I was one day entering my apartment, when I was filled with horror at perceiving my mouse picking up some crumbs upon the carpet, beneath the table, and the terrible cat seated upon a chair watching him with what appeared to me to be an expression of sensual anticipation and concentrated desire. Before I had time to interfere, Puss sprang from her chair, and bounded towards the mouse, who, however, far from being terrified at the approach of his natural enemy, scarcely so much as favoured her with a single look. Puss raised her paw and dealt him a gentle tap, when, judge of my astonishment if you can, the little mouse, far from running away, or betraying any marks of fear, raised himself on his legs, cocked his tail, and with a shrill and angry squeak, with which any that have kept tame mice are well acquainted, sprang at and positively _bit_ the paw which had struck him. I was paralysed. I could not jump forward to the rescue. I was, as it were, petrified where I stood. But, stranger than all, the cat, instead of appearing irritated, or seeming to design mischief, merely stretched out her nose and smelt at her diminutive assailant, and then resuming her place upon the chair, purred herself to sleep. I need not say that I immediately secured the mouse within his cage. Whether the cat on this occasion knew the little animal to be a pet, and as such feared to meddle with it, or whether its boldness had disarmed her, I cannot pretend to explain: I merely state the fact; and I think the reader will allow that it is sufficiently extraordinary. In order to guard against such a dangerous encounter for the future, I got a more secure cage made, of which the bars were so close as to preclude the possibility of egress; and singularly enough, many a morning was I amused by beholding brown mice coming from their holes in the wainscot, and approaching the cage in which their friend was kept, as if in order to condole with him on the subject of his unwonted captivity. Secure, however, as I conceived this new cage to be, my industrious pet contrived to make his escape from it, and in doing so met his death. In my room was a large bureau, with deep, old-fashioned, capacious drawers. Being obliged to go from home for a day, I put the cage containing my little friend into one of these drawers, lest any one should attempt to meddle with it during my absence. On returning, I opened the drawer, and just as I did so, heard a faint squeak, and at the same instant my poor little pet fell from the back of the drawer--lifeless. I took up his body, and, placing it in my bosom, did my best to restore it to animation. Alas! it was to no purpose. His little body had been crushed in the crevice at the back part of the drawer, through which he had been endeavouring to escape, and he was really and irrecoverably gone. * * * * *