“My Sister Beulah Black had a young family of her own, and one day she tried to carry us to her house, in order that she might not have to be all the time running back and forth. It happened that I dropped into a hole, and she could not get me out. She had to leave me. Now this was lucky for me, for the others of my mother’s young family, and all but one of my sister Beulah Black’s young family were sent away and lost. I have often wondered why it is that so many little kittens are sent away and lost.

“Only for falling in that hole I might not be here. But I came near dying there. When taken out I was almost starved to death. I could not move; I could not make a sound. Girl-Nellie took me out and kept me for her own. She made me a cotton-wool bed in a cricket, she covered me over with silk, she fed me with a spoon, she held me just as if I had been a baby. And when I grew larger she used to rock me in the baby’s cradle and sing to me. She took turns rocking me and her dolly, and when dolly was being rocked I sat and waited for my turn to be rocked and sung to. Oh, how I did love my little mistress! I wanted to sit on her lap. I wanted to be with her a great deal. I told her all this, though perhaps she never understood what I said. I knew the time for her to come home from school, and went always to meet her. She did not know how I knew the time. People do not know how cats know things. My dear mistress would not let boy-John torment me. Boy-John was not cruel, but he wished me to sit up on my hind legs, and to hold a stick, and to jump through a hoop. It was easy enough to do such things but I did not like to do them. Boy-John used to say to the baby, ‘Come Baby, bring David!’ I was so big then that baby could hardly lift me, but he would drag me, and push me, and try to lift me.

“Many at this famous party have spoken of what they have suffered from cruel boys and from dogs, but nobody as yet has spoken of a baby. Tongue cannot tell what I suffered from that baby. A baby will step on any part of a cat. A baby will sit on a cat. A baby does not mind what part of a cat it lifts up a cat by, whether by the tail or by a leg, or by the head. A baby will pull your ears, will stick its finger in your eyes, will even meddle with your smellers, and you must keep from touching it, because it is a baby.

“I never did touch that baby to hurt it. I loved that baby. I kept my claws way in out of sight, and if I ever squealed it was sometimes when he sat down on me hard, and squelched the squeal out of me before I knew it.

“I come now to something painful to speak of. You will be 

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