Some time during the morning she would contrive to elude our vigilance and escape; and late every evening she would come reeling home across the fields in a condition that I will not sully my pen by attempting to describe.
It was on Saturday night that she met the sad end to which I have before alluded.
She must have been very drunk, for the man told us that, in consequence of the darkness, and the fact that his horses were tired, he was proceeding at little more than a snail's pace.
I think my grandmother was rather relieved than otherwise.
She had been very fond of the cat at one time, but its recent conduct had alienated her affection.
We children buried it in the garden under the mulberry tree, but the old lady insisted that there should be no tombstone, not even a mound raised.
So it lies there, unhonoured, in a drunkard's grave.
I also told him of another cat our family had once possessed.
She was the most motherly thing I have ever known. She was never happy without a family.
Indeed, I cannot remember her when she hadn't a family in one stage or another.
She was not very particular what sort of a family it was.
If she could not have kittens, then she would content herself with puppies or rats.
Anything that she could wash and feed seemed to satisfy her.
I believe she would have brought up chickens if we had entrusted them to her.
All her brains must have run to motherliness, for she hadn't much sense.
She could never tell the difference between her own children and other people's.
She thought everything young was a kitten.
We once mixed up a spaniel puppy that had lost its own mother among her progeny.
I shall never forget her astonishment when it first barked.
She boxed both its ears, and then sat looking down at it with an expression of indignant sorrow that was really touching.
"You're going to be a credit to your mother," she seemed to be saying "you're a nice comfort to any one's old age, you are, making a row like that.
And look at your ears flopping all over your face.
I don't know where you pick up such ways."
He was a good little dog.
He did try to mew, and he did try to wash his face with his paw, and to keep his tail still, but his success was not commensurate with his will.
I do not know which was the sadder to reflect upon, his efforts to become a creditable kitten, or his foster- mother's despair of ever making him one.
Later on we gave her a baby squirrel to rear.
She was nursing a family of her own at the time, but she adopted him with enthusiasm, under the impression that he was another kitten, though she could not quite make out how she had come to overlook him.
He soon became her prime favourite.
She liked his colour, and took a mother's pride in his tail.
What troubled her was that it would cock up over his head.
She would hold it down with one paw, and lick it by the half-hour together, trying to make it set properly.
But the moment she let it go up it would cock again.
I have heard her cry with vexation because of this.
One day a neighbouring cat came to see her, and the squirrel was clearly the subject of their talk.
"It's a good colour," said the friend, looking critically at the supposed kitten, who was sitting up on his haunches combing his whiskers, and saying the only truthfully pleasant thing about him that she could think of.
"He's a lovely colour," exclaimed our cat proudly.
"I don't like his legs much," remarked the friend.
"No," responded his mother thoughtfully, "you're right there. His legs are his weak point.
I can't say I think much of his legs myself."
"Maybe they'll fill out later on," suggested the friend, kindly.
"Oh, I hope so," replied the mother, regaining her momentarily dashed cheerfulness.
"Oh yes, they'll come all right in time.
And then look at his tail.
Now, honestly, did you ever see a kitten with a finer tail?"
"Yes, it's a good tail," assented the other; "but why do you do it up over his head?"
"I don't," answered our cat.
"It goes that way. I can't make it out.
I suppose it will come straight as he gets older."
"It will be awkward if it don't," said the friend.