MAIDA
In Long-Suffering
Patience
Maida Would
Stretch Herself
in a Streak
of Sunshine and
Survey
the Riotously
Incorrigible
Mites, Indulging
in Their
Favorite Pastime
of Playing
Tag All
Over Her Body
This rather serious game for Maida of "in and out" would go on until her nervous system was a wreck and she was utterly exhausted. Finally realizing that her efforts to subdue her riotously indecent family were useless, she would drop breathless to the floor, stretch herself in a streak of sunshine near the box, and survey the incorrigible mites with disgust. No longer pursued, the fun ceased for the youngsters, and they would come to where she was having a little interval of peace, and nip and maul, challenging her into another contest, playing tag up and down her tail, and indulging in other tantalizing pastimes, until even her self-sacrificing, long-suffering patience could no longer endure, and she would indignantly shake every one of them off, spring to her feet with a contemptuous meow of impatience, and seek another place for relief. Then the apparently conscience-stricken little rascals would meekly come, one by one, anxious and conciliatory, humbly begging her notice, scrambling solicitously over her, and by and by the four tired-out white beggars would be sleeping quietly with their sharp little noses snuggled in the soft fur of her body, all love and forgiveness.
Although animal children are generally supposed to be much better behaved and to cause their mothers less anxiety than human children, this poor foster-mother was kept very busy disciplining and training her strangely troublesome family. She truly mothered them, not as adopted aliens, but as the real thing, and taught them the proper things kittens ought to do and ought not to do, with much vigor and many a box on the ear; for generally what the rodents wanted to do, seemed to be just the thing they should not do in the progress of their strange education.
One day the closet door having been left ajar, baby ratlets in their search for mischief, climbed way up to the ceiling and perched on the topmost strip that held the hanging hooks. Maida, on finding them so far above her reach, was painfully distressed, meowing and making the greatest kind of a commotion in trying to scramble up the smooth wall to their rescue, as she thought. The ratlets seemed to be heartlessly indifferent to her anxiety and had to be driven from their lofty roost by the mistress. The first one to land on the floor was grabbed by the enraged cat and given such a shaking that he wobbled about in dizzy unconsciousness for several minutes. The next one she caught with a firm paw, as he was scurrying back to the box, hoping to escape his punishment, and held him tight to the floor, in spite of his whimpering protest, till he was quite still. This one lay for a long time as if dead, but after a while he slowly lifted his giddy, swimming head and crawled patiently and sorrowfully back to his bed, and never again did any of these naughty babies attempt to break this strange law of a strange mother, by climbing in the closet.
Once a window of this room was lowered from the top, just a tiny way for air. Maida's mistress, happening to be in the barn, heard a great meowing and disturbance going on in their room overhead and rushed up to find her beloved cat racing about like mad, apparently frantic with grief and not a ratlet in sight. The lady was very much puzzled over this total disappearance of all four of the ratlets and imagined all sorts of things, even the worst, and started in to investigate. In her search, she happened to glance out of the window and there on the roof were the whole bunch, plainly going mad in their unusual freedom. The weather was splendid and they were all out enjoying it, jumping and running on the separating wall in mad frolic, apparently just for the sake of falling back in somersaults on the roof, scuffling and doing all sorts of nimble acrobatics in reckless stunts, and surely making the most of their glorious holiday in the sunshine. The window was no sooner raised from the bottom, giving Maida a chance, than she dashed out like a flash, plainly determined on revenge. The instant the naughty runaways caught sight of her, they could not get back into the room and their box quickly enough; they raced for their very lives, stumbling and knocking each other over in their eagerness to get there, fairly shivering in their fright. Maida selected one poor pink-eyed, trembling sprinter for a thorough shaking and let the others profit by his sorrowful example, saving herself further exercise.
The ratlets lived to be independent, well-behaved grown-ups, with wonderfully polished and silky coats, owing to their frequent and thorough grooming by their faithful foster-mother, who seemingly never grew weary of her maternal duties or their companionship. They were great successes as rats, though doubtless Maida had her own interior disappointment and cat wonder as to why, with such faithful bringing up, they were not animals of a more comforting nature. Now she has real babies of her own, and this time there is no mistake, for their fur is pure Maltese, so her mother instincts have been allowed legitimate vent. Her alien foster-children have the freedom of the whole country and, owing to their strange adoption and the zeal with which they were brought up in the way good kittens ought to go, they seem irreproachable in behavior.
A MEMORY
