clothes, rubbed hard, and tried to purr loud enough to make her understand that I said in purr language, 'I love you, love you. Don't send me away!'

Oh the happiness of a cat with a good home! I had now a good home. I was held in laps, stroked well, talked to, even kissed. I had warm milk, meat scraps, and plenty of fish. I was not expected to catch. I wonder why cats are almost always expected to catch. I went every day to see poor Ellen. I used to go up after breakfast and scratch the door and get myself let in. When she combed her hair I sat close to her looking-glass, and looked at her while she combed her hair, and when she sat down to rest I lay on the floor and waited, and when she put on her shoes I kept at her feet, and rubbed her feet, and then I rubbed against her a good deal and purred to be taken up, and she took me up. Poor Ellen could not walk much but she could hold me. She liked me because I kept myself so clean and white.

The maiden said she never before saw a cat which could not endure a speck of dirt. She said she believed I taught her other cats to be neat. This might not have been true, but it was certainly true that while I was with them the other cats were very careful to clean themselves after eating. One day she called the family to see us. 'Look!' she cried. 'Look at my cat that cannot endure a speck of dirt! I do believe that rooster has brought his hen to make her take a lesson in neatness.' This might not have been true, either. He might have brought her to make her take a lesson in neatness, or he might have brought her for the scraps we often left.

Speaking of hens, a chicken made something happen to me which does not often happen to a cat. Our hen hatched out a brood of chickens and while they were little she was carried off by a fox. All the chickens died except two, and one of these had a weak throat. When the fox carried off the hen he stepped on that little chicken's neck and it had a weak throat ever after. One day when I was in a far corner of the garden I heard a curious noise like a choking, or a peeping, but more like a choking than a peeping. I watched, and presently that little chicken came out of the grass. I should have sprung upon it if I had not seen that it was in distress and was coming to me for help. It had got a bug stuck in its throat. It came close to me and I licked it, and purred to it and tried to cover it over with myself just as its own mother used to. Pretty soon it swallowed that bug.

After this it often came to me to be licked and purred to when it had a bug or a worm stuck in its throat, and at last it 

 Prev. P 8/65 next