Old Grumpy was raking her grate that cold morning, when the solemn old church clock struck eight. She had just raked out the ashes and was hunting in a dark, dirty closet by the fireside for some pieces of stick, which she could use to light the fire, when she heard a step on the staircase which led up to her room.
It was not a heavy step, and it was not a loud step, and it was not a quick step. On the contrary, it was very light, and very quiet, and very slow. And yet it was such an unusual thing for Old Grumpy to hear any step at all on her staircase that she paused in what she was doing and listened.
It could not be a child, she thought: Could it be a dog, or a rat, or a bird?
Curiosity led her to open her door and look out. There, on the landing close by her, and looking up piteously into her face, was a visitor waiting to be let in. It was a little, black, half-starved kitten.
Now, Old Grumpy had the greatest contempt for cats. A neighbor of hers, the old man who lived in the downstairs room, had a cat, a great tom-cat with a long, bushy tail, that used to sit on his back when he was at work, and followed him like a dog. Old Grumpy had the greatest contempt for this cat and for old Joel’s affection toward it. She would scowl at the cat, and scowl at his master, as she passed his room, and would mutter to herself: “Some folks are crazed, and ought to be took and put in ‘sylums, and not left to live among decent people in a decent court.”
Old Joel’s cat was a wild, ferocious creature. No one dared to touch it but him. The children never ventured to pull its tail, or to drive it about the court, as they did all the other poor, miserable cats which had the misfortune to live there; and there was not one of the neighbors, man or woman, who would have dared even to stroke it.
Yet with old Joel the cat was always gentle and obedient. At a word from him, it would jump from the ground on to his shoulder, or rush madly out of the window, and leap first on the churchyard wall, and then on to the roof of its master’s house. Joel was very fond of this cat. It had been his companion for many years, and its tricks and performances were the pride of the old man’s heart.
But whilst they amused old Joel, they disgusted Old Grumpy. “Silly old fellow!” she would mutter to herself, as she heard the cat leaping in the room below, “Silly old chap, to be wasting, his time over an ugly creature like that!” She was glad God Almighty hadn’t made her a man. Women had more sense in their little finger tips than men in their whole body. Loving a cat! Spending time on a cat! Stroking and kissing a cat! It was a wonder old Joel was left to live on there. “The p’lice ought to have seen to it before this!”
These being her sentiments, it was not to be expected that Old Grumpy would receive her visitor with open arms. Her great idea was to get rid of it and that as quickly as possible.
She accordingly gave it a kick, and shook her shawl at it; but the kitten only crawled a few steps from the doer, and lay down again. It seemed quite weak and exhausted, as if it had spent all its strength in climbing up the staircase.
Old Grumpy closed her door and went back to her fire hoping that the kitten would soon go away; but whenever she paused in her work, she heard the same doleful sound outside.
“Mew, mew, mew, mew,” said the kitten again and again.
And so it went on, long after the fire was lighted, and the kettle had boiled, and the old woman had made herself a cup of tea.
“Mew, mew, mew, mew,” but the sounds grew fainter and fainter, and at last they ceased altogether.
“That tiresome little thing is either gone or dead,” said Old Grumpy to herself.
But which was it? Had it gone? She had never heard its step going downstairs, as she had heard it coming up. Or was it lying stiff and dead at her door?
Old Grumpy had very few things to think of; and although she tried to forget the kitten entirely, yet in spite of herself she kept wondering what had become of it. At last she thought she would just look out for a moment to see if it were there or not; she could shut the door again if it were still alive and if it tried to get into her room.
So she looked out, and the kitten was still there, and it was not dead. It was evidently very ill, so ill and weak that it did not even try to crawl to the door; but it looked in at the fire, which was burning brightly in Old Grumpy’s grate, and it looked up in the old woman’s face as if it were asking her to let it in.
It was a very strange thing, but at that moment, as Old Grumpy saw the kitten looking in at the fire, her thoughts went back to that cold Christmas Eve, nearly sixty years ago, when she had looked in at the bright firesides of that little back street. It may have been the thought of that night, so long ago, yet so well remembered, or it may have been the plaintive cries of the kitten, which began again as soon as she opened the door, or it may have been the recollection and the cries together that touched the soft part in Old Grumpy’s hard heart. But, anyhow, the old woman, who was in the act of giving the kitten another kick, suddenly changed her mind, stooped down, and lifted it in her arms, as gently as if she had been old Joel himself, and carried it into her room.
The kitten had been shamefully ill-treated. A boy had pelted it with stones, which had broken its leg and given it a terrible wound on its head. Old Grumpy bound up its leg, bathed its wounds, gave it milk out of her own saucer, and let it lie on her knee.
The kitten seemed pleased and grateful, and purred its thanks. And as the day went on, strange to say, the old woman, who had never loved anyone before, began to love the kitten; and, not strange to say, for it was the natural consequence, the kitten began to love her.
Old Grumpy’s heart, which had been bolted and barred against everything before, had suddenly opened to let this poor dumb creature in; and, having let it in, she gave it all the stores of love that had been hidden and buried in her heart during those long loveless years.
It seemed very strange and very sad that the wealth of love God had given her, that power to love that He gives to all alike, should be squandered on a kitten! It surely was very sad that the love that might have made so many around her happy, the love that might have helped the poor tired mothers in the court, nursed the sick children, and cheered those more helpless than herself, should have been hoarded up, only to be given to a poor little kitten, which would have been more than content with so much less. But still it was the beginning of better days for Old Grumpy. She was learning to love, which was something; she was learning the pleasure of being loved, which was more.
Strangely, sometimes the small and insignificant things in life are the first link in a chain that leads on to really important things. There was One watching the old woman that day as she opened the door to the lost kitten. One who was also standing outside her door, longing and yearning to enter, that He might give her the riches of His love, and that He might win her heart in return.
“Behold, I stand at the door, and knock. If any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.”
But Old Grumpy knew nothing of Him, of the living, loving Lord; she knew nothing of His love. Now, He was about to stir up in her heart an earnest desire for someone to love her, that she might be ready to receive the glad news of His great love for her when the time came to send it to her.
“God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”