Plot - summary:
- The author tells the restless girl Nika about the appearance of the cat Yu-yu in the house and her acquaintance with the boy Kolya.
- The author says what amazing creatures animals are, each with their own character. Donkeys, geese, horses are not stupid, but very smart animals.
- Yu-yu grew up independent, proud, and did not allow anyone to touch her. Every morning she woke up her owners.
- One day Kolya became very ill, Yu-yu did not leave the door of his room, where she was not allowed.
- After recovery, Kolya and her mother went to the sanatorium, and Yu-yu walked around the rooms in confusion.
- The author decided that Yu-yu would recognize Kolya’s voice over the phone. But Kolya had already forgotten about Yu-Ya on the trip and was getting capricious. Yu-yu died in old age, and a new cat moved into the house.
Summary of “Yu-yu”
If you're going to listen, Nika, then listen carefully. Her name was Yu-yu
. Just. Seeing her for the first time as a little kitten, a young man of three years old widened his eyes in surprise, stretched out his lips and said: “Yu-yu.” We ourselves don’t remember when suddenly, instead of a black-red-white fluffy ball, we saw a large, slender, proud cat, the first beauty and the envy of lovers. All cats have a cat. Dark chestnut with fiery spots, a lush white shirtfront on the chest, a quarter arshin mustache, the hair is long and all shiny, the hind legs are in wide trousers, the tail is like a lamp brush!.. Nika, get Bobik off the rut. Do you really think that a puppy's ear is like a barrel organ handle? What if someone twisted your ear like that? And the most remarkable thing about her was her character. And never believe what they tell you bad about animals. They will tell you: the donkey is stupid. When they want to hint to a person that he is narrow-minded, stubborn and lazy, he is delicately called an ass. Remember that, on the contrary, the donkey is not only an intelligent animal, but also obedient, friendly, and hardworking. But if he is overloaded beyond his strength or imagines that he is a racehorse, then he simply stops and says: “I cannot do this. Do whatever you want with me."
(About geese) And what glorious fathers and mothers they are, if you only knew. The chicks are hatched alternately - first by the female, then by the male. The goose is even more conscientious than the goose. If, in her leisure time, she starts talking excessively with her neighbors at the watering trough, according to women’s custom, Mr. Goose will come out, take her by the back of the head with his beak and politely drag her home, to the nest, to her maternal responsibilities.
And it’s very funny when the goose family deigns to stroll. He is in front, the owner and protector. From importance and pride, his beak lifted to the sky. He looks down on the entire poultry house. But it’s a disaster for an inexperienced dog or a frivolous girl like you, Nika, if you don’t give way to him: immediately the fret will grind to the ground, hiss like a bottle of soda water, its hard beak will open, and the next day Nika will walk around with a huge bruise on her left leg, below the knee , and the dog keeps shaking its pinched ear. And the whole goose family is exactly like a good German family on a festive walk.
Or, let's take a horse. What do they say about her? The horse is stupid. She only has beauty, the ability to run fast and a memory of places. And so she is a fool, besides the fact that she is short-sighted, capricious, suspicious and unattached to people. But this nonsense is said by people who keep a horse in dark stables, who do not know the joy of raising it from foal age, who have never felt how grateful a horse is to someone who washes it, cleans it, takes it to shoeing, gives it water and feeds it. Such a person has only one thing on his mind: to sit on a horse and be afraid that it will kick him, bite him, or throw him off. It wouldn’t occur to him to freshen the horse’s mouth, to use a softer path on the way, to give him moderate water on time, to cover him with a blanket or his coat in the parking lot... Why will the horse respect him, I ask you? But you’d better ask any natural rider about a horse, and he will always answer you: there is no one smarter, kinder, nobler than a horse - of course, if only it is in good, understanding hands. For Arabs, the horse is part of the family.
So, in Ancient Greece there was a tiny town with huge city gates. On this occasion, a passer-by once joked: look carefully, citizens, outside your city, otherwise he will probably escape through these gates. Yu-yu slept in the house where she wanted. When the house began to wake up, her first business visit was always to me, and then only after her sensitive ear caught the clear morning childish voice heard in the room next to me. Yu-yu opened the loosely closed door with her muzzle and paws, entered, jumped onto the bed, poked her pink nose into my hand or cheek and said briefly: “Purrm.” She jumped to the floor and, without looking back, walked towards the door. She did not doubt my obedience.
I obeyed. He dressed quickly and went out into the darkish corridor. With her eyes sparkling with yellow-green chrysolite, Yu-yu was waiting for me at the door leading to the room where a four-year-old young man usually slept with his mother. I opened it slightly. A barely audible grateful “mrm”, an S-shaped movement of the nimble body, a zigzag of the fluffy tail, and Yu-yu slid into the nursery.
