But a cat with all its nine lives fresh within its young frame, is not easily “squished,” even by so heavy a thing as a chest full of magazines, and Miss Pussy’s body darted out just in time. Not so the tip of her tail which, whisking behind her as she turned to rush out, was caught between chest and floor, and acted like a push button on a call bell, for she emitted a continuous yawp that lasted until I had lifted the chest again.
Cats generally see where they are going, but Miss Pussy had been looking behind her at the spectacle of her imprisoned tail, and when I released her she sprang high in the air and landed compactly and dexterously on a sheet of sticky fly paper.
Never can I forget the look she gave us over her shoulder as her feet struck the gluey mass. To give herself a leverage by which to pull her dainty fore-paws out of the entanglement, she sat down—temporarily, as she thought—permanently, as the fly paper decided.
We were sorry for the cat, but being Americans we gave ourselves over to mirth at the picture she presented. The pencil of a Frost is needed to adequately represent her agonized twisting on the sticky sheet. At last, by a Herculean effort, she extricated her fore paws and walking glue-ily to the head of the stairs she dragged herself along on the fly paper as if she were part sled, part cat. Coming to the head of the stairs she attempted to walk down in the manner of trick cats, but not being used to the exercise she turned a series of summersaults instead, and landed at the foot so completely enmeshed in sticky fly paper that it would have been a small fly, indeed, who could have found a place for his own little feet upon its yellow surface.
I have often derided the witless persons who found amusement in what I call pantomime catastrophes, but this simple conjunction of cat and fly paper was as funny as anything I ever looked at.
“It’ll spoil her nice fur,” said Minerva, running down stairs after the cat and overtaking her at the kitchen door, which I had fortunately closed. A sympathetic hand picked up the papered cat and attempted to divorce her from her adhesive mantle, but when I came down it looked to me as if there were far more fur on the “tanglefoot” than Pussy had herself, and the ungrateful animal had scratched her benefactress as well as she could with glue covered talons. Then spitting and swearing, Miss Pussy dashed through the kitchen window, not waiting for it to be opened, and went to her first retreat, where she remained for the rest of the day, ridding herself, after the manner of cats, of as much as she could of the flies’ last resting place.
It suddenly occurred to me that the time was ripe for more diplomacy, that even now, at the eleventh hour, I might save Minerva to the house of Vernon, and things would continue to go on as smoothly—as before.
“Minerva, you saved Miss Pussy’s life by holding on as you did,” said I. (I said nothing about her asininity in lifting the chest for Miss Pussy to creep under it.)
“Might as well be dead as all gawmed up with that fly paper stuff.”
“Well, she has a cat’s tongue, and she knows how to use it. She’ll be as sleek as sealskin by to-night. Minerva!”