Miss Mary's room and the next one opened into each other and were quite
large, and both were covered with heavy rugs. Pussy's favorite game was
to race back and forth from one end of the rugs to the other; sometimes
he would poke his nose under the edge of a rug and wriggle in between
the rug and the floor until he was simply a hump in the middle of it,
like a dumpling. It was well Miss Mary always knew where he was, or he
might have been stepped on some fine evening. But he was feeling
altogether too lively for any such amusement as that, this cold night.
It was one of those dry, cold, clear evenings when you feel like running
races, or snowballing, and pussy was as full of life and go as even a
cat could be. So he had a little Wild West Show all by himself, with the
rugs for tanbark, and went so fast that he looked like a long
black-and-white fur streak on the bright Persian rugs.

Now, if you walk and jump about on a heavy carpet for a few minutes, on
a cool night, you may find that if you touch your fingers to anything
iron you will get an electric spark. So when pussy had raced about for
fifteen or twenty minutes on the rugs, he was, though he did not know
it, one capering little battery of electricity.

Then he jumped up on the bed and began to race over the blankets. He was
going so fast that he could not stop quite quick enough, and the
bedstead was iron. He came up against the foot of it before he could
stop, and though he did not touch it, he got an electric spark right on
the end of his nose!

If you have ever had a little shock from an electric machine, and can
imagine how it would have felt on the tip of your nose, you will have no
doubt that pussy was shocked.