As soon as the poor creature’s hunger was appeased, without stopping to wash, she went into a dark corner behind the cook-stove and lay down to rest. While she thus lay there, mistress said to Bettie, “It seems to me the kindest thing we can do to this poor creature is to gently put her to sleep and end her troubles.”
“I think so, too,” said Bettie; “no one would care to have such an unsightly animal around the house. She will never be anything but a hapless vagabond, to whom death would be a blessing.”
But after all the little stranger was allowed to spend a few days of real happiness, and when one morning we missed her, we knew that she had gone to her long resting-place and was saved from further sorrow.
As to the big cat, mistress said she felt sure that she must be somebody’s pet, and she told Bettie not to let her out under any circumstances.
Several days afterward Budge told me that during the first night of the big cat’s stay with us she confided to him that her reason for leaving her home was the fact that a new housekeeper who had lately come, had just made her life unendurable; and that in utter despair she had wandered away not knowing whither to go.
The very next day after the stranger arrived she became the mother of five kittens. I dread to think what would have become of the poor thing and her helpless babies on that cold winter night, if mistress hadn’t allowed her to stay. But no doubt the kind Providence directed her safely to our door.
A day or two after the little kittens came, there was a notice in the newspaper: “Lost, strayed or stolen, a full-grown tiger cat. Leave at ‘The Elms’ and get reward.” When mistress saw it she sent word to “The Elms” and they sent the coachman, who identified the cat and took her and her kittens home, wrapped up in a Buffalo robe and tucked in a laundry basket which he had brought in the coupé. The people at “The Elms” were so grateful to mistress for sheltering their pet that they sent her a basket of beautiful flowers.
Of course, it is not to be expected that every lady will turn her house into an asylum for stray cats; but I have often heard mistress say, and so I believe it is true, that many parents would have less cause to mourn over selfishness and ingratitude in their children if they would set a more generous and unselfish example before them in their own treatment of dumb and helpless creatures.
XXXII
A KITTIE PARTY
When my kittens were of the proper age mistress proposed they should have a chance to see all their little friends, so we sent out invitations like this: