Then there was Lady Jane. He had one white eye and a torn ear. He was a very dissipated-looking cat, and he had evidently fought a great many fights. Why he was called Lady Jane, I am sure I do not know. He was not related to Grandma, and nobody knew where he came from. He did not fight the kits that belonged to the gentleman’s wife, at least not when he came to get something to eat. And though she did not like his looks, the gentleman’s wife was too kind-hearted to drive him away.
When summer was over, the gentleman and his wife went away to their other home in a Northern city; but you must not suppose they left their cats to suffer. No, indeed! The kits had a warm house of their own to sleep in, and there was a little door left open at the back of it so that they could go into the kitchen if they wanted to. They were good neat cats, that never abused this privilege.
Every day, all winter long, the man came with fresh milk, night and morning, and called “P-ooo-s, p-ooo-s, p-ooo-s.” And two or three times a week they had fresh meat, or, best of all, canned salmon. The gentleman left a whole case of salmon for them every year, and they loved it better than anything else,—for you know cats are very fond of fish. Some cats will even go fishing for themselves if they live near the water.
Little Mitchell Likes Chinkapins
“He sat on the Lady’s knee and cracked chinkapins, and would give the shells a toss that sent them far away.” (Page [132])
Baby Mitchell’s lady once had a cat whose name was Little Man Friday, and he would catch his own fish out of a little bayou that came up from the Gulf of Mexico, on whose shore the lady lived. For Little Man Friday was a Florida cat, and perhaps some day you may like to hear his story, and how he got his name.
Grandma and the other kits knew perfectly well when the gentleman and his wife were packing their trunks to go North, and it made the poor kits very unhappy. It made Grandma so dreadfully unhappy toward the end of her life that they used to do it slyly, and not let her see the preparations for going away.