Maurice felt very affectionately to both his parents. The natural way of showing this was to jump on to the sideboard and thence on to his father’s shoulders. He landed there on his four padded feet, light as a feather, but father was not pleased.
‘Bother the cat!’ he cried. ‘Jane, put it out of the room.’
Maurice was put out. His great idea, which was to be carried out with milk, would certainly not be carried out in the dining-room. He sought the kitchen, and, seeing a milk-can on the window-ledge, jumped up beside the can and patted it as he had seen Lord Hugh do.
[p18]
‘My!’ said a friend of Jane’s who happened to be there, ‘ain’t that cat clever—a perfect moral, I call her.’
‘He’s nothing to boast of this time,’ said cook. ‘I will say for Lord Hugh he’s not often taken in with a empty can.’
This was naturally mortifying for Maurice, but he pretended not to hear, and jumped from the window to the tea-table and patted the milk-jug.
‘Come,’ said the cook, ‘that’s more like it,’ and she poured him out a full saucer and set it on the floor.
Now was the chance Maurice had longed for. Now he could carry out that idea of his. He was very thirsty, for he had had nothing since that delicious breakfast in the dust-bin. But not for worlds would he have drunk the milk. No. He carefully dipped his right paw in it, for his idea was to make letters with it
on the kitchen oil-cloth. He meant to write: ‘Please tell me to leave off being a cat and be Maurice again,’ but he found his paw a very clumsy pen, and he had to rub out the first ‘P’ because it only looked like an accident. Then he tried again and actually did make a ‘P’ that any fair-minded person could have read quite easily.
‘I wish they’d notice,’ he said, and before he got the ‘l’ written they did notice.