Daisy: the autobiography of a catSwan, Miranda Eliot
General
Daisy: the autobiography of a cat
Swan, Miranda Eliot
Cats -- Fiction
Topsy was very fond of this cellar. They often remarked that she
probably found kindred spirits of the past, for she always surprised
them with some practical joke on her return to the upper regions.
One day, just at dusk a crash came that shook the house. The sound came
from the cellar, and on taking a light there, they found the floor
covered with bottles. Through some unknown agency, Topsy had moved a
shelf, and all the bottles had fallen to the floor. There she sat on a
barrel, looking on. If ever a cat delighted in a sensation, she did.
Quite a young girl lived with them, to help the girl of all work. She
got the impression that the house was haunted. She said the doors would
fly open without visible agency, and the bells all over the house would
ring, and when she answered them, every one would be surprised; they had
not touched them. They explained to her that the wind moved the
old-fashioned latches, and the doors, being old, would fly open.
Possibly rats would move the bell wires and make them ring. It is
impossible to uproot a belief in the supernatural out of the mind of an
ignorant child.
She said: "It is that black witch cat Topsy. She is an evil spirit. I
shut her up at night in the kitchen, Molly says she never let her up;
but there she is, upstairs, all over the house, during the night."
They could not persuade her to stay, and after she left the mystery was
solved, as such mysteries almost always can be, in a very common,
matter-of-fact manner. Miss Eleanor said at the time that she thought
her room was the way Topsy came, though how, she could not say.
One night, about eleven o'clock, being very wakeful, she heard a slight
scratching sound at the door. She sat up in bed and watched. She was not
afraid, for she was sure the mystery was about to be solved. Another
rattle of the latch, then the door opened wide, swinging back, with some
long black thing hanging from the latch. It was Topsy. She had jumped up
and knocked up the latch with her head, holding on the lower part with
her paws, and in this way had entered the room every night.
Changes came to their home, and the death of their mother made a break
in the household. They moved to Boston and were perplexed about Topsy.
What could they do with a cat of her restless nature in a few rooms?
What could she do without a large house and garden to roam about in,
and, above all, how could she leave that cellar? The people who took the
house were very anxious to keep her, and at last it was decided to leave
her on trial.
Miss Milly said, "After what we have passed through, as we are breaking
the last tie to home, one parting more we can bear."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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