He really belonged to the farmer’s wife, and was always released at her request. He then tore round doing his amiable best to exterminate the farm’s feline inhabitants.
The foreman is sitting milking in the stall, when he is suddenly overturned and kicked into the gutter. The cows roar frenziedly.... Box has just rushed by in pursuit of a cat!
As soon as the foreman has picked himself up, a clog comes hurtling at Box—and just as he is disappearing crestfallen through the door, a milk-stool catches him in the rear.
After this exploit he seldom ventured inside the stall-door; but the foreman knew well enough when the ruffian stood outside peering through the chink, for the stall-cat’s tail always swelled and stood to attention immediately.
One day he surprised the good wife’s favourite kitten, a little white he-cat, as it lay sleeping in the barn; it was too slow in waking, and was captured. The farmer chased him with a shovel, and succeeded in recovering the kitten, but it was dead. There was nothing to do except break the news to his wife, and bury the corpse.
After that outrage Box was chained up for a very long time indeed. But gradually his madness subsided so much that he learned to recognize the “musk animals” attached to the farm; and although he could not of course regard them as friends, he yet respected them for the sake of the general peace.
But beyond the bounds of the farm, out on the road and in the fields, he showed no mercy. Every cat he met there was his sworn enemy—and he was master-hand at running them down and killing them.
CATS OF ALL COLOURS
Among the wheat, which is now almost ripe, flame the poppy-torches ... the blue-stalked corn is so thickly massed that Grey Puss disappears completely in its depths.
The seething of the rye from the adjacent field fills her sensitive ear; it is the keynote of the summer music.