The first sound that I heard—for I wasn't born deaf as well as blind—was the voice of Rosamond, a little girl who lives in our house sometimes, screeching at the top of her voice, 'Oh, Auntie, Auntie May! Petronilla has got her kittens! Hooray! Hooray!'
My mistress came running upstairs two steps at a time, and put her foot through her dress—I heard it rip. Then she leaned over us, for I felt her breath on my face, and said in a voice quite gurgly with pleasure, 'Brava, Petronilla!'
Then another voice—I learnt afterwards that it was the voice of the parlour-maid, a good soul and as fond of cats as Auntie May—said, 'They look just like so many grey boiled rags, don't they, Miss?'
'Oh, p-p-please, Auntie May,' began Rosamond, stuttering in her eagerness, 'mayn't I take one out to look at it?'
'Certainly not. How dare you propose such a thing! Go and do your health exercises. Petronilla is to be left entirely alone and not bothered.'
'Quite right, Miss Rosamond!' said Mary; 'I've heard say that if you watch her she'll do them a mischief. I knew a cat what ate all her kittens—'
'Ssh, Mary, I am sure Petronilla would not do such a thing. She isn't a common cat. But I tell you what she will certainly do if she thinks we are going to touch them or take them away from her—she will hide them. She knows it isn't good for them to be handled. You have no idea of the amount cats know, and though Petronilla is only four years old, she knows as much as the best nurse ever did. Now be off, all of you, and leave her alone!'
All very well, but Mary the maid simply couldn't keep away, and about three days after this she came in to dust the room (although she had been forbidden to do that just yet, for fear of blowing the germy dust into our eyes and down our throats); and when she had done dusting, she bent down and took us all out one by one, and examined us till she was sure to know us again. Mother looked at her reproachfully, but did not lift a paw to her, for she knew Mary was a dear good creature, and, though silly, would sacrifice her life for a single grey hair off mother's head, or indeed a hair of anywhere off her, and she once said so. But when Mary had gone she took a decided line, and said that she was determined to make an end of all this fingering and pawing of young limbs, which would certainly prevent them from growing and developing properly.
There was a large press with low flat shelves in a corner of the room, full of Auntie May's clothes, that just suited her purpose. She took us all up, one by one, carefully, in her mouth, keeping her teeth back somehow or other not to hurt us, though she could not help making us most disagreeably wet, and carried us along to the cupboard, bumping us as little as she could help on the floor, but still she did bump us. Then with one of us in her mouth, she jumped up to the shelf she had chosen—having first opened the folding doors of the cupboard with her paws—and laid him or her carefully down in the corner, and so with us all.
When Auntie May came up to find her clothes for going out, she discovered us. Mother purred at once to disarm her, for it was known that Auntie May could not manage to be really cross with dear Pet for long, IF she purred.