One. The Fireside Favourite.

One. The Fireside Favourite.

The lines of some cats fall in pleasant places. Mine have. I’m the fireside favourite, I’m the parlour pet. I’m the beau idéal, so my mistress says, of what every decent, respectable, well-trained cat ought to be and I looked in the glass and found it so. But pray don’t think that I am vain because I happen to know the usages of polite society, and the uses and abuses of the looking-glass. No cat, in my opinion, with any claim to the dignity of lady-puss, would think of washing her face unless in front of a plate-glass mirror. But I will not soon forget the day I first knew what a looking-glass meant. I was then only a cheeky little mite of a kitten, of a highly inquiring turn of mind. Well, one evening my young mistress was going to a ball, and before she went she spent about three hours in her dressing-room, doing something, and then she came down to the parlour, looking more like an angel than ever I had seen her. Oh, how she was dressed, to be sure! And she had little bunches of flowers stuck on all over her dress, and I wanted to play at “mousies” with them; but she wouldn’t wait, she just kissed me and bade me be a good kitten and not run up the curtains, and then off she went.