"Most likely much the same as did old Mrs. Pussy Cat up on the next
farm."
"How was that?" your Aunt Amy asked.
"Well, you see, she was partly black and partly white, and not being a
very neat cat, the white hair got dirty so often that she believed it
would be a great thing if it was all black. So she got the idea into her
head that if she should shave off the white hair, it would be the color
she wanted when it grew out again.
"Well, now what do you suppose that poor foolish thing did? Why she went
to the barber's, and had him shave all the white hair off of her body.
She actually frightened the ducks and the geese when she came home, she
looked so queer; but you couldn't have made her believe it. She thought
she was a perfect beauty, and when she came over to this farm that
evening, Mr. Thomas Cat said to her:
"'Why you are a perfect sight, that's what you are, with those tufts of
black hair all over you!'
"'That's all the style,' Mrs. Pussy Cat said, and I think she really
believed that she was as handsome as any cat you could find.
"Well, things went along all right while the weather was warm, but in
the course of ten days we had a heavy frost, and dear me, dear me, how
cold it grew all of a sudden! Poor Mrs. Pussy Cat was almost frozen to
death the first night of the cold snap, when she tried to stay with the
rest of us to a concert, and went home moaning:
"'Oh, give me back my hair! Give me back my hair!'
[Illustration: Mrs. Pussy Cat in Style.]
"Of course that couldn't be done, because she had to wait for it to grow
again; but Mrs. Man on the next farm wrapped her up in an old shawl, and
she had to stay in a basket until her hair grew, else she'd have frozen
to death, for we had a terrible hard winter that season. When the hair
did come out it was uneven, of course, and she was the worst looking cat
you ever saw.
"Mr. Man was shaving the first morning Mrs. Pussy Cat came out of the
basket, and he hadn't seen her since she had been to the barber's.
[Illustration: Mr. Man is Disturbed.]
"She jumped up on a chair by the side of him, thinking he would stroke
her fur as he always used to do, when the poor man got one glimpse of
her, and it nearly scared him into hysterics. I suppose he thought it
was a ghost, or something like that, for she looked bad enough to be
almost anything.
"He gave a yell, and jumped in the air. That scared Mrs. Pussy Cat, and
she screamed as she leaped out of the chair. Then Mr. Man went after her
with that big razor in his hand.
"I don't know how far he chased her; but Mr. Towser said that Mrs. Pussy
Cat ran more than five miles before she stopped, and when she sneaked
back home that night, I'm thinking she felt a good deal as Mr. Crow did
when he tried to make folks believe peacock feathers were growing in his
tail."