NOBODY'S CAT. 59 



as big as I am, and he likes to be stared at, and can stare back 

 again." 



Humph! / don't want to look at the octopus now, do you? Ugly 

 thing! We will see him some day, however. But now I really 

 must stir up Miss Aphrodite, and let you see how she walks. 



You see those bunches of bristles on each side of her flat body? 

 Well, she walks — if you can call it walking — with those. She does 

 not get about very fast, but there is no need of that, for she has 

 plenty of time, and is never in a hurry. Another queer thing about 

 her is the way in which she breathes. You see she li^es in the 

 mud a great deal, and yet she does not want to breathe mud ; so, 

 under her beautiful rainbow cloak of hair, slie has another coat of 

 something that looks like felt. This felt coat catches and holds the 

 mud, and does not let any of it pass through ; so that the scale- 

 like gills underneath, through which she breathes, get nothing 

 but cleai-, good water. I am very sorry to be obliged to saj 

 that Aphrodite is extremely greedy, but it is the melancholy truth. 

 There is no end to her appetite ; and I am afraid that if she were 

 very hungry she would not hesitate to eat her own grandmother. 

 Isn't that shocking? 



NOBODY'S CAT. 



She ought to have been " Somebody's Cat," for she was a pretty 

 creature, with jet-black coat, white hood and cape, and long white 

 mittens. But nobody owned her, nobody cared for her; and so 

 she came to live in my garden. I could not take her into the 

 house, because Toramo, my great yellow cat, would have eaten her 

 lip; but I fed her every morning from the dining-room window. 

 The moment I opened the window up popped the white head, 

 with an eager "Mi-au-ow!" and poor pussy was always so very 

 hungry that I was sure nobody else fed her. She slept at night 

 curled up among the dry leaves at the foot of the elm tree. On 

 cold mornings she used to sit huddled in a pile of leaves until 

 Susan came out to sift the ashes; then, the moment Susan was 



