Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens

by Tabitha Grimalkin

She lifted her eyes languidly, for she had no strength to be alert now, and saw the bright and beautiful Fairy, with her car drawn by the silver pheasants.

'Have you learnt yet to be contented with plain fare at home?' said the Fairy to the cat, with an expression in her countenance that the cat could hardly make out: she did not know whether her strange visitor meant to be kind or not to her.

'Oh! if you would but take me back to my old mistress again!' cried the poor cat, clasping her paws in an agony of entreaty, 'I would never be discontented any more!'

The Fairy smiled, and touching her lightly with her silver wand, bade her close her eyes—another moment, and she bade her open them; and, most wonderful of all the wonderful things that had happened to her, the trees, the country, the distant city, all were gone! There was a charming log-fire on the hearth, sparkling and crackling; whirr, whirr, whirr, went the old woman's wheel, and there she sate in her chair just as usual; and the wind was blowing, and the rain was pelting against the shutters, exactly as it did the very night puss had left the cottage in such a mysterious way. In fact, everything looked precisely the same. The cat rubbed her eyes, but nothing could she see of the Fairy, or the car, or the silver pheasants.

However, had she got back, and so quick too? And the old woman did not seem at all surprised to see her—it was very odd. She could not make it out anyhow: at last it struck her that, perhaps, she might have been dreaming, and never have been out of the hut at all. Yet those terrible growls of Viper's, and those dismal days and nights in the trees—no, they must have been real! Still, it was very strange that the old woman should take no more notice of her, if she had been lost—how could it be? It was really unaccountable.

But her perplexities were interrupted by the cheerful voice of her old mistress calling out, 'Come, my pussy! it is supper-time!' and as she spoke, she rose up from her spinning-wheel, and taking down some eggs and a cake of brown bread, with a large jug, from her corner cupboard, she broke the eggs into the frying-pan, and they were soon hissing and sputtering over the fire. Then she placed a large saucer on the table, and broke some bread into it; and returning to the fire, she took off the frying-pan, and emptied the eggs into a dish on the table, and sat down to her supper. But before she tasted a bit herself, she poured some nice goat's milk over the bread in a saucer, and set it down on the hearth before the cat.

Now I will venture to say, puss never ate a meal in her life half so thankfully before. She made a resolution, between every mouthful, never to say one word to that silly chattering magpie again; and never to indulge in any more foolish wishes, but to stay at home, do her duty in catching her mistress's mice, and be contented, and thankful for the brown bread and milk, without troubling her head about countesses and buttered crumpets any more.

And I am happy to be able to tell you that she faithfully kept her resolution. She never spoke to the magpie afterwards; but contracted a steady friendship with the owl, which lasted to the day of his death; and when he did die, which was not till he had attained a venerable old age, he bequeathed to her his share of the mice that infested the neighborhood of the cottage.

As to the magpie, finding that her company was no longer desired in that part of the world, she very wisely took her flight far away to the other side of the wood.

Whether she still lives there, and goes on chattering about the grand things she used to see in the palace of the Countess Von Rustenfustenmustencrustenberg, is more than I can inform you. If you want to ascertain that fact, you must go to the northern part of the Duchy of Kittencorkenstringen, and then you must walk seventeen leagues and three quarters still further north, and then you must turn off to your right, just where you see the old fir-stump with the rook's nest in it; and then you must walk eleven leagues and a quarter more, and then turn to your left, and after you have kept straight on for about fifteen leagues more, you will see the wood where the magpie lives;—and then, if you walk quite through it to the other side, you will see the old woman's cottage; and if it should happen to be a fine day, I dare say you will see her sitting in the sunshine spinning, and, curled round beside her, the contented cat.