Royalty With A Squint

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 200, 22 April 1943, Page 9

Royalty With A Squint

[™ telling this story as I heard it from a wotman who loves Siamese cats. I don’t know if it is someone’s copyright story or if it is just one of those folk tales handed down from Siamese Cat-lovers to Siamese Catlovers from generation to generation. For all I know the story was told in Muan-Thai, the-land of the free, a thousand years before the Royal Cat of Siam took the eye of the first European to’ behold him. NCE upon a time, a long time () ago, there was a priest of a temple in ancient Muan-Thai, and the chief work of this priest was the guarding of a most precious goblet. For company in the temple the priest had a pair of cats (Felis domestica, the royal cat of Siam). These elegant cats, of a creamy-fawn colour with nigger-brown heads, paws, and tails, followed the priest devotedly about the temple all the days of their years. There came a time, however, when the priest had to go with a message to the palace of the emperor. "Now," said he, "I am afraid to leave this precious goblet. unguarded; but I must: So I commend it to the care of you both. Do not, I pray you, take your eyes from it. Guard it with your lives until I am here again." The priest then went his way down the steep hill, leaving the royal cats to guard the precious goblet: The sun’s shadow moved from here to there and was lost, and next day moved again from here to there and was lost; and on the third day the male royal cat of Siam said to his wife: "I must go after the priest. You must stay here, guarding the precious goblet and not taking your eyes from it..I shall surely return with the priest soon.’ And the male royal cat of Siam went his way after the. priest. leaving the female royal cat of Siam to guard the precious goblet. Next day the sun’s shadow moved from here to there and was lost and the female royal cat of Siam grew more and more sleepy and her eyes began to squint with the strain of looking always at the precious goblet. So she, being a person of wisdom and ingenuity and knowing that she could no longer guard the precious goblet well enough with her tired eyes, hooked her long tail through the handle of the goblet and went contentedly to sleep. Next day the sun’s shale had moved a little way from here, but had’ not yet reached to there, when the priest of the temple and the male royal cat of Siam, came back up the steep path of the hill. And as they came into the courtyard of the temple they saw the female royal cat of Siam lying in the sun with happily blinking eyes and her tail hooked still through the handle of the precious goblet. And as they followed the gaze of her eyes they saw playing in the sun three royal kittens, each with a hook on the end of its tail, and each with a furious squint in the eyes. And since that time, so the story says, all the royal cats of Siam have had hooks on the ends of their tails and they all

fix a newcomer with a squinting regard as unwavering as it is disconcerting. Visit them in the Auckland Zoo and see for yourself. They live in the compartment next to those charming creatures, the spider monkeys, and at the moment there are kittens still young enough to be pure white. }

J.