“Said my mistress, ‘Pinky-white is the neatest cat that ever was seen. She will have no dirt on her fur. She licks off every speck. She keeps herself snow white. And I have taught her to behave well. I no longer keep a rod. But she catches no mice.’
“‘You feed her too well,’ said the next house cat’s mistress. ‘Send her to Miss Rhody and get you a mouser. Miss Rhody is out of a cat and is waiting to find a neat one. Miss Rhody has managed cats these forty years and knows how to do it. Miss Rhody never feeds a cat. If it won’t catch mice she drowns it.’
“‘I will send Pinky-white to Miss Rhody to-morrow,’ said my mistress.
“This frightened me. Oh what should I do? What could I do? In my agony of distress I ran round and round in a circle in the potato patch, tore up the squash vines, and at last I sprang over the high wall, and in that house and garden I was never seen more.
But Alas! Three Others Were Gnawing the Bone.
“Then began the terrible unhappiness of my life. No tongue can tell what I suffered. Hiding behind fences, under barns, in empty pig-styes, empty hen-houses; being driven from back doors, hooted at by boys, barked at by dogs, and hungry, hungry, hungry, oh so hungry!—for I could not catch well—and always dirty! Ah! none who have not felt it can know the unhappiness of a cat without a home!
“One night I thought surely I should taste a bit of meat. A black-and-white kitten kindly told me of a large bone she had seen in a yard, and we scampered to that yard. But alas! three others were already gnawing the bone and there was nothing on the bone, for a tommy cat had kept the others away till he had eaten off all the meat and then he sat seeing them gnaw the bare bone. I did not gnaw. I did not wish to gnaw bare bone.
“One day a dreadful thing happened to me. It was when I was hungrier than I had ever been before, though I had been very hungry. I was so hungry I thought I could not live, and I went into the fields to try to catch something. It was a silly thing for me to try to catch a rat when I was short-clawed.
“I did. A great rat went into a field and I thought, oh if I could only get that rat! I must have that rat! I must!