Whenever he came in, if we saw him in time, we would run as fast as we could and crawl in between the latticework under the porch, and hide in there till he had gone.
As time went by the fur on my back and sides became worn very short, because I had such hard work to squeeze through. You see I grew bigger every day, and the hole didn’t.
One day our little tormentor tied a string around Toddy’s neck, fastened it to his velocipede, and then rode up and down the sidewalk, as fast as he could. And there is no telling how long he would have kept it up if a kind neighbor across the street had not come over and taken Toddy away from him.
When mistress came home that evening, they told her about Eddie’s cruelty, and as she had warned him already many times to let her kittens alone, she said she would report the case to the “Humane Agent.”
I never learned what the gentleman did, but from that day Eddie did not trouble us for a long time, and we think that next to mistress and the boy, the Humane Agent is our best friend.
But alas for poor Budge and Toddy! A few moons after I came to my new home Toddy disappeared, and we all felt very badly about it. The next day Budge went away, I suppose to look for Toddy, and he never came back. Then for several days mistress and the boy had such sad faces that it made me very unhappy. They asked the milkman and the grocer and the letter-carrier to look out for the two kittens, but we never heard anything more of them, and I was without any companions for quite a while.
As for me I rather enjoyed being alone, because mistress and the boy paid more attention to me than they had ever done before. At meal-time I was allowed to sit on a chair beside mistress, and at night I slept at the foot of her bed.
But the days seemed very long, until I became acquainted with our neighbor’s dog, Dennis, a large handsome fellow with brown curly hair and beautiful brown eyes. Although Dennis had more good things at home than any one dog could eat, for he was always burying something in his yard, yet he came to our house daily for the little titbits that mistress would give to him. But having had one unpleasant experience with a dog I kept at a distance from Dennis; till one day he proved himself a real friend. Two saucy little curs came into my yard and chased me up a tree, when Dennis, with one bound, jumped at them and drove them away, and after that he and I were the best of friends.
III
MY REASONS FOR WRITING THIS STORY
When mistress and the boy are at home, he generally reads aloud to her and at such times I usually sit on his lap or by his side. About the time Budge and Toddy went away he read a story which was written by “Black Beauty,” a horse. I thought it was rather peculiar that a horse should write a story. But Black Beauty told people how to take care of horses, how to provide for their comfort and how to sympathize with them, in doing which he set the whole world to thinking for a time about nothing but horses, and in that way did them a very good turn.