When her hair began to come out in handfuls she herself agreed that
something must be done.
'I think I will go and live in Paris for a bit and study.'
'But, my dear child, you don't know anybody there.'
'That's just the point. I shall change the scene completely and get out
of myself.'
That seems an odd and impossible sort of thing to do, but it isn't the
first time I have heard people speak of performing this feat. Cats
can't, and wouldn't want to, I fancy.
The old man said he couldn't think of allowing it, and she at once
wrote for rooms to an address she knew. He said it would never do, and
she answered the woman's letter who kept the pension and took the rooms
for a month.
Then _we_ were the difficulty. She could not think of leaving us to
Mary, who was good but careless, and she thought of a certain place she
had heard of at Gunnersbury where they boarded cats.
Mother disliked the idea very much, but what could she do? We were all
three put in baskets and taken in a cab. Gunnersbury seemed partly
country when we got out, but I saw very little, for we were hustled
into the house, and our fastenings not undone till we were in a garden
with wire cages or houses in it that they called 'cat-runs.'
A young lady in a grey voile frock trimmed with blue ribbons was
sweeping one of the wire places out, and she seemed to be no relation
to the mistress of the cattery, just a friend.
'I am single-handed just now,' the old lady said. 'My daughter, who
helps me, is away, taking King Henry the Eighth to a cat-show, but Miss
Joldwin--_such_ a nice girl, and so well connected!--is good enough to
come here and help me turn out the cages twice a day!'
I don't see why because Miss Joldwin was a pedigree-woman she should be
too good to sweep out a cattery, but I do think she might have put a
pinafore on, and said so.
'Dear little fellow, he is very lively and talkative!' said the old
woman to me. 'I know I shall make a pet of you, I shall.'
'Oh, no favouritism, Mrs. Jennings, please,' said Auntie May. 'I
should like them all to be kept together, if you don't mind, as much
as possible. They are a very united and loving family. Fred, do leave
Zobeide alone! You are nearly murdering her.'
'Pretty little spirited dears,' murmured the woman, and I hated her.
'Come here! Kittie! Kittie!'
I wouldn't come here, and I saw that Auntie May was pleased. She soon
after took her leave, whispering to us:
'Now keep yourselves to yourselves, my dears, and though you must be
civil to other cats, don't make great friends. I shan't be away long;
I feel I shan't be able to stand it. Eat what you are given, and don't
have fancies. Don't climb up the old woman. Be civil to her, but no
more. Now goodbye, pets--angels--darlings--I _must_ tear myself away!'
She tore herself away, and we were left alone in the wire house with
a sort of box thing inside where we were expected to retire for the
night. It wasn't bad, and the food was excellent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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