PUSS AND I.
Muff, come here! Don’t stop to clean your paws, that is only an excuse for not minding, you naughty little mischief. Come here, Muff; you need not play with my watch-chain or your tail either. I do not wonder that you dislike to look me in the eye, you are not the first guilty one who has dreaded to look in the eye of the person whom they had wronged. Muff, who jumped upon the marble table and frightened the poor gold-fish, by putting a paw into the glass globe? who went down cellar and lapped milk out of the pan? who jumped on the breakfast-table, and helped herself to beefsteak, before her mistress could get down to table? who flew at the looking-glass-doors of my new secretary, to play with another Muff, who seemed to play with her? who scratched and defaced the rosewood ornaments upon the side of the secretary, with her sharp claws? who took a nap on the velvet sofa, without asking by-your-leave? and, worse than all, Muff, oh, Muff, who stole into my chamber, before I woke, in the morning, and, with one spring, lit on my astonished face,startling me into a headache for the rest of the day? what have you got to say to all that, Miss Muff?
Well, in the first place, if you please, madam, I will answer your question (Yankee fashion) by asking another. Whose cook was it who threw her apron over me, when I was quietly taking a walk in the street one day, and brought me here without saying by-your-leave, for a play-mate for your own little girl? As to the “gold-fish,” I did put my paw on the glass globe, there’s no use denying that, because you peeped into the parlor just as I was doing it; but that does not prove that I wanted to kill and eat them, and if I did, did not you buy a fresh lobster this morning, of the market-man, and tell your cook to boil him, boil himalive? if you kill creatures for your dinner how should a poor little cat be expected to do better?
“Lapped milk out of a pan,” did I? don’t you often, when you pass into a confectioner’s shop, pick up bits of candy and peppermint-drops, and put them in your mouth, while you are wailing to be waited upon? People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, mistress! As to helping myself “to beefsteak,” if your girl had not kidnapped me, and brought me to this bran-new house, where there is not a sign of a mouse to be had, I would not have been obliged to steal yourbeefsteak. With regard to “looking in the glass,” the less you say about that, the better.
Where’s the harm if I did want to trim my whiskers a little, and admire my soft white paws, I am not the only person in this house who looks in the glass, I reckon. I also plead guilty to “taking a nap on your velvet sofa,” but I will leave it to any outsider, if I did not look better on it than did theboots of that gentlemanwho called to see you the other evening, and who certainlyoughtto know what velvet sofas were intended for.
Yes, and I jumped on your face in the morning too, I am not going to back out of that, but you must recollect that you have a way of sleeping too long in the morning; and that I never can get my breakfast till your ladyship has had yours; as to the headache you say I gave you by doing it, it is my opinion, that the preserves, and hot biscuit, you ate for tea the night before, were answerable for that. But what a fool I am to waste words with a woman who lays down one rule of right for her cat, and another for herself; thank goodness there’s a mouse, the first I’ve seen here, now you’ll see science, or my name is not kitty; keep your old cold beefsteak and welcome, and I will take my first independent meal in this house, off hot mouse, and no thanks to you.