CATS
A FELLER which had took a unfurnished bed room in a lodgin’ house, he said one evening to a friend which had called on him: “Now I got my room, and I have bought this bed and chair, but my money has give out, wot am I to do for a water pitcher, and a lamp, and a hair brush, and other little articles of luxury such as a man of refined taste likes to see about him?”
Then his friend he spoke up and said: “Just give me that old cat and come along o me, and we will get all them things mighty quick.”
So they took the cat into the back yard of a other house and pinned her tail to a cloes line, where she swung free to the sport of the wind and owled awful! Then the fellers friend he said: “Now we will get plenty water jugs, and lamps, and hair brushes, and old shoes, and all things which is nice. All we got to do is just hide ourselfs till they come down like manna from Heaven.”
They stayed all night till the cat had singed herself into the better land and they was most froze, and no manna. While they was a lookin up to a window a feller in his night shirt opened the window and looked out for to see the sun rise. Then one of them said to the shirt feller: “It is a nice mornin, gum dast you!” But the man at the window he didnt say nothing. So the other feller he hollered: “How do you like music, old stick-in-the-mud?” but the man didn’t say nothin a other time. Then the feller which the cat was hisn he shook his two fists real terible and hollered: “Ile get even on you for this, you darned thief!”
The man in the house took notice and went away from the window, but pretty soon come back with a enormous ear trumpet, which he stuck in his ear and leaned out and shouted: “What?”
Old Gaffer Peters, which has got the bald head, he had a big Maltese cat, and the cat had a hole in its ear. One day it come in to Mister Brilys meat shop, which is the fat butcher, and Jack Brily, he catched it and shut it up. But first he cut off its ear which had the hole in it. Bime by Missis Doppy, which is old Gaffer’s daughter and has a red head, she come in for to buy sausage meat. Jack he sneaked the cat ear into the sausage meat and Missis Doppy she took the meat home, but Jack he said, just as she left the shop:
“That is the dandiest sausage meat which we have ever made, you look at it when you get home, and see if it aint.”
When she was gone Jack he shut the cat up in the box which catches the ground up meat as it comes out of the machine, and waited. Pretty soon Missis Doppy she come boilin in, real furious, and handed back the meat and showed Jack the cat ear with the hole in it and said: “Young man, do you know what that is?”