TIMOTHY’S TALE

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 146, 17 March 1934, Page 23

TIMOTHY’S TALE

* ♦ * THE DISAPPOINTING HUNT I'll introduce myself first, though I think you all know me quite well. My name is Timothy and I’m a cat. I heard, quite accidentally, about the Animal Page, so of course I must make my mark on it, and I have, see, just at the end of my story. It’s my left paw mark. I know, because that paw is black and all Iho others are pink. I feel quite piebald underneath. -Funny. -■ - Now for the story. The other night I went out hunting. It wasn’t a very hunty night because the wind and the leaves and the rain and the dog over the road were making a dreadful roaring, howling, scratching, screaming noise that frightened everything into cover. First I visited the dog over the road. I don’t like him a bit. He's not in the least like my friend Tinker, who is fat and curly and goodtempered. He doesn’t mind,how much I chew his ears or care a bit when I pull out his fur. No, the dog opposite is certainly no gentleman,, so I jumped on his kennel, very softly and jumped whop, on to the top of his head just" as he was beginning a new howl. What a noise he made, just as though I was ten thousand cats with red-hot claws. Serve him right, I thought, and as I walked away I twitched my tail at him. Then I went mousing, and in the coal-shed I found a nice little podgy mouse. I caught him easily and took him inside to show my mistress. She was asleep, so I miaowed a bit and played hide-and-go-seek with the mouse under her bed. Then she woke up and turned on the light. My goodness, what a fuss. She pounced at me and picked I me up and pushed me out of the win-' dow, whiclrshe shut, and there was I watching through the window while she caught the horrid little mouse mil pnt it in a box. Then she actually brought cheese for the creature. Fattening it up, I thought to myself. But she wasn’t, for next morning she let it go under the house. I wonder what the cheese was for. Well, after this I felt a bit fed up' not really fed up, for I was hungry. So. I climbed up the sycamore tree and would have caught a thrush, only just then a larger wind than usual shook the bough and woke him up. and he saw me. What a hullabaloo! He woke every bird up foe trees around. I’ll get him yet though. Then I went exploring in the creeper, as a last hope, and found an enormous weta. Here's fun. said I. and prepared myself for battle. Only the weta prepared himself first: lie sprang straight at in.v nose and bit hard. Out through the rain I jumped, down from the creeper, and rushed round and round the wet grass, and if I did make a noise—we.l, I mean to say. if you’d had a wela nipping your nose! At last he got tired and dropped off, and I dashed along as hard as I could to see if any

of the other fellows were in. I wasn’t going hunting alone any more that night. The black cat at the end of the road was out, and so was Tabby, who lived opposite him. I know that the grey, fluffy Persian would be much too dignified to get his fur wet, and didn't like liiin much anyway, so I went home again and tried to find an open window. However, mistress had kept hers fast shut after the mouse episode, .so there was nothing else to do but share Tinker’s kennel.

“Um-grumph,” he snorted as I came in. “Hi, get out,” he shouted as he woke up properly. “You’re all wet!”

So I had to go and spend the rest of my night in the mouseless, cushionless and warinless coal-house. Nice ending to a fel low’s hunting expedition.