148 CATS 



gets his rabbit or not, he is perfectly happy in fulfilling 

 his office as partner. To a cat the very notion of a 

 partnership is distasteful. Go to one, as I did this 

 morning, watching a mousehole in the hayfield, and offer 

 assistance ; all the thanks you will get is a peevish glare, 

 expressing, as plain as any words could put it, ' I wish to 

 Heaven you would mind your own business and let me 

 attend to mine ! ' 



When I say that cats are only tolerable in a town, I 

 mean that they cannot indulge their evil propensities 

 there as they do in the country. Hear me while I reveal 

 how evil those propensities are. There is a pretty silver- 

 gray cat with nice black mittens and four half-grown 

 kittens in this hill farmhouse, where I have been waiting 

 a week for the long-wished-for spate that is to set us 

 a-fishing. I began with the gentlest intentions towards 

 that cat. I purloined dainties from the breakfast-table 

 for her ; I sat in the sun stroking her back for a quarter 

 of an hour at a time. I told her how much I regretted 

 that meteorological conditions were unfavourable to my 

 providing her with fish. She purred so softly that I was 

 almost beguiled into the belief that I had her sympathy, 

 whereas all the time I might have known that all she 

 said was 'Go on; that's rather jolly. A little quicker 

 quicker, d' ye hear ? Now my ears that 's it. Now you 

 may do my back again.' 



A little further acquaintance has made me understand 

 better the nature of this domestic tiger. Every day she 

 brings something to the grass plot before the house and 

 instructs her offspring how to tear it to pieces. One day 

 it is a mouse, which she brings alive, and tortures for ten 

 minutes or a quarter of an hour. When the tiny frame 



