BY AGNES CARR.
Pretty little Kitty Kimo was sent by her mistress to the cat show, where her silky fur, bright eyes like great yellow daisies, and pink sea-shell-like ears, soon won her a prize, and she came home with a beautiful silver medal hung round her neck by a blue ribbon, and just the proudest little kit in all catdom.
Oh, how Miss Alice petted her, and fed her on chicken and cream for a week afterward! and how all the poor black, white, and gray cats who had not been to the show watched her with envy as she promenaded up and down the fence with the pretty medal glittering on her neck, and turning her vain little head right and left that every one might see it.
"She puts on as many airs as though she had killed a dozen rats," said Tabby Tortoiseshell, a scraggy-looking old cat, who was blind in one eye.
"When she couldn't catch even a mouse to save her life," said Tommy Scratchclaw, a famous hunter and mouser.
"She hissed and spat at me this morning, when I met her in the violet bed," said Pussy Clover, "and then scampered off up the elm-tree to show her tin locket to Dandy Maltese, who presented her with the neck of a sparrow he had just killed on the spot."
"Silly kitten!" sniffed old Granny Grimalkin, taking a pinch of catnip snuff. "Beauty isn't everything. I once won a brass button on a cord by turning door handles and jumping over a cane; but she hasn't done a thing except look as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth."
"Let us take her medal away, and make her win it back," suggested Sancho Squaller, a powerful black cat, with eyes like buttercups.