We were occupying a furnished house for the summer, however, and as we
were to board through the winter, I took only the kitten back to town,
thinking the mother would return to her former home, just over the
fence. But no. For two weeks she refused all food and would not once
enter the other house. Then I went out for her, and hearing my voice she
came in and sat down before me, literally scolding me for a quarter of
an hour. I shall be laughed at, but actual tears stood in her lovely
green eyes and ran down her aristocratic nose, attesting her grief and
accusing me, louder than her wailing, of perfidy.

I could not keep her. She would not return to her old home. I finally
compromised by carrying her in a covered basket a mile and a half and
bestowing her upon a friend who loves cats nearly as well as I. But
although she was petted, and praised, and fed on the choicest of
delicacies, she would not be resigned. After six weeks of mourning, she
disappeared, and never was heard of more. Whether she sought a new and
more constant mistress, or whether, in her grief at my shameless
abandonment of her, she went to some lonely pier and threw herself off
the dock, will never be known. But her reproachful gaze and tearful
emerald eyes haunted me all winter. Many a restless night did I have to
reproach myself for abandoning a creature who so truly loved me; and in
many a dream did she return to heap shame and ignominy upon my repentant
head.

This experience determined me to cherish her daughter, whom, rather, I
cherished as her son, until there were three little new-born kittens,
which in a moment of ignorance I "disposed of" at once. Naturally, the
young mother fell exceedingly ill. In the most pathetic way she dragged
herself after me, moaning and beseeching for help. Finally, I succumbed,
went to a neighbor's where several superfluous kittens had arrived the