HIS KITTENHOOD
[Illustration]
LITTLE Graycoat developed much faster than his Kitten foster-brother.
The spirit of play was rampant in him, he would scramble up his mother's
leg a score of times a day, clinging on with teeth, arms and claws, then
mount her back and frisk along to climb her upright tail; and when his
weight was too much, down the tail would droop, and he would go merrily
sliding off the tip to rush to her legs and climb and toboggan off
again. The Kitten never learned the trick. But it seemed to amuse the
Cat almost as much as it did the Squirrelet, and she showed an amazing
partiality for the lively, long-tailed Foundling. So did others of
importance, men and women folk of the farmhouse, and neighbors too. The
frisky Graycoat grew up amid experiences foreign to his tastes, and of a
kind unknown to his race.
[Illustration]
The Kitten too grew up, and in midsummer was carried off to a distant
farmhouse to be "their cat."
[Illustration: HIS KITTENHOOD]
Now the Squirrel was over half-grown, and his tail was broadening out
into a great banner of buff with silver tips. His life was with the old
Cat; his food was partly from her dish. But many things there were to
eat that delighted him, and that pleased her not. There was corn in the
barn, and chicken-feed in the yard, and fruit in the garden. Well-fed
and protected, he grew big and handsome, bigger and handsomer than his
wild brothers, so the house-folk said. But of that he knew nothing; he
had never seen his own people. The memory of his mother had faded
out. So far as he knew, he was only a bushy-tailed Cat. But inside was
an inheritance of instincts, as well as of blood and bone, that would
surely take control and send him herding, if they happened near, with
those and those alone of the blowsy silver tails.
_THE RED HORROR_