidelia was busy receiving her guests, and ushering them out to the dining-room, where Madam Laura was pouring catnip tea at the table out of a very big urn indeed. The table was beautifully set with charming saucers and plates of glass and silver, and decorated with bunches of catnip in the centre and at each corner, connected by long loops of sky-blue ribbon. There were thin slices of cold meat, little cakes of puppy biscuits, cut into fancy shapes, crackers, cheese, cream in a large bowl, like a punch-bowl on a side-table, and ice-cream—melted ice-cream, of course, as all sensible people with good, catlike tastes prefer it.

Bidelia had cups for the catnip tea which had come down to her from her greatest of grandmothers, nobody knows how many generations ago, for the cups were nearly a hundred years old, and in a hundred years cats lay by a great length of grandmothers. These cups were small at the bottom and flaring at the top, like little bowls, and they had no handles. They were a grayish china, with dark blue border and little sprigs of dark blue flowers in the bottoms, which the guests could not see until they had lapped up their tea to the last drop.

Dolly Varden handed around tea and the other refreshments. The crowd grew so great that there was not room after awhile to set the cups on the floor. Ever so many were waiting to be served, and one could see from their rising fur that this was annoying them dreadfully.

Tommy Traddles saw this, too, and he whispered to Bidelia.

“Certainly,” she said aloud, and Tommy Traddles turned to the guests.

“Our hostess has provided us with an entertainment, in which I have the honour to be of some assistance, as the master of the Purrington school,” he said. “When you have enjoyed sufficiently the hospitality of this room will you please go out upon the lawn, where the music announced on the cards of invitation will be given.”

The instant Doctor Traddles had finished speaking more than half the guests hastened out on the lawn, anxious to secure the best places to see and hear, for cats do not always behave unselfishly; perhaps they have followed the bad example of human beings, of whom a few are always trying to get the best of everything for themselves.

Here the fond and proud parents found all the kittens of Purrington, little girls and little boys, drawn up in a row, their eyes as bright as they could be, their noses quivering with nervous impatience, and their little tails all straight up in the air above their backs like so many fur-covered slate-pencils. The kittens all wore ribbons crossed under the left foreleg and tied in a bow on the right shoulder. The boys wore pink, the girls blue ribbons, and the scholars who had done well in school had each a little silvered bell tied around the throat by a narrow ribbon, matching in colour the wider one around the shoulder.

The murmurs that arose from the guests on the lawn reached the ears of those remaining in the dining-room, who hastily finished their catnip tea and swallowed their last bites of cold meat and puppy biscuit cakes, lapped the final drops of their ice-cream, and hurried after the ladies and gentlemen on the lawn.

“Dear friends,” said Bidelia in a faint little voice, for she was frightened to speak to so many cats, all with their eyes fixed on her and with their tails slightly waving. “Dear friends, with Doctor Traddles’s help I have got together our blessed kittens to help me entertain you, and to prove what great progress they are making in school. First, my dancing class will show you a figure, a new figure, in the cotillion. It is called: The Chase of the Tails.”

’Clipsy, who, being black, had a natural talent for music, and particularly for playing the violin, took his place with his fiddle over his shoulder, precisely as you see the cat in “High, Diddle, Diddle.” Nearly all the kittens stepped out into the middle of the lawn, stuck their tails out straight, and waited. ’Clipsy played a few bars softly and then dashed into a lively air, that made every eye in the place spread its pupil ’way to the beginning of its white line, so exciting was this music.

Instantly every kitten made a rapid, low bow, and then danced a few steps to the right, a few to the left, leaped into the air, turned its soft body half-way around as it came down, and slapped at its own tail with its right forepaw. The music changed into other time, and with it the dancing steps of the kittens changed also. Swinging and swaying, the kittens began to spin around after their tails, keeping perfect time to the exciting music, whirling faster and faster, until all one could see were so many soft, varied-coloured balls of graceful kits, spinning, dashing, running, skipping, snatching after the tails that they never quite caught, never losing the swing of the dance, never losing the fun of the thing, until all the cats looking on were quite wild themselves with the delight of it and pride in their children. Fancy, if one kitten running after its tail is funny and charming, what it must have been to have seen twenty-two kittens, in a circle, trying to catch their tails in a mazy dance, perfectly performed!

“We’ve had the time of our lives!” cried Posty, jumping up in the air himself, and giving a wild mew, because he could not help doing it.

“Let us give Mrs. Bidelia a vote of thanks,” proposed Ban-Ban, remembering how he had been publicly thanked for bringing the cow into Purrington.

“Three cheers instead!” cried Wutz-Butz, who wanted to let off steam in some way.

The three cheers were instantly given, for all the cats felt precisely as Wutz-Butz did, that they must give vent to their feelings, so wrought up by the dance, or fly into small pieces on the spot.

Bidelia dropped a beautiful curtsey. “Thank you, dear friends,” she said. “I am glad that you consider our first social event in Purrington a success. Before you go will you join in a song? The kittens will lead us, because they know it best.”

A large kitten, whose voice was already changing from soprano to tenor, started the air of “Old Kentucky Home,” in which all the kittens, and most of the cats, joined at once, singing the following words:

“We are cosy ev’ry night, And we’re happy ev’ry day, In this Pussy-town we call Purrington; We have just enough of work, And we’ve just enough of play To keep us ever purring on.

_Chorus_: “Then hasten, all ye pussies, Oh, come, our joy to see. For we’re happy little kits, And we’ve danced ourselves to bits, In honour of Bidelia’s Catnip Tea.

“In the world we’ve left behind Where the houses grow in blocks, We were often far from safe and warm, And the hands that ought to stroke, Sometimes gave us cruel knocks; But in Purrington we’re out of reach of harm.

_Chorus_: “Then sing aloud, dear pussies, And purr your joy and glee! For here we’ve made a home, Whence we never more will roam, And we’re grateful for Bidelia’s Catnip Tea.”