around her neck for a comforter. I let her do it. The cook hung a bell round my neck. The noise of it pained my ears, and I was glad when the woman took it off. She took it off because I used to get into the place where the girl slept, and wake her up.

“Now when the ship came to the ground the cook put me into a bag and got into a cart. He was going to give me away. Pretty soon I smelled grass. Then I scratched and cried. Oh how I did want a piece of something green and to roll in the grass! Every cat here knows it would be a hard thing to live without something green. I soon got something green, and plenty of it. The cook opened the bag a little, to show me to another man and I took a sudden spring and away I went, and the more he called, ‘Puss! Puss! Puss!’ the faster I ran, and at last I found myself all alone in the fields, in a strange country.

“I rolled over and over, and tore up the grass, and ran up and down trees, and then I lay down behind a bush and watched to see if there were any moles or field mice in that country. Pretty soon I saw two live things sitting together. They looked like rats, but they had white on them. They were sitting in the sun. I was going to spring at them, but I stopped. I was in a strange country. How did I know if the creatures were good to eat? They might be bad as that bad meat which killed poor White Velvet, White Satin, White Floss, Black Satin, and Black Floss; or they might have dreadful teeth, or dreadful claws.

“While I was waiting a minute to think about it, I heard a sound in the grass; a creep, creep, creep, creeping sound in the grass. It was a cat. But she did not spring quick enough. They heard her and skipped out of sight quicker than a wink.

“As the cat sprang past me I could see that she had no tail. ‘Poor thing,’ I said, ‘she has lost it in a trap!’ Pretty soon I saw another cat without any tail. Then some kittens without any tails. I thought that must be a dreadful place for traps. I dared not step in the grass to hunt.

“I got very hungry keeping still without hunting for mice and moles, and at last I went to a house. In the yard of the house a black-and-white cat without a tail stood and looked at me.

‘What do you want here?’ said she.

‘I want to go in the house,’ said I.

‘Be off!’ said she.

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