He sucks his tail,--alas, and alas! In
vain have we peppered it, and pepper-sauced it, and dipped it in
Worcestershire sauce and in aloes, and done it up in curl papers, and
glued on it the fingers of old gloves. At last we gave it up in despair,
and I took him and put his tail in his mouth and told him to take his
pleasure,--and that is the reason, I suppose, that he attaches himself
particularly to me. He is very near-sighted with those magnificent orbs,
for he will jump into any one's lap, who wears a black gown, but jump
down instantly, and when he finds my lap curl down for a brief season.
But he is not much of a lap-loving cat. He puts up his nose and smells
my face all over in what he means for a caress, and is off. He is not a
large eater, although he has been known to help himself to a whole steak
at the table, being alone in the dining room; and when poultry are in
the larder he is insistent till satisfied. But he wants his breakfast
early. If the second girl, whose charge he is, does not rise in season,
he mounts two flights of stairs and seats himself on her chest until she
does rise. Then if she does not wait on him at once, he goes into the
drawing-room, and springs to the top of the upright piano, and
deliberately knocks off the bric-a-brac, particularly loving to
encounter and floor a brass dragon candlestick. Then he springs to the
mantel-shelf if he has not been seized and appeased, and repeats
operations, and has even carried his work of destruction around the room
to the top of a low bookcase and has proved himself altogether the wrong
sort of person in a china-shop.
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