I suppose that when chappie the Globe-trotter opened his eyes, behind the counter in a little stationery shop in New York, his mother had no idea that he was to become a great traveler. She was a humble creature who had never been a block away from home, and Chappie was the least of her kittens. He was beautifully striped in black and gray, and he had six toes on each foot, but he was frail and rickety. When, a few weeks later, a customer asked if she could have him the shopkeeper said that she could, and welcome.
The customer was Miss Alice Engel, a lover of cats, who was going on a long trip through Europe and the Orient and wanted a cat for a traveling companion. The kitten’s six-toed feet marked him for distinction, so she named him Chappie the Globe-Trotter and trained him for his job. Good red meat and milk and cod-liver oil made him strong and healthy, and daily walks on a leash taught him to regard strange sights and sounds with equanimity.
Miss Engel wrote the managers of the Italian Line by which she was sailing and asked if she might take her cat in her cabin, and the price of his passage. They replied that they would be delighted to have him as a guest, and inquired what he preferred to eat, that they might provide the right food for him.
Chappie had his own suitcase, which contained his dishes for food and water, scissors for cutting up his beef, his brush and comb, his bed, his sanitary pan, and some simple medicines. For cold days on deck he had a tweed coat and for mild weather a wool sweater. In the pocket of his coat he carried a bill of health from a New York veterinarian for the reassurance of foreign quarantine authorities.
Chappie proved to be an excellent sailor. He was never seasick but once, when a choppy sea off Gibraltar took him off his legs temporarily. But during a rough Atlantic crossing, when some race horses aboard the ship nearly died of seasickness, and “Bring ‘Em Back Alive” Buck was staying up nights with four unhappy baby elephants, Chappie would sit for hours watching the waves through a porthole or from the deck, and the higher they rose the more he enjoyed it.
Miss Engel’s itinerary took her into southern Europe, Egypt, India, China, Japan, and Hawaii, and everywhere railway officials were most polite to Chappie. He rode in her compartment, sitting up on the seat beside her like a nice child, looking with interest at the sights that flashed past and the people in the stations. Sometimes he rode free, and sometimes there was a small charge for his fare. Miss Engel kept him on a leash, but it was hardly ; necessary; he would sit quietly wherever she bade him. It was only when customs men approached his suitcase that he lost his splendid poise.
In Trieste, Vienna, and other European cities the hotels were most hospitable to Chappie. Miss Engel had dreaded China, knowing that the Chinese I do not care for cats, but he had a beautiful time , there. In the Palace Hotel on the Nanking Road in Shanghai his beef was sent up to him on ice, served on a silver tray, and the boys there guarded him zealously. “We shuttie door tlight,” they assured his mistress. “Pussie no lun out.”
Chappie greatly enjoyed riding in rickshas. In fact he likes riding in anything except aircraft. He will not travel by air, so Miss Engel never flies, for she and Chappie are too used to one another to bear being separated.
Chappie is now at home, but he keeps beside him, ready for another journey, his suitcase, which is well plastered with foreign labels. Miss Engel says they had only one bad experience during their twoyear trip. That was when a steamship captain refused to honor the written permission given her with her ticket to take her cat to her cabin, and told her she must leave it in the hold. She refused, and was put off on the dock with Chappie and her baggage. This, I regret to say, was an American boat.
European railways are more agreeable about cat travelers than American railways are. I know only one cat who has traveled in our passenger cars, and she was smuggled aboard wearing a baby’s cloak and cap. In Europe it is quite usual to take one’s pets journeying. In 1934 the American Consul at Moscow, Angus I. Ward, and Mrs. Ward arrived in that city from Tientsin accompanied by an Alsatian shepherd dog, a bearded Korean hen, and two cats-Shart, a yellow Angora, and Blackie, a Siamese. They emerged in stately procession from the Ward compartment on the Trans-Siberian Express, and Mr. Ward said they had behaved beautifully during the twelve-day journey.
In England some years ago there was a remarkable cat named Mickey, who traveled many thousands of miles with his people, Mr. and Mrs. Osborne Leonard, stopping with them at hotels and boardinghouses. He loved to take long walks with them, especially in London and other big cities. He would go out by himself, too, even in strange places, taking the precaution to smell about the doorstep of their lodging so that he could identify the place when he returned. Only once had Mickey’s people left him behind them at home, and he had grieved so piteously, though he was quite young, that they resolved they would never leave him again.