There is a morning greeting ritual. Yu-yu never begs. (She thanks meekly and cordially for the service.) But she studied the hour of the boy’s arrival from the butcher’s and his steps to the finest detail. If she is outside, then she will certainly wait for the beef on the porch, and if she is at home, she will run towards the beef in the kitchen. She opens the kitchen door herself with incomprehensible dexterity. It happens that the boy digs for a long time, cutting and weighing. Then, out of impatience, Yu-yu hooks her claws onto the edge of the table and begins to swing back and forth, like a circus performer on a horizontal bar. But - silently. The boy is a cheerful, ruddy, laughing mouthful. He passionately loves all animals, and is directly in love with Yu-yu. But Yu-yu doesn’t even allow him to touch her. An arrogant look - and a jump to the side. She's proud! She never forgets that blue blood flows in her veins from two branches: the great Siberian and the sovereign Bukhara. For her, the boy is just someone who brings her meat every day. She looks at everything that is outside her home, outside her protection and favor, with royal coldness. She graciously receives us. I loved to carry out her orders. For example, I’m working on a greenhouse, thoughtfully pinching off excess shoots from melons - this requires a lot of calculation. It's hot from the summer sun and the warm earth. Yu-yu approaches silently. "Mroom!" This means: “Go, I’m thirsty.” I have difficulty bending over. Yu-yu is already ahead. It will never turn back on me. Dare I refuse or slow down? She leads me from the garden to the yard, then to the kitchen, then along the corridor to my room. I politely open all the doors for her and respectfully let her in. Having come to me, she easily jumps onto the washbasin, where living water is installed, deftly finds three support points for three paws on the marble edges - the fourth is suspended for balance - looks at me through her ear and says: “Mrum. Let the water run."
I let a thin silver stream flow. Gracefully stretching out her neck, Yu-yu hastily licks the water with her narrow pink tongue. Cats drink occasionally, but for a long time and in large quantities. Yu and I had special hours of calm family happiness. This is when I wrote at night: a rather exhausting activity, but if you get involved in it, there is a lot of quiet joy in it. You scratch and scratch with your pen, and suddenly some very necessary word is missing. Has stopped. What silence! And you will shudder from the soft elastic push. It was Yu-yu who easily jumped from the floor onto the table. It is completely unknown when she arrived.
The pen scratches and scratches. Good, clumsy words come by themselves. Phrases are constructed in obedient variety. But my head is already heavy, my back is aching, the fingers of my right hand begin to tremble: just look, a professional spasm will suddenly twist them, and the pen, like a sharpened dart, will fly across the entire room. Isn't it time? And Yu-yu thinks it’s time. She has long invented entertainment: she carefully follows the lines growing on my paper, moving her eyes behind the pen, and pretends to herself that it is I who release small, black, ugly flies from it. And suddenly slam your paw on the very last fly. The blow is precise and fast: black blood is smeared on the paper. Let's go to bed, Yu-yushka. Let the flies sleep until tomorrow too. Outside the window you can already discern the dim outlines of my dear ash tree. Yu-yu curls up at my feet, on the blanket. Yu-Yushkin's friend and tormentor Kolya fell ill. Oh, his illness was cruel; It’s still scary to think about her. It was only then that I learned how incredibly tenacious a person can be and what enormous, unsuspected powers he can reveal in moments of love and death.
People, Nick, have many truisms and current opinions that they accept ready-made and never bother to check. So, for example, out of a thousand people, nine hundred and ninety-nine will tell you: “A cat is a selfish animal. She becomes attached to the housing, not to the person.” They will not believe, and they will not dare to believe, what I am now going to tell about Yu-yu. I know you, Nika, will believe it! The cat was not allowed to visit the patient. Perhaps this was correct. It will push something, drop it, wake it up, scare it. And it didn’t take long for her to be weaned from the children’s room. She soon realized her situation. But she lay down like a dog on the bare floor outside, right next to the door, burying her pink nose in the crack under the door, and so she lay all those dark days, leaving only for food and a short walk. It was impossible to drive her away. Yes, it was a pity. People walked over her, entering and leaving the nursery, they kicked her, stepped on her tail and paws, and sometimes threw her away in haste and impatience. She just squeaks, gives way and again gently but persistently returns to her original place. I had never heard or read about such cat behavior before. To which doctors are accustomed not to be surprised by anything, but even Doctor Shevchenko once said with a condescending grin:
Your cat is funny. On duty! This is funny... Oh, Nika, for me it was neither comical nor funny. To this day, I still have in my heart a tender gratitude to the memory of Yu-yu for her animal compassion... And that’s what else was strange. As soon as Kolya’s illness, following the last severe crisis, came a turn for the better, when he was allowed to eat everything and even play in bed, the cat, with some particularly subtle instinct, realized that the empty-eyed and noseless one had moved away from Colin’s head, clicking her jaws in anger. Yu-yu left her post. She slept for a long time and shamelessly on my bed. But on my first visit to Kolya I didn’t find any excitement. He crushed and squeezed her, showered her with all sorts of affectionate names, and for some reason even called her Yushkevich out of delight! She deftly twisted herself out of his still weak hands, said “Mrm,” jumped onto the floor and left. What restraint, not to say: the calm greatness of the soul!..
