If you listen, Nick, then listen carefully. Her name was Yu. Seeing her for the first time as a small kitten, a young man of three years turned his eyes in surprise, extended his lips with a tube and said: "Yu-yu." We ourselves do not remember when, suddenly, instead of a black-red-white fluffy lump, we saw a big, slender, proud cat, the first beauty and the envy of lovers. All cats have a cat. Dark chestnut with fire spots, a lush white shirt-front on his chest, a quarter-arshin mustache, long and shiny hair, hind legs in wide trouser legs, tail like a tube ruff! Nika, bring Bobik down from his knees. Do you really think that a puppy’s ear is like a barrel organ? If someone twisted you by the ear? And the most remarkable thing about her was her character. And never believe what they say to you evil about animals. They will tell you: the donkey is stupid. When a person wants to hint that he is not far from the mind, stubborn and lazy, he is delicately called a donkey. Remember, on the contrary, the donkey animal is not only smart, but also obedient, and affable, and hardworking. But if you overload him beyond his power or imagine that he is a racehorse, then he just stops and says: “This I can’t. Do what you want with me. "

(About geese) And what glorious fathers and mothers they are if you knew. The chicks are hatched in turn - either a female or a male. A goose is even more conscientious than a goose. If she speaks in her leisure time through a measure with neighbors at the watering trough, as usual, the mister goose will come out, take her by the beak in the back of her head and politely drag her home, to the nest, to her mother's duties.

And it’s very funny when the goose family deigns to walk. Ahead of him, the master and protector. From importance and pride, the beak lifted up to the sky. He looks down at the whole house. But the trouble is for an inexperienced dog or a frivolous girl like you, Nick, if you don’t give way to him: now he will snake above the ground, hiss like a bottle of soda water, open his hard beak, and the next day Nick walks with a huge bruise on his left leg, below the knee and the dog shakes everything with a pinched ear. And the whole goose family is exactly like a good German surname on a holiday walk.

Or take a horse. What do they say about her? The horse is stupid. She has only beauty, the ability to run fast and the memory of places. And so - a fool of a fool, besides the fact that myopia, capricious, suspicious and unattached to a person. But this nonsense is said by people who keep the horse in the dark stables, who don’t know the joy of raising it from a foal age, who have never felt like a horse is grateful to those who wash it, clean it, drive it forging, drink water and ask food. Such a person has only one thing in mind: to ride a horse and be afraid that she might kick him, bite him, or throw him away. It doesn’t occur to him to refresh his horse’s mouth, take a softer track on the way, moderate it in time, cover it with a boot or his coat in the parking lot ... Why would the horse respect him, I ask you? And you better ask any natural horseman about a horse, and he will always answer you: there is no one smarter, kinder, more noble than a horse - of course, if only it is in good, understanding hands. Arabs have a horse a member of the family.

So, in ancient Greece there was a tiny town with a huge city gate. Some passerby once joked about this: look out, citizens, outside your city, otherwise he will probably slip into this gate. Slept Yu in the house where she wanted. When the house began to wake up, her first business visit was always to me, and only after her sensitive ear caught the morning clear voice of a child, which was heard in the room next to me. Yu-yu opened the door with a snout and paws, closing the door, came in, jumped onto the bed, poked a pink nose in my hand or cheek and said briefly: “Murrm”. She jumped to the floor and, without looking back, went to the door. She did not doubt my obedience.

I obeyed. He dressed hastily, went out into the darkish corridor. Glistening with yellow-green chrysolite eyes, Yu was waiting for me at the door leading to the room where the four-year-old man usually slept with his mother. I tried it on. A slightly audible appreciative “mrm”, S-shaped movement of a dexterous body, a zigzag of a fluffy tail, and Yu-y slipped into the nursery.

