Identifier: lettersfromcatpu00jack (find matches)
Title: Letters from a cat : published by her mistress for the benefit of all cats and the amusement of little children
Year: 1880 (1880s)
Authors: Jackson, Helen Hunt, 1830-1885 Roberts Brothers (Boston, Mass.) Ledyard, Addie Botsford, Bertha Fisk
Subjects: Cats Pets
Publisher: Boston : Roberts Brothers
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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Text Appearing Before Image:
thing for my dinner that the rest
of them did: it must be a splendid
thing to be a man or a woman! I
do not think I shall ever again be
contented to eat in the shed, and
have only the old pieces which no-
body wants.
Two things troubled me very
much while I was confined to the
cradle : one was that everybody who
came in to see your mother laughed
as if they never could stop, at the

80 LETTERS FROM A CAT.

first sight of me; and the other was
that I heard poor Cæsar mewing
all around the house, and calling me
with all his might; and I knew he
thought I was dead. I tried hard
to make your kind mother notice
his crying, for I knew she would be
willing to let him come in and see
me, but I could not make her under-
stand. I suppose she thought it
was only some common strolling cat
who was hungry. I have always
noticed that people do not observe
any difference between one cat's
voice and another's; now they really
are just as different as human voices.
Cæsar has one of the finest, deepest-
Text Appearing After Image:

LETTERS FROM A CAT. 81

toned voices I ever heard. One
day, after I got well enough to be in
the kitchen, he slipped in, between
the legs of the butcher's boy who
was bringing in some meat; but
before I had time to say one word
to him, Mary flew at him with the
broom, and drove him out. How-
ever, he saw that I was alive, and
that was something. I am afraid
it will be some days yet before I
can see him again, for they do not
let me go out at all, and the band-
ages are not taken off my leg.
The cradle is carried upstairs, and
I sleep on Charlie's blanket behind
the stove. I heard your mother

82 LETTERS FROM A CAT.

say to-day that she really believed
the cat had the rheumatism. I do
not know what that is, but I think
I have got it: it hurts me all over
when I walk, and I feel as if I
looked like Bill Jacobs's old cat,
who, they say, is older than the old-
est man in town; but of course that
must be a slander.
The thing I am most concerned

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