As the first step in making ready, he decided to ask his animal friends at Cloverleaf Farm to tell him all they knew about circuses, for, thought he, certainly some of them must know and can just as well give me pointers as not. He did not propose to tell anyone, however, not even his best friend, Rex, the colt, what his plans were.
With this scheme in mind, he first approached Abbie, the black cat. Her real name was Abagail, and while the boys called her Ab for short, sister Emma and Billy Whiskers always addressed her as Abbie, “for,” said Billy, “it isn’t so hard a name to pronounce as Abagail and sounds very much more friendly than just Ab.” He knew that it was well worth his while to be on good terms with her.
“Abbie,” he said, when he found her napping the next morning on the mat before the front door, “what’s a circus?”
She didn’t move though she heard every word that Billy said. The truth is she had been very restless the night before and didn’t want to be disturbed in her morning snooze. More than that, she had no idea what a circus was and didn’t want to let Billy Whiskers see that she couldn’t answer his question if it could be helped. Cats, you remember, have been considered very knowing creatures ever since the days of the Pharaohs in Egypt, and Abbie was very proud of her race and its reputation and didn’t propose to lessen it. So she lay perfectly still when Billy asked her about the circus.
He repeated the question in a louder tone. Still there was no reply. If his mind had not been so taken up with the matter, Billy would have known that there was something wrong and gone elsewhere with his question. But he did not stop to think, he was so bent and determined on finding out about circuses. So he next, with more force than he probably intended to use, poked Abbie in the side with his left horn. Then there was a fuss. She jumped up as though she had suddenly found herself sleeping on a bumblebee’s nest, and the first Billy knew she was looking at him for all the world as he had seen her look one day at a strange dog which had chased her into a corner where further flight was no longer possible and she had turned to fight him off if necessary. Billy Whiskers had appeared on the scene then just in time to rescue her, but Abbie had now forgotten all about that debt of gratitude.
There she stood with her front and hind feet close together, her back all humped up, her fur sticking out so that she looked twice as big as usual, her tail all swelled up and jerking nervously, while her eyes looked, as Billy said afterward, as green as old Croaker’s back. (Old Croaker was the big frog in the pond behind the great barn.)
“Why, Abbie,” exclaimed Billy, “it’s me, your old friend. Don’t look like that! I only want to ask you what’s a circus.”
Then he got a piece of Abbie’s mind.
“Billy Whiskers, you are no gentleman. If you were, you wouldn’t be around here disturbing my rest. You know that I am half dead with neuralgia and that the only sound sleep I get is when the sun shines on my right side. Now you be off, and if you ever cut up like this again, you’ll get a scratching that you can’t forget to the last day of your life.”