The happy little mother lies purring with delight over her maternal duties—and at intervals, when one of her little blind children utters a tiny miauw, she miauws back tenderly and consolingly.
Old Grey Puss has the sweetest cat-face possible. The chin and lower lip are white, as is also the upper lip with its shining whiskers. But above the slightly mahogany-coloured snout she seems almost to be wearing a mask. It is dead black—and gives a veiled, deceitful look to the gleaming, golden-yellow eyes.
GREY PUSS AND HER PAST
She had been the children’s kitten; had been petted and played with and had free run of the living-rooms. She could never forget those wonderful days—and the room there—just the other side of the threshold, where no hen or cock, cow or horse, not even Box himself, ever set foot—where only “humans” came. Old as she was, it still lingered in her memory.
Often during the chill of spring or the frost of winter she would see it hovering above her, dreamlike, with its endless bowls of milk and its everlasting summer.
The days of luxury had lasted little more than a month; after that the command was “Get out!” And with boot and broomstick she was ruthlessly expelled.
“Grey Puss is such a thief!” complained the housewife.... “She is always after the meat and cream on the kitchen table. Grey Puss steals ... we can’t have her in the house!”
What did she know about human laws? What were meat and cream meant for if not for a cat?... She took what she could; it was her nature.
After being expelled from the house she began to avoid people; soon the habit became second nature. From the house she was chased to the farmyard, from the farmyard to the cow-stall.... The smoke from the chimney was now the only thing in sight to remind her of her childhood’s luxury.
She was often to be found of a summer morning basking in the sun outside the stall. Together with the other she-cats of the farm she lay here giving suck to a motherless kitten. They shared the child between them, and fed it alternately, listening the while for the return of the milk-cart from the fields.