THE CAT, THE KITTEN, AND THE DICKY-BIRD.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXVII, Issue 120, 23 May 1903, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE CAT, THE KITTEN, AND THE DICKY-BIRD.

I remember one pathetic scene on a rainy evening in late summer, when the kittens of the time were playing about the room and Persis came in wet and draggled with something in her mouth. We thought it was a dead bird and though regretting the fact, did not hinder her when she deposited it before her favourite kitten, a shy grey creature, and retired to the lap of a forebcaring friend to make her toilet. Hut, while she was thus engaged we saw thai, the thing she had brought in was a shivering little bird a belated fledgling, alive and unhurt.

The grey kitten .had not touched it, l)ii t with paws tucked under him was regarding it with a cold steady stare.

He was quite unmoved when we look it away, and restored it to a profitless liberty, with a, few scathing remarks on the cruelty of cats. It is so nice and affectionate of a father to initiate his son into the pleasures of t-port, and show him how to play a fish, but. quite another thing for a cat to show her kitten how to play with a live bird— a cat, indeed from whom we, should have expected a sympathetic imagination

When Persis had washed and combed herself she came down to see how her .son was enjoying his first attempt at sport; and no affectionate father sym pathising with his boy for losing his fish would have been half so mhch distressed as Persis to find her kitten robbed of his game.

She ran round the room, crying as she went, searched for the bird under chairs and tables, sprang on the knees of her friends to seek it, and wailed v- the loss of her present to her son.