KITTy-WEE THE LOVELy 



many allowances for the frailty of degenerate creation/ 

 but he drew the line at the violation of his reverend elbows. 

 Tittums was once again, with many tears and heart- 

 rendings, passed on. This time to a lady who keeps a 

 cattery. We hear that he has become a model of every 

 virtue, and that she only wears a fencing mask and boxing 

 gloves when she combs him, because on the day when she 

 left them off, Tittums, in a fit of absence of mind, bit her 

 through the thumb. Anyone who takes a cat paper can 

 hear more of this most distinguished beast, under the name 

 of " Saracinesca." 



Kitty- Wee is supposed to have inherited her father's super- 

 lative looks only he was " smoke ""-and her mother's 

 angelic disposition. If occasionally a spark of the paternal 

 temper flashes out, the gardener's wife <with whom she 

 prefers to dwell) says " Kitty is a bit nervous to-day." 

 It was after Kitty-Wee's first mesalliance that she took up 

 her abode with the worthy pair in the "little cot," as 

 Mrs. Adam calls it, at the bottom of the garden. Persian 

 princesses, from the time of "A Thousand and One 

 Nights " onwards, are proverbially capricious. But what 

 perverse freak of youthful fancy induced our delicate silver- 

 pawed highborn damsel to fix her young affections upon 

 Mr. Hopkinson was and is, a painful mystery. 

 Mr. Hopkinson, a very hooligan among cats, so degenerate 

 indeed as to have lost all his eastern characteristics, and to 

 have assumed a positively "Arry-like, bank-'oliday, dis- 

 reputable, Hampstead-Heath kind of vulgarity," was a 

 lean, mangy creature with a denuded tail. He had a black 

 spot over one eye/ the other eye was conspicuous by 

 its absence. We could hear his raucous voice uplifted 



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