There is a ritual of morning health. Yu-u never begs. (Thanks for the service meekly and cordially.) But she studied the hour of the boy’s arrival from the meat and his steps to the finer point. If it is outside, then it will certainly wait for beef on the porch, and if at home, it will run towards the beef in the kitchen. She opens the kitchen door with incomprehensible dexterity. It happens that a little boy digs for a long time, cutting and weighing. Then, out of impatience, Yu-claws clutches at the edge of the table and begins to swing back and forth, like a circus performer on a horizontal bar. But - silently. Malchugan - a cheerful, ruddy, mocking rotozey. He passionately loves all animals, and he is directly in love with Yu. But Yu doesn't even let him touch himself. An arrogant look - and a leap to the side. She is proud! She never forgets that in her veins blue blood flows from two branches: the great Siberian and the sovereign Bukhara. The boy for her is just someone bringing her meat daily. She looks at everything outside of her home, outside of her protection and favor, with regal coldness. She graciously accepts us. I loved to obey her orders. For example, I’m working on a greenhouse, thoughtfully plucking extra shoots from melons - a lot of calculation is needed here. Hot from the summer sun and warm earth. Sounds july. "Mrum!" This means: “Go, I am thirsty.” I’m unbending with difficulty. Yu is already ahead. Never turn on me Do I dare to refuse or slow down? She leads me from the garden to the yard, then to the kitchen, then down the hall to my room. Courteously, I open all the doors in front of her and respectfully skip ahead. Having come to me, she easily jumps onto the washbasin, where the living water is taken, cleverly finds on the marble edges three reference points for three paws - the fourth on weight for balance - she looks at me through her ear and says: “Mrum. Let the water go. ”

I let a thin silver trickle flow. Gracefully craning her neck, Yu hastily licks the water with a narrow pink tongue. Cats drink occasionally, but for a long time and a lot. Yu and I used to have special hours of calm family happiness. This is when I wrote at night: the occupation is rather exhausting, but if you get involved in it, it has a lot of quiet rejoicing. You scribble, scribble with a pen, suddenly there is not enough of some very necessary word. Has stopped. What a silence! And you will startle from a soft elastic push. This Yu-yu easily jumped from the floor to the table. It is completely unknown when she came.

Scratches, scratches the pen. Alright, clumsy words come by themselves. In obedient variety phrases are built. But the head is already getting heavier, it hurts its back, the fingers of the right hand begin to tremble: look and see, a professional cramp suddenly grips them, and the pen, like a pointed dart, will fly through the whole room. Isn’t it time? And Yu-yu thinks it's time. She had invented entertainment for a long time: she was carefully following the lines growing on my paper, keeping her eyes behind the pen, and pretending to herself that it was I who let out of him small, black, ugly flies. And suddenly clapping a foot on the very last fly. Beat marks and fast: black blood smeared on paper. Let's go to sleep, Yu-yushka. Let the flies also sleep before tomorrow. Outside the window you can already see the cloudy outlines of my dear ash. Yu is curled up at my feet, on the blanket. Yu-yushkin fell ill Kolya’s friend and tormentor. Oh, his illness was cruel; it’s still scary to remember her. Then only I found out how incredibly tenacious a person is and what huge, unsuspected forces he can discover in moments of love and death.

People, Nick, have a lot of common truths and common opinions that they take ready and will never bother to check them. So, for example, out of a thousand people, nine hundred ninety-nine of you will say: “A cat is an egoistic animal. She is attached to housing, not to man. ” They will not believe, and do not dare to believe what I’ll tell you about Yu. You, I know, Nika, believe it! The cat was not allowed to the patient. Perhaps this was right. Will push something, drop it, wake it up, scare it. And she didn’t have to be weaned from the children's room for long. She soon realized her position. But then she lay down like a dog on the bare floor outside, at the door itself, with her pink nose in the slot under the door, and she lay there all these dark days, absent only for food and a short walk. It was impossible to drive her away. Yes, and it was a pity. They walked through it, going into the nursery and leaving, they pushed it with their feet, stepped on its tail and legs, sometimes thrown away in a hurry and impatience. She only squeaks, gives the way, and again gently but persistently returns to her former place. Until now, I have never heard or read about such cat behavior. What doctors are used to not being surprised at anything, but even Dr. Shevchenko once said with a condescending grin:

You have a comic cat. On duty! This is funny ... Ah, Nick, for me it was neither comical nor funny. Until now, I still have a tender appreciation in my heart for Yu's memory for her bestial sympathy ... And here's what else was strange. As soon as the last brutal crisis occurred in Colin’s disease, when he was allowed to eat and even play in bed, the cat realized with some particularly subtle instinct that the empty-eyed and beznosny moved away from Colin's headboard, locking his jaws from anger. Yu-th left her post. For a long time and shamelessly she slept on my bed. But at the first visit to Kolya, she did not find any excitement. He crumpled and squeezed it, showered it with all sorts of affectionate names, even called Yushkevich for some reason even with delight! She cleverly twisted out of his still weak hands, said “mrm”, jumped to the floor and left. What an endurance, not to say: the calm greatness of the soul! ..

