Now although this cat was made a great deal of with us and seemed to have a strong personal affection for me, spending most of her time with me, one fine day she took herself off and disappeared altogether.
As weeks went by and we heard nothing of her we concluded she had met with the fate to which pitiless game preservation has consigned many another cat. But after about three months I saw her in the garden, when though she followed me she refused to be touched. For weeks again we never set eyes on her, and we almost came to believe that it was her wraith I had seen. At last I happened to notice her sitting outside a cottage not 200 yards from this house, by which I passed almost every day of my life, but though she looked up when I called her by name she would not come to me. After a year or two she very frequently came into the garden and was willing enough to be stroked, but she never entered this house again until (in 1909) the old man at the cottage died, and the home she had chosen for herself was broken up. Then of her own accord she returned to us as a matter of course, and up to the day of her death (in November, 1911) was as friendly and affectionate as possible.
It is odd that a cat should thus deliberately have chosen to leave a home that was her birthplace, and where she had been more than kindly treated. We thought at the time that it might have been through jealousy of her own kitten, that she often found in the study, but if of so jealous a disposition, why should she go to be one of a family of cats in which as the last-comer she could hardly hope to take the first place?
The man she went to sometimes worked here, and as he was fond of cats might have taken a fancy to this one, and possibly did something to entice her away. If this was so, it is clear that a cat's affection is not always for places rather than people.
The strangest part of it all is to me not that she should have left us for the cottage, but that at the same time her whole behaviour towards us should have so entirely changed that she wouldn't let us touch her, and couldn't be induced to set foot in the house.
The old man to whom this cat betook herself was quite a character in his way. He could neither read nor write, having been put to work on a farm when he was eight years old, but he took a very intelligent interest in things. His house was an asylum for stray cats and you would find him on a winter's evening sitting in front of a good fire with a circle of half a dozen cats round him, all staring like himself at the grate. He used to have a fancy for clocks; there must have been five or six of all sizes perpetually ticking away in his kitchen, not to speak of others that were there but refused to tick any longer. He was not content, like other cottagers, with a candle or cheap light, but had hanging from the low ceiling a large paraffin lamp, which had cost him at least fifteen shillings.