My sister lived in town and going away for the summer left her
cat in a neighbor's care, and the neighbor moved away meanwhile and left
the cat to shift for herself. She went down to the apothecary's, two
blocks away or more. There she had a family of kittens, but apparently
came up to reconnoitre, for on my sister's return, she appeared with one
kitten and laid it down at Kate's feet; ran off, and in time came with
another which she left also, and so on until she had brought up the
whole household. Lucifer was one of them.
"He was as black as an imp and as mischievous as one. His bounds have
always been tremendous: from the floor to the high mantel, or to the top
of a tall buffet close under the ceiling. And these bounds of his,
together with a way he has of gazing into space with his soulful and
enormous yellow eyes, have led to a thousand tales as to his nightly
journeyings among the stars; hurting his foot slumping through the
nebula in Andromeda; getting his supper at a place in the milky way,
hunting all night with Orion, and having awful fights with Sirius. He
got his throat cut by alighting on the North Pole one night, coming down
from the stars. The reason he slumps through the nebula is on account of
his big feet; he has six toes (like the foot in George Augustus Sala's
drawing) and when he walks on the top of the piazza you would think it
was a burglar.
"Lucifer's Mephistophelian aspect is increased not only by those feet,
but by an arrow-pointed tail.
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