"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 hoa.r.s.e. "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, n.o.body 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 b.u.t.tery."
The b.u.t.tery 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 b.u.t.tery 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 b.u.t.ter 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 b.u.t.tery door has been shut tight all the time."
Miss Kitty Cat was right there in the kitchen while Mrs. Green was talking to her husband. And it was easy to see that Miss Kitty agreed with her mistress. She came close to Mrs. Green and purred, saying quite plainly that she was a good, honest cat and that she deserved to be petted. At least, that was what Mrs. Green understood her to mean.
Often, after that, Mrs. Green discovered traces of the thief in the b.u.t.tery. Flecks of cream on the side of a milk pan, drops of cream on the table, smudges of cream now and then on the floor! Such signs meant something. But Farmer Green"s wife couldn"t decide what.
And another strange thing happened. Miss Kitty Cat lost her appet.i.te for milk. She would leave her saucer of milk untasted on the kitchen floor.
Now and then Mrs. Green picked Miss Kitty up and looked closely at her face. At such times Miss Kitty purred pleasantly. She did not seem to be the least bit disturbed.
One evening, after dark, Johnnie Green went into the b.u.t.tery to get a pail. The moment he opened the door there was a crash and a clatter inside the room.
Johnnie jumped back quickly.
"There"s somebody in the b.u.t.tery!" he shouted.
But when his father brought a light they found no one there. A tin dipper lay on the floor.
"When you opened the door it must have jarred the dipper off the edge of the table," said Farmer Green.
"_Meaow!_" said a voice behind them. There stood Miss Kitty Cat, saying that everything _must_ have happened exactly as Farmer Green said.
"She couldn"t have been in here, could she?" Farmer Green puzzled.
"Come, Kitty!" And he picked up Miss Kitty and held her where the light fell full upon her face. "Clean as a whistle!" said Farmer Green. "I guess she just followed us in." He set her down again. And once more, with a plaintive _meaow_ she agreed with him perfectly.
X
A CREAMY FACE
FARMER GREEN"S wife threw away pan after pan of milk, because she knew somebody had been stealing cream off the top of them. At least, she told Farmer Green to feed the milk to the pigs, because she wasn"t going to make b.u.t.ter of any cream that had been tampered with by goodness knew whom or what. And old dog Spot said that feeding good creamy milk to the pigs was just the same as throwing it away. He made that remark to Miss Kitty Cat, adding that it was a shame that somebody was stealing cream and declaring that he hoped to catch the thief.
Miss Kitty Cat made no reply whatsoever.
"Don"t you hope I"ll catch the guilty party?" Spot asked her.
"Please don"t speak to me!" Miss Kitty Cat exclaimed impatiently. "I don"t enjoy your talk; and you may as well know it."
"Very well!" said Spot. "But when I catch him I"ll let you know."
"She"s jealous," Spot thought. "She knows I"m a good watch dog. And she can"t bear the idea of my catching a thief."
It was hard, usually, to tell how Miss Kitty Cat felt about anything.
She was a great one for keeping her opinions to herself. It seemed as if she wanted to be let alone by every one except Farmer Green"s family.
Having boasted about catching the cream thief, old dog Spot began to watch the b.u.t.tery very carefully. Search as he would, he couldn"t find a c.h.i.n.k anywhere that was big enough even for a mouse to squeeze through.
One day he happened to catch a glimpse of something moving under the roof of the shed next the b.u.t.tery. To his amazement he saw Miss Kitty Cat slip through an old stove-pipe hole that pierced the great chimney which led down into the b.u.t.tery, where there was an ancient fireplace which hadn"t been used for years and years. Miss Kitty Cat crept along a tiebeam and hid herself in a pile of odds and ends that somebody had stowed high up under the roof and left there to gather dust and cob-webs.