Concerning Cats 



I remained with her. There was plenty of milk and 

 cream, and she caught a great many mice. She was 

 far too dainty to eat them, but she had an inherent 

 pleasure in catching mice, just like her more plebeian 

 sisters; and she enjoyed presenting them to Mr. 

 McGinty or me, or some other worthy object of her 

 solicitude. 



She was at first afraid of "the big outdoors." 

 The wide, wind-blown spaces, the broad, sunshiny 

 sky, the silence and the roominess of it all, were quite 

 different from her suburban experiences; and the 

 farm animals, too, were in her opinion curiously dan- 

 gerous objects. Big Dan, the horse, was truly a 

 horrible creature ; the rooster was a new and suspi- 

 cious species of biped, and the bleating calves objects 

 of her direst hatred. 



The pig in his pen possessed for her the most 

 horrid fascination. Again and again would she steal 

 out and place herself where she could see that dread- 

 ful, strange, pink, fat creature inside his own quar- 

 ters. She would fix her round eyes widely upon him 

 in blended fear and admiration. If the pig uttered 

 the characteristic grunt of his race, the Pretty Lady 

 at first ran swiftly away ; but afterward she used to 

 turn and gaze anxiously at us, as if to say : — 



"Do you hear that.' Isn't this a truly horrible 

 creature .■" " and in other ways evince the same sort of 

 surprise that a professor in the Peabody Museum 

 might, were the skeleton of the megatherium sud- 



i8 



