Next morning when he came down to breakfast, the old gentleman poured out a saucer of milk for his cat as usual. “You must be well fed if you are going to be shown at the show,” he said, “and I must not mind a little extra expense to make you look well. It will all be paid back, so this morning you shall have some fish as well as your milk.” Then he put the saucer of milk down by the cat, but it never touched it, but sat and looked at the fire with its tail curled round it. “Oh, well, if you have had so much already that you don’t want it, you can take it when you do,” so he went away to his work and left the saucer of milk by the fire. But when he came back in the evening there was the saucer of milk and the piece of fish, and the grey cat had not touched them. “This is rather odd,” said the old gentleman; “however, I suppose cook has been feeding you.” Next morning it was just the same. When he poured out the milk the cat wouldn’t lap it, but sat and looked at the fire. The old gentleman felt a little anxious, for he fancied that the animal’s fur did not look so bright as usual, and when in the evening and the next day and the next, it would not lap its milk, or even smell the nice pieces of fish he gave it, he was really uncomfortable. “The creature is getting ill,” he said, “and this is most provoking. What will be the use of my having kept it for a year, if now I cannot show it?” He scolded his cook for having given it unwholesome food, but the cook swore it had had nothing. Anyhow it was growing terribly thin, and all day long it sat in front of the fire with its tail hanging down, not curled up neatly round it, and its coat looked dull and began to come out in big tufts of hair. “Now really I shall have to do something,” said the old gentleman, “it is enough to make any one angry! No one would believe that this could be a prize cat. It looks almost as wretched as that stray beast that came to the window on Christmas Day.” So he went to a cat and dog doctor, who lived near, and asked him to come in and see a very beautiful cat which had nothing the matter with it, but which refused to eat its food. The cat’s doctor came and looked at the cat, and then looked very grave, and shook his head, and looked at it again. “I don’t know what sort of cat it is,” he said, “for I never saw any other like it, but it is a very handsome beast, and must be very valuable. Well, I will leave you some physic for it, and I hope you may be able to pull it round, but with these foreign cats you never know what ails them, and they are hard to cure.”