"Why not go to the back-door and rub the knife on the steel?" we asked, modestly trying to appear unconscious that we were getting off something rather dazzling. "Then when he hears it, he'll rush up and you can—"
The suggestion was so obviously sensible that, in spite of its coming from us, our landlady adopted it at once. Other suggestions of ours had not worked out quite according to specifications, but this one looked good. Our landlady was even moved to say that she hadn't expected so much wisdom from us.
She got a chance to try the ruse soon after. It was a warm dark night, when the feet of even the wisest cat might stray from the paths of piety, and Mike's had very evidently wandered. In fact, it seemed to us that the strong but lyric tenor voice singing of love down the lane might well belong to him. But we couldn't be sure. There was a good deal of singing going on, mostly of a sentimental nature.
We cheerfully undertook to do the knife-grinding, being an adept at any operation connected with eating. Squaring our elbows in a professional manner, we gave three or four slashing cuts on the steel that would have earned us a job in any packing-house. We made a noise like a duel in romantic comedy—some of that matinee idol stuff, you know, "Have at ye, caitiff knave!" lunging in tierce and quart, and then a quart or so in the dressing-room after the act.
Did it work? Yes, friend reader, it worked. It brought Mike all right—also every other cat off every other fence in that block. Before the landlady could slam and bolt the door, about ten frenzied felines hurled themselves into that quiet and orderly kitchen and immediately started trying to throw one another into the stove or drown one another in the sink.
While it lasted—and it was some minutes before the landlady's screams brought sufficient assistance, including the Chinaman out of the laundry across the way—it was the liveliest little scramble one could see outside the Petrograd Soviet. In ten seconds that kitchen looked like the plucking room of an otter-shop. Those cats just grabbed the fur in handfuls and threw it away. We got it in our porridge for weeks after, giving to that wholesome breakfast dish a still further resemblance to soft mortar.
Mike finally took to staying out all night. It was about this time that we began to entertain doubts as to his sex and morals—we were still calling him Yvonne in moments of friendship. He also wore a bow of red ribbon and a bell, the bell being for the purpose of tracking him around the house when he elected to go up and sleep in someone's bed.
The bell must have been an awful nuisance to Mike. Perhaps that is why he never could catch a mouse. We saw him tracking one in the grass one night. Every time he got ready to spring the infernal bell would tinkle, and Mike would sit up and moan. It was no use, and Mike definitely gave up mouse-catching as a steady job—stone-deaf mice being presumably rare.
His bow and bell, no doubt, made him unpopular with the other Toms. The decoration was not particularly becoming—he was about as pretty as a prize-fighter in a rose necklace—but his confrères probably regarded it as a sign of a vain and uppish disposition. So they used to chasten him—three or four at a time, we should judge from Mike's mussed appearance when he came home for breakfast.
His bandy front legs must also have been a handicap at first in these nocturnal affrays, but he learned how to use them to good effect after a while—they were probably all right for upper cuts and short hooks from either side. We noticed that as time went on he used to bring more of his fur back with him in the morning, and we judged he was working well up towards the top of his class—welter-weight, we should say. Mike never got beyond medium size, and he was always rather lean.