"Plenty! plenty!" said Mr. Connor. "Don't get another one. And, Jim," he added, "wouldn't it be better to feed them at night? Then they will be hungry the next morning."
"I tried that, sir," said Jim, "but they didn't seem so lively. I don't give them any more than just enough to whet their appetites. At first they sat round the door begging for more, half the morning, and I had to stone them away; now they understand it. In a few minutes, they'll all be off; and you won't see much of any of them till to-morrow morning. They are all on hand then, as regular as the sun rises."
"Where do they sleep?" said Mr. Connor.
"In the woodpile, every blessed cat of them," replied Jim. "And there are squirrels living in there too. It is just a kind of cage, that woodpile, with its crooks and turns. I saw a squirrel going up, up, in it the other day; I thought he'd make his way out to the top; I thought the cats would have cleaned them all out before this time, but they haven't; I saw one there only yesterday."
Jim had counted too soon on Mexican's kittens. Five of them came to a sad end. Their mother carried to them, one day, a gopher which she found lying dead in the road. Poor cat-mother! I suppose she thought to herself when she saw it lying there, "Oh, how lucky! I sha'n't have to sit and wait and watch for a gopher this morning. Here is one all ready, dead!" But that gopher had died of poison which had been put down his hole; and as soon as the little kittens ate it, they were all taken dreadfully ill, and all but one died. Either he hadn't had so much of the gopher as the rest had, or else he was stronger; he lingered along in misery for a month, as thin, wretched-looking a little beast as ever was seen; then he began to pick up his flesh, and finally got to be as strong a cat as there was in the whole pack.
He was most curiously marked: in addition to the black and white of his mother's skin, he had gray and yellow mottled in all over him. Jim thought it looked as if his skin had been painted, so he named him Fresco.
Jim had names for all the best cats; there were ten that were named. The other seven, Jim called "the rabble;" but of the ten he had named, Jim grew to be very proud. He thought they were remarkable cats.
First there was Mexican, the original first-comer in the colony. Then there was Big Tom, and another Tom called China Tom, because he would stay all the time he could with the Chinamen. He was dark-gray, with black stripes on him.
Next in size and beauty was a huge black cat, called Snowball. He was given to Mr. Connor by a miner's wife, who lived in a cabin high up on the mountain. She said she would let him have the cat on the condition that he would continue to call him Snowball, as she had done. She named him Snowball, she said, to make herself laugh every time she called him, he being black as coal; and there was so little to laugh at where she lived, she liked a joke whenever she could contrive one.