104 IN A CHESHIRE GARDEN 



absolute skin and bone literally; her face 

 lost all its roundness and got to be quite 

 small and her voice died almost completely 

 away. Towards the last she spent her days 

 on one particular stool by the fire, eating 

 very little, but apparently content and even 

 happy, and responding as best as she could 

 to any attention. I do not remember her 

 ever lying down at that time, she was always 

 sitting and always on the same spot, which 

 was worn quite shiny in consequence. At 

 last one day she failed to appear, and we 

 never found her body. 



The oddest cat we ever had was a black 

 one that came to us of her own accord in 

 1 88 1. She had such a vile temper and was 

 altogether so uncanny that she might well 

 have been possessed by an evil spirit. 



When she had been with us only a few 

 days, I found her hanging on to the wire- 

 netting of an outhouse door, evidently trying 

 to get some pigeons that she could see behind 

 it. Very soon afterwards another cat was 

 drowned for persistently taking pigeons, and 

 it really seemed as if Blacky understood, for 

 never after that did she look at a pigeon 

 with evil intent; she would walk through a 

 number of them as they fed on the ground, 

 and so little did they fear her that they 

 hardly moved out of her way. 



We had a canary once (and we must have 

 had him for more than 10 years), whose noisy 