(the cat was going to talk on the phone)

But she was going to. Listen, Nick, how it came out. Kolya got out of bed thin, pale, green; lips without color, eyes sagged, little hands through the light through, slightly pinkish. But I already told you: great power and inexhaustible - human kindness. It was possible to send Kolya for amendment, accompanied by his mother, two hundred miles to a beautiful sanatorium. Yu, with the departure of her two friends — big and small — was anxious and perplexed for a long time. I walked around the rooms and all poked my nose into the corners. Will bite and say expressively: “Mick!” For the first time in our longstanding acquaintance, I began to hear this word from her. What does it mean like a cat, I don’t presume to say, but humanly it clearly sounded something like this: “What happened? Where are they? Where have you gone? ”

And she looked at me with wide-open yellow-green eyes; in them I read astonishment and a demanding question. Our telephone was placed in a tiny front desk on a round table, and near it stood a straw chair without a back. I don’t remember in which of my conversations with the sanatorium I found Yu sitting at my feet; I only know that this happened at the very beginning. But soon the cat began to resort to every phone call and, finally, completely moved its place of housing to the front.

People generally very slowly and hard understand animals; animals - people are much faster and thinner. I understood Yu very late, only when one day, in the midst of my gentle conversation with Kolya, she silently jumped from the floor onto my shoulders, balanced herself and stretched forward her fluffy muzzle with guarded ears from behind my cheek.

I thought: “The cat’s hearing is excellent, in any case, better than the dog’s, and much sharper than human.” Very often, when we returned from our guests late in the evening, Yu, having learned our steps from a distance, ran out to meet us beyond the third cross street. So she knew her people well. And further. We had a friend, a very restless boy, Zhorzhik, four years old. Having visited us for the first time, he was very annoying to the cat: he patted her ears and tail, squeezed her in every possible way and ran around her rooms, holding her across her stomach. She could not stand this, although by her everlasting delicacy she had never released her claws. But then, every time later, when Zhorzhik came — whether it was two weeks later, a month later or even more — as soon as Yu heard the sonorous voice of Zhorzhik, which rang out on the doorstep, she rushed headlong with a plaintive cry: she jumped out in summer in the first open window, in winter slipped under a sofa or under a dresser. Sure, she had a good memory.

“So what’s the tricky thing,” I thought, “that she recognized Colin in a sweet voice and reached out to see: where is her beloved friend hidden?”

I really wanted to check my guess. That same evening, I wrote a letter to the sanatorium with a detailed description of the cat's behavior and asked Kolya very much so that the next time, speaking with me on the phone, he would certainly remember and say into the phone all the old kind words he had said to Yu-yushka at home. And I will bring the control auditory tube to the cat's ear. Soon received an answer. Kolya is very moved by Yu's memory and asks to give her a bow. He will talk to me from the sanatorium in two days, and on the third they will gather, get in and go home. Indeed, the very next morning, the telephone informed me that they would speak with me from the sanatorium. Yu-u was standing next to the floor. I took her to my lap - otherwise it would be difficult for me to handle two handsets. A cheerful, fresh Colin voice rang in a wooden rim. What a lot of new experiences and acquaintances! How many household questions, requests and instructions! I barely managed to insert my request:

- Dear Kolya, I’ll put a telephone receiver to Yu-yushka’s ear. Done! Speak to her your pleasant words. - What words? I don’t know any words, - the voice answered boringly. - Kolya, dear, Yu is listening to you. Tell her something affectionate. As soon as possible. - Yes, I do not know. I don’t remember. And you will buy me an outdoor birdhouse, how are they hanging from the windows here? - Well, Kolenka, well, gold, well, good boy, you promised to talk with Yu. “Yes, I don’t know how to speak feline.” I can not. I forgot yl. Something suddenly snapped in the receiver, grunted, and the telephone operator's sharp voice rang out: “You can’t say anything stupid. Hang up. Other customers are waiting. ” A slight knock, and the telephone hissing fell silent. Our experience with Yu did not succeed. It's a pity. It was very interesting to me to find out whether our smart cat would respond or not to the affectionate words familiar to her with her tender “murrum”. That's all about Yu.

Not so long ago, she died of old age, and now we have a cat-grumbling, velvet belly. About him, my dear Nick, another time.