pretty-faced white kitten used to come and play with me sometimes. One day when I was asleep on the door-mat, I was waked by a small noise and there was the white kitten’s face looking in at the door. She wanted me to go and see two rats. She said two rats went every day to a place to sit in the sun and we could stay behind a rock and peep at them.“I went with her to see the rats. They were too big for us to meddle with, but we could peep at them.“The white kitten liked to frolic and we raced over the fields and on the fences as much as we wanted to.“All at once we heard a noise. People came. The white kitten got away but a man caught me, and carried me in some whistling cars to his home. He wanted to keep me. I was afraid to stay in that strange place and I squeezed out through a hole in the cellar.“Then something dreadful happened. I was chased by boys. They were dreadful boys. They hurt me. They made me tremble. They did things too cruel to mention.“They set a dog on me. I could hardly move, I trembled so. I crept under a rail and the dog stayed there, barking. I thought he would seize me, but before he did it a boy came and took me and treated me kindly, and carried me in his arms to his own home and took care of me.“Oh how I did love that boy! I wanted to stay with him all the time.“Every day when he went to school he let me go with him as far as the bridge.“Then I would look up in his face and mew, ‘Mayn’t I go further?’“He would lift up his finger and say, ‘No, Tabby Furpurr. Go back!’ And I always went back. But when it was time for him to come home I went to the bridge and waited till he came and then went to the house with him. The boy’s dog did not like to have the boy like me so much. He was not so good as Nep. He would not let me warm my feet in his hair. He looked at me when I stole cream or custard. If they caught me stealing cream or custard, I hung my tail and went over to the grandma house to stay. When grandma caught me stealing I hung my tail and went back to the boy’s house to stay. A girl lived in the boy’s house, and she tamed a mouse. It stayed in a box. One day the boy looked at me hard, and lifted up his finger and said, ‘Tabby Furpurr, you have had enough to eat. This mouse is not for you. I am going to let this mouse out. Don’t you touch this mouse. Do you hear? Don’t you touch it!’“I knew what he said, and I never did touch that mouse. The girl played with it and let it stay in her work-basket. It liked to nibble green things that were brought into the house.“One day it got at a flower that the girl put in water and hung up, and it nibbled the flower. One day it was nibbling something green and it knocked over the thing the green was in and spilt the water on me and scared me, and made me jump, though I was quite an old 

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