own genuine kittens, there could be no more 

 doubt or fear. 



The squirrels do not know to this day that 

 Calico is not their real mother. From the first 

 they took her mother's milk and mother's love 

 as rightfully and thanklessly as the kittens, 

 growing, not like the kittens at all, but into the 

 most normal of squirrels, round and fat and 

 splendid-tailed. 



Calico clearly recognized some difference be- 

 tween the two kinds of kittens, but what differ- 

 ence always puzzled her. She would clean up a 

 kitten and comb it slick, then turn to one of the 

 squirrels and wash it, but rarely, if ever, com- 

 pleting the work because of some disconcerting 

 un-catlike antic. As the squirrels grew older 

 they also grew friskier, and soon took the washing 

 as the signal for a frolic. As well try to wash a 

 bubble. They were bundles of live springs, 

 twisting out of her paws, dancing over her back, 

 leaping, kicking, tumbling as she had never seen 

 a kitten do in all her richly kittened experience. 



I don't know why, but Calico was certainly 

 fonder of these two freaks than of her own 

 normal children. Long after the latter were 

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