THE two cats whose histories I am about to write are associated in memory with comparatively happy years of my life,—years scarce past by the dates they bear, but years already seeming in the remote past, borne away by the frightfully accelerating speed of time, and which, placed beside the gray to-day, bear tints of early dawn or last rosy light of morning. So fast our days hasten to the twilight, so fast our fall to the night.
(III)
PARDON me that I call each of my cats Pussy. At first I had no idea of giving names to my pets. A cat was “Pussy,” a kitten “Kitty;” and surely no names could be more expressive and tender than these. I shall call the poor little personages of my story by the names they bore in their real lives, Pussy White and Pussy Gray; the latter often known as Pussy Chinese.
(IV)
AS the oldest, allow me first to present the Angora, Pussy White. Her visiting card, by her desire, was thus inscribed—