She first kept all of her pets a day without food, and then the next day
placed the cat between the dogs while she fed him his breakfast. After
that the cat and the dogs became such good friends that they all slept
together. At the next meal she took one of the canaries, put him on her
finger, and petted him while she held "Mittens" in her lap and fed him.
This she did several times, and then let all of the birds fly around the
cat. The latter never attempted to touch one, and frequently to-day you
may see "Mittens" slumbering peacefully before the fire, with a canary
nestled on the soft fur of his back.
[Illustration: IN THE LONG-HAIRED CAT-ROOM.]
While there were many more short-haired cats on exhibition for prizes,
the long-haired ones created more attention because they are much less
common. They had a separate room to themselves upstairs, and a band of
music played for them lest they should forget that many of them were
descended from cat emperors and princes in the far-off East. There was
"Ajax," a white Angora, with firm mouth and keen eyes, his fluffy white
mane looking like a lion's, every inch of him a king. There was
"Paderewski," blue-ribboned, with longer and thicker hair than the
famous musician whose name he bears. Near by an interested crowd watched
"Ellen Terry" and her seven kittens. "Ellen" is a large white and orange
Angora, and very cozy were she and her kittens in a basket lined with
yellow silk and trimmed with dotted muslin. Her manners were perfect,
for whenever her cunning little kittens were caressed she showed no
surprise, but looked on with calm maternal pride.
Just to show by contrast how very aristocratic these long-haired cats
were, six or eight lost cats from the Shelter for Animals (where lost
and homeless cats are cared for) were exhibited near the haughty
Angoras. All but one looked sadly out of place. They were thin, their
fur was uneven, and the disdainful sniffs which their Persian and Angora
neighbors gave them made them feel very miserable indeed. But one of
them, though, a short-haired cat, looked as if his grandfather had been
a somebody in the cat kingdom, and he seemed to say,
"Though appearances are against me, please don't think that I belong to
this vulgar herd of tramp cats."
And he was vindicated, for the third day of the show a little girl came
rushing over to the cage with a glad cry of recognition, which the cat
immediately responded to by joyful purring. The cat had been lost for
over two weeks, and now as his young mistress took him away he looked
back at his proud long-haired neighbors with a smile, which meant,
"Ah, you see I'm somebody, after all!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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