CHAPTER III

CONCERNING OTHER PEOPLE'S CATS


Every observing reader of Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford's stories knows
that she is fond of cats and understands them. Her heroines usually
have, among other feminine belongings and accessories, one or more cats.
"Four great Persian cats haunted her every footstep," she says of Honor,
in the "Composite Wife." "A sleepy, snowy creature like some
half-animated ostrich plume; a satanic thing with fiery eyes that to Mr.
Chipperley's perception were informed with the very bottomless flames;
another like a golden fleece, caressing, half human; and a little
mouse-colored imp whose bounds and springs and feathery tail-lashings
not only did infinite damage among the Venetian and Dresden
knick-knackerie, but among Mr. Chipperley's nerves."

In her beautiful, old-fashioned home at Newburyport, Mass., she has two
beloved cats. But I will not attempt to improve on her own account of
them:--

"As for my own cats,--their name has been legion, although a few remain
preeminent. There was Miss Spot who came to us already named, preferring
our domicile to the neighboring one she had. Her only son was so black
that he was known as Ink Spot, but her only daughter was so altogether
ideal and black, too, that she was known as Beauty Spot. Beauty Spot led
a sorrowful life, and was fortunately born clothed in black or her
mourning would have been expensive, as she was always in a bereaved
condition, her drowned offspring making a shoal in the Merrimac,
although she had always plenty left. She solaced herself with music. She