NOW I seem to see some of you Pansies skipping this article, because you think is a biographical sketch of the great musician Mozart, and possibly you “don’t like biographical sketches.” Or if you do, those of you who are members of the “P. S.” have read all about Mozart in your book—“Great Composers.” But let me assure you at the beginning that while this is a biographical sketch, and as true a one as ever was written, and about a person named Mozart, who was something of a musician, possibly you will not pass it by so scornfully when I tell you this Mozart is a cat!
MOZART.
He belonged to a family which is quite small, I believe, though its members are very large, so that when he was but two or three months old, he was as large as many ordinary cats, while his mother was positively colossal!
The way I came to get Mozart was this: his mother, brothers and sisters, and he, were owned by my auntie May, and this same auntie was, once upon a time, about to move from her home in New York, to New Jersey. Knowing how I loved cats, when my mother was visiting her, she proposed that one of the kittens should be taken home to me. So, on the morning of my father and mother’s start, one was procured, and imprisoned in a willow basket which was tied with strong cord. Just as the good-bys were being said, when the basket was reposing in the bottom of the sleigh, and as the driver was raising his reins preparatory to the start, my uncle called out, “Don’t step on the kitten!” To which the driver responded, “It ain’t here!” and grinned broadly, as the disappointing animal jumped to the ground, and sped across the snow to the stable. There was no time to recapture him, for they were then almost afraid they would miss the train, and the sleigh-bells jingled as the sleigh ran down the hill to the depot, the occupants thereof looking curiously at the empty basket in the bottom. “How did he get out?” was the question; and became the question for discussion on the train, as all day my mother and father whizzed along from New York into Pennsylvania. The basket had been found to be just as securely tied as it was when the kitten had first been placed therein, and the only explanation that could be given when my parents reached home was, that the kitten had been in the basket, and was not! Which explanation was, as you may not be surprised to hear, exceedingly unsatisfactory to me, for I dearly loved, and do dearly love all members of the feline kingdom. I never see one but I feel that I must stop and pat its soft fur.
But so far, instead of telling you how I did get Mozart, I have been telling you how I did not get him!
It was about a week after my father and mother had reached home, when, one morning, as we were seated at the breakfast table, the door-bell rang, and an expressman appeared, with a grin on his face that seemed literally to reach from one ear to the other! “’Ere’s a cat!” he exclaimed, and forthwith produced a box a foot or two square, the top of which was decorated, in good-sized letters, with this injunction:
“THIS SIDE UP WITH CARE!”
As the official brought it into the hall, the listeners and lookers-on heard a prolonged “Waa-a-a-a-a-a!” which seemed to echo and re-echo, and at last died away into silence.
“It is the kitten that we didn’t bring!” said my mother, while I ran for a hammer and chisel with which to open the box. When the operation was performed, there jumped out a large, yellow, cat-like kitten, which escaped as far as possible from us, as we tried to grasp it, repeating its mournful, yet decisive cry of—“Waa-a-a-a-a-a!”