He heard somebody coming up the street. “I will follow that Gentleman,” he thought, “and I will cry so that he will be sorry for me and give me a home.”
When this person came nearer he saw that it was not a Gentleman at all, but a Lady who could hardly keep from being blown away. He could not have seen her except that Cat’s eyes can see in the dark. “Meouw!” said the Kitten. “Meouw! Meouw!”
“Poor little Pussy!” said a voice above him. “Poor little Pussy! But you must not come with me.”
“Meouw!” answered he, and trotted right along after her. He was a Kitten who was not easily discouraged. He rubbed up against her foot and made her stop for fear of stepping on him. Then he felt himself gently lifted up and put aside. He scrambled back and rubbed against her other foot. And so it was for more than two blocks. The Lady, as he always called her afterward, kept pushing him gently to one side and he kept scrambling back. Sometimes she even had to stand quite still for fear of stepping on him.
“Meouw!” said the Kitten, and he made up his mind that anybody who spoke so kindly to strange Kittens would be a good mistress. “I will stick to her,” he said to himself. “I don’t care how many times she pushes me away, I will scramble back.”
When they turned in at a gate he saw a big house ahead of him with many windows brightly lighted and another light on the porch. “I like that home,” he said to himself. “I will slip through the door when she opens it.”
But after she had turned the key in the door she pushed him back and closed the screen between them. Then he heard her say: “Poor little Pussy! I want to take you in, but we have agreed not to adopt another Cat.” Then she closed the door.
He wanted to explain that he was not really a Cat, only a little Kitten, but he had no chance to say anything, so he waited outside and thought and cried. He did not know that the Lady and her husband feared that Cats would eat the many birds who nested in the trees on the lawn. He thought it very hard luck for a tiny Kitten to be left out in the cold rain while the Lady was reading by a blazing grate fire. He did not know that as she sat by the fire she thought about him instead of her book, for she loved little Kittens, and found it hard to leave any out in the street alone.
While he was thinking and crying, a tall Gentleman with a black beard and twinkling brown eyes came striding up to the brightly lighted porch. “Well, Pussy-cat!” said the Gentleman, and took a bunch of shining, jingling things out of his pocket and stuck one of them into a little hole in the door and turned it. Then the door swung open, and the Gentleman, who was trying to close his umbrella and shake off the rain, called first to the Lady and then to the kitten. “O Clara!” he cried. “Come to see this poor little Kitten. Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty! I know you want to see him. Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty! I should have thought you would have heard him crying. Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!”
The Lady came running out and was laughing. “Yes, John,” she said, “I have had the pleasure of meeting him before. He was under my feet most of the way home from church to-night, and I could hardly bear to leave him outside. But you know what we promised each other, that we would not adopt another Cat, on account of the birds.”