did not let her come in my barn. She was a good cat for not liking birds.
“The boy carried the little ducks to the barn and tried to make a hen that was there take care of them. She would not do that. She went and left them. She would not scratch up worms for them. The other ducks would not. They had to take care of their own children, and these little ducks stayed all alone by themselves, and cried for their mother.
“Now that barn cat, though she was only a black and white cat and not a Tabby, sat down there with the little ducks and took care of them. Every day she went there and stayed with the ducks, and when they went into a puddle she mewed for them to come back.
“When she sat taking care of the little ducks, people used to come and look at her. The first time she took care of them grandma’s dog barked at her. When grandma told him it was all right, and let him see her stroke the barn cat, he went away, but sometimes he came to look at that cat and the ducks to see if all was right. Sometimes the cat would spit at him. She would spit at anybody that touched one of her little ducks. When the little ducks went in wet places she took them by their necks and brought them out, and she carried them by their necks so much that they had crooked necks. One day a strange cat, a great white Tommy, came and looked in at the barn door when she was staying with the little ducks and she flew at him quick, and almost clawed his eyes out and he was glad to run.
“One day I wanted very much to taste of a little duck and I tried to get one, and I hurt its leg, and she clawed me and made me drop it, and grandma shamed me and I went back to the boy’s house and hid under a bed, and when I was almost starved I crawled out and the boy whipped me hard and carried me back to the grandma house, and into her barn, and showed me that barn cat with the little ducks, and lifted up his finger, and looked at me hard, and whipped me again and said: ‘Tabby Furpurr, don’t you see that barn cat staying with ducks and not eating any? And you even fly at birds! Don’t you ever touch any kind of bird again. Do you hear? Find out a way of not liking birds. Find out a way of not liking birds! Remember!’
“I knew what he said, though not in the way people know. I knew by the cat-way. I remembered by the cat-way of remembering. I kept very still, I did not steal, and when they thought I was asleep I was finding out a way of not liking birds, and after I found it out I never touched a bird again, nor a duck, nor a chicken. I stayed with the girl under the tree and never touched a bird. I watched the bird in the cage when he hopped and shook his tail and did not jump at him, and I would not let any other cat touch a bird nor a duck nor a chicken.
“One day when some killed chickens were hanging 

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