I noticed that in spots the hair on the cat’s body was entirely gone; the flesh was covered with bleeding sores, and her tail had scarcely any hair on it.
Guy called us cats together and sent us into the kitchen, but we could look through the screen door and see what was going on. He gave the poor creature a big saucer of fresh warm milk, which she lapped up very greedily, asking for more till she had finished three saucers full.
When mistress came home she looked at the cat, but did not touch her. She gave Guy some money and a bottle and sent him to the drug store for some medicine.
The poor cat was so tired she did not even wash after eating, but lay right down on the old door-mat. I think she had walked a long while before she found a place where she was allowed to rest. Before Guy returned from the store she was fast asleep.
Mistress poured some of the medicine on a small cotton pad, and placed it by the cat’s nose. Then she quickly covered her up with a tub, and Guy sat on top of it.
The cat whined and struggled for a few seconds, then gradually her breathing became heavier, but in less than a minute she was perfectly quiet. She had gone to her long and peaceful sleep, and I have no doubt that if she ever sees mistress in that beautiful place they tell about, where there are no homeless and hungry creatures, she will thank her for the kind act which ended her wretched existence.
The tub was not removed till the following morning, when Guy improvised a little casket for the body and buried it by the side of Beauty, marking the spot with a stake on which he wrote:
“Sacred to the Memory of the Unknown Dead,”
and mistress planted some heliotrope upon it.
Meanwhile one of our neighbors was sitting on her kitchen porch in full view of the whole proceeding, and I expected every minute that she would say something sarcastic about a “cat funeral” or a “cat hospital,” as she had done before. She was busily plying the needle on her beautiful fancy work. As soon as mistress had finished planting the flowers, the lady came to the fence and said: