“‘Yes, and I am going to tell you why. You see cats like us, that have been dragged up in a den like this, and without human companionship, never learn manners. They are never cleanly in their habits, and just as often thieves as not. So the new purchaser soon finds out her mistake, and pussy, instead of becoming a parlour pet, is thrust out of doors, ill-used by the servants, and in time becomes a nomad and helps to swell the great army of vagrant cats, that commit depredations of every conceivable sort and render night hideous by their howlings.’ The sentences I place in italics should be remembered by all who think of buying a beautiful cat for a companion.
“My young heart sunk when I heard this intelligence, and, alas! I soon found it was all too true. Yes, my dear Shireen, and more than true, for not only were all the cats in this great prison-house treated as if they had been wild beasts, but sometimes even with systematic cruelty. I myself was soon the subject of this. You see, that having been used to good food in variety, with plenty of fresh air and exercise, I fell ill. I could not drink the thin skimmed-milk, and I loathed the high half-putrid horse-flesh. Then my skin became irritable. So one day my mistress hauled me out of my cage and slapped me across the head till my eyes grew almost blind, and I was dizzy.
“‘I shall lose by you, confound you,’ she cried.
“Then I was taken to a dirty back kitchen and scrubbed, yes, literally scrubbed with hot water and soap, then roughly dried and put in a cage near the fire. When half dry I was smeared all over with some vilely-smelling ointment till I loathed the very smell of myself. After this I was put in the hospital cage in another room. Here there was a cat in a worse plight than myself by far.
“She didn’t care to talk at all.
“‘I’m too sick and ill to speak,’ she said. ‘Besides, I’m going to be drowned to-night. I do so wish the night was come.’
“I shuddered with horror and fear.
“The night did come, and with it the executioner. He seized my poor companion and thrust her roughly into a sack, in which I could see there were some old bricks. Then he tied her up and left the room.
“I got worse instead of better, and there came a day when, from something in my mistress’s eye, I knew that I too was doomed.
“I received no food or drink of any kind that day; my inhuman mistress no doubt considering it would be mere waste to give meat to a cat she was going to drown.