The Tale of Miss Kitty Cat | Page 6

he lost his hold. Down he dropped, slipping and floundering from one branch to another.
And down Miss Kitty Cat followed him.

VIII
NINE LIVES
FRISKY SQUIRREL was much more at home in the trees than Miss Kitty Cat was. While Frisky managed at last to cling to a limb and right himself, Miss Kitty lost her footing and fell out of the tree completely.
"Oh! She'll he hurt!" Frisky cried as he saw her turning and twisting through the air. But to his great surprise she struck with all her four feet on the ground, quite unharmed. "You did that very nicely," he called to her generously.
But she didn't answer. To tell the truth, she felt rather foolish because she had fallen out of the tree. And she walked back to the woodshed and stalked through the doorway without saying a word.
After that adventure Frisky Squirrel decided to go back home. So he scurried town the tree-trunk and scampered to the stone wall, and scooted along the top of it.
Old Mr. Crow was watching for him. And as before, he dropped down near the wall to talk.
"I hardly expected to see you again," Mr. Crow remarked. "You couldn't have met the cat."
"Yes!" said Frisky. "I met her. She followed me up a tree. And it's a wonder she didn't get hurt, though I was careful of her. She had a fall; but she landed beautifully."
Old Mr. Crow nodded wisely.
"She always lands on her feet," he observed. "And you needn't worry about her," he added. "You know, they say she has nine lives."
"Nine lives!" Frisky Squirrel exclaimed. "What do you mean, Mr. Crow?"
Now, Mr. Crow really knew a great deal, because he had lived many years. And he pretended to know still more, because he liked to appear learned. But this question was a puzzler for him. He simply couldn't answer it.
"You wouldn't understand, even if I explained," he told Frisky Squirrel. And then he flew away, leaving Frisky to run home and wonder what it meant to have nine lives.
As for Mr. Crow, he suddenly made up his mind that he would find out about Miss Kitty Cat's nine lives. He would ask that lady herself. So he flapped himself over to the big elm in the farmyard, where he cawed and cawed, hoping that Miss Kitty Cat would appear to see what all the noise was about.
And sure enough! she soon bounced out of the woodshed door and looked up at Mr. Crow inquiringly.
"I've been hearing a good deal about; you," Mr. Crow called down to her in what he considered his sweetest tones, though anybody else would have said they were quite hoarse. "I know you always manage to land on your feet--and I can understand that. But what's this I hear about nine lives?"
Miss Kitty Cat only stared at him.
"Perhaps you don't feel like talking," said Mr. Crow. "If you've just had a fall, maybe you're still a bit shaken up, even if you did land on your feet. Perhaps you'd rather I came back later."
Miss Kitty Cat suddenly found her voice.
"You've been gossiping with that young squirrel!" she snapped. "I'll have you know that I'm not shaken up at all. But I'd shake you up if I could get hold of you!"
Mr. Crow was astonished. He was sure he had been most polite. Yet here was Miss Kitty Cat as rude as she could be!
He amused himself by jeering at her until she turned her back on him and went inside the woodshed. And he had to go away without learning anything at all about the nine lives of Miss Kitty Cat. They always remained a deep mystery. Everybody agreed that the number was nine. But beyond that, nobody could explain about them.

IX
THE STOLEN CREAM
"I DECLARE!" Farmer Green's wife cried one day. "Somebody's been stealing my cream in the buttery."
The buttery was a big bare room on the shady side of the house, where great pans of milk stood on a long table. When the cream was thick enough on the milk Mrs. Green skimmed it off and put it in cans. At one end of the buttery there was a trap door in the floor. When the trap was raised you could look right down into a well. And into its cool depths Mrs. Green dropped her cans of cream by means of a rope, which she fastened to a beam under the floor, so the tops of the cans would stay out of the water.
Mrs. Green made butter out of that cream. So it was no wonder she was upset when she discovered that some one had meddled with one of her pans of milk.
"It can't be the cat," said Farmer Green's wife. "The buttery door has been shut tight all the time."
Miss Kitty Cat was right there