(the cat was about to talk on the phone)
But I was going to. Listen, Nika, how it happened. Kolya got out of bed, thin, pale, green; lips without color, eyes sunken, little hands showing through, slightly pinkish. But I already told you: great strength and inexhaustible is human kindness. It was possible to send Kolya for recovery, accompanied by his mother, two hundred miles away to a wonderful sanatorium. With the departure of her two friends - big and small - Yu-yu was in anxiety and bewilderment for a long time. I walked around the rooms and kept poking my nose into the corners. He pokes and says emphatically: “Mick!” For the first time in our long acquaintance, I began to hear this word from her. What it meant in a cat’s way, I don’t presume to say, but in a human way it clearly sounded something like this: “What happened? Where are they? Where did you go?
And she looked around at me with wide-open yellow-green eyes; in them I read amazement and demanding question. Our telephone set was placed in the tiny hallway on a round table, and next to it stood a straw chair without a back. I don’t remember in which of my conversations with the sanatorium I found Yu-ya sitting at my feet; I only know that it happened at the very beginning. But soon the cat began to come running to every phone call and, finally, completely moved her place of residence to the front room.
People in general understand animals very slowly and difficultly; Animals are much faster and thinner than humans. I understood Yu-ya very late, only when one day, in the middle of my tender conversation with Kolya, she silently jumped from the floor onto my shoulders, balanced herself and stretched her fluffy muzzle with alert ears forward from behind my cheek.
I thought: “A cat’s hearing is excellent, at least better than a dog’s, and much sharper than a human’s.” Very often, when we returned from visiting late in the evening, Yu-yu, recognizing our steps from a distance, ran out to meet us across the third cross street. This means she knew her people well. And further. We knew a very restless boy, Zhorzhik, four years old. Having visited us for the first time, he was very annoying to the cat: he ruffled her ears and tail, squeezed her in every possible way and rushed around the rooms with her, holding her across her stomach. She could not stand this, although in her usual delicacy she never let out her claws. But every time then, when Zhorzhik came - be it two weeks later, a month later, or even more - as soon as Yu heard Zhorzhik’s ringing voice, which was heard even on the threshold, she ran headlong, with a plaintive cry, to escape: in the summer she jumped out out the first open window, in winter she would sneak away under the sofa or under the chest of drawers. Undoubtedly, she had a good memory.
“So what’s so strange about it,” I thought, “that she recognized Colin’s sweet voice and reached out to see where her beloved friend was 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 really asked Kolya that the next time he spoke to me on the phone, he would certainly remember and say into the phone all the previous kind words that he had said to Yu-yushka at home. And I will bring the control ear tube to the cat's ear. Soon I received an answer. Kolya is very touched by Yu-yu’s memory and asks to convey his regards to her. They will talk to me from the sanatorium in two days, and on the third they will pack up, get into bed and go home. Indeed, the next day in the morning the phone told me that they would now talk to me from the sanatorium. Yu-yu stood nearby on the floor. I took her on my lap - otherwise it would have been difficult for me to manage two pipes. Colin’s cheerful, fresh voice rang in the wooden rim. What a lot of new impressions and acquaintances! How many household questions, requests and orders! I barely had time to insert my request:
- Dear Kolya, I’ll now put the telephone receiver to Yu-yushka’s ear. Ready! Tell her your nice words. - What words? “I don’t know any words,” the voice responded boringly. - Kolya, dear, Yu-yu is listening to you. Say something sweet to her. Hurry up. - Yes, I don’t know. I don't remember. Will you buy me an outdoor bird house, like they hang outside our windows here? - Well, Kolenka, well, golden, well, good boy, you promised to talk to Yu. - Yes, I don’t know how to speak cat. I can't. I forgot. Something suddenly clicked and grunted in the receiver, and the sharp voice of the telephone operator came from it: “You can’t talk nonsense. Hang up. Other clients are waiting." A slight knock and the telephone hiss stopped. Our experience with Yu did not work out. It's a pity. I was very interested to find out whether our smart cat would respond or not to the affectionate words she knew with her gentle “murrum”. That's all about Yu-yu.
Not long ago she died of old age, and now we have a cooing cat with a velvet belly. About him, my dear Nika, another time.
Proverbs for the work:
A kind word also pleases the cat.
The dog will not forget the owner, the cat will not forget the house.
We are responsible for those we have tamed.
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