ARISTA AND THE FOREIGN BABY TALK.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19108, 28 June 1930, Page 18 (Supplement)

ARISTA AND THE FOREIGN BABY TALK.

Arista was feeling most important. And good reason she had to feel sj, too. Never in all the days of her charming kittenhood nor since she had grown into the beauty of cathood had she received such flattering attention. First a gentleman with a queer black box had looked on while Arista’s mistress arranged Arista and her family in their pretty basket. Then the gentleman had pointed the black box < at them, made it click and departed. Very soon after that a picture of Arista and her family appeared in the newspaper and immediately people began to come and look and exclaim and kept on coming and looking and exclaiming for ever so long. Arista tried hard to appear bored and aloof but it was all really very exciting. And after attracting so much attention it was scarcely a wonder that she became considerably impressed with her own importance.

Arista and her family really were quite out of the ordinary. Not long before her sudden rise to fame, Arista had been very much occupied with several small kittens likenesses of herself. Then one day her mistress handed over to her four very tiny, very helpless baby Boston bull puppies. The puppies had been left without a mother and were only two days old, so something had to be done about it at once Would Arista adopt them? They were, of course, very different from her own fluffy children, but she took an immediate fancy to the orphan ed babies and began to mother them with the most attentive and loving care. Knowing that Arista couldn't manage an assorted family of three kittens and four puppies, her mistressturned the kittens over to the care of Peggy, a lovely smoke-grey Persian cat, who amiably consented to adopt them and bring them up with her own children. Under Arista’s devoted care the puppies grew and thrived and became stronger and livelier every day. Arista was very proud of them and seemed to love them as well as she had ever loved hei own babies, until suddenly they began to present a most unexpected problem. One day when they were several weeks old they opened their mouths and proceeded to experiment with a series of noises that were absolutely unaccountable to Arista. Instead of speaking to her in mews as her own well-brought-up children always did, the puppies began to converse in a most strange language. Arista was completely puzzled by their baby barks. What in the world could they mean by this outlandish baby talk! She decided that so far as conversation was concerned, her own children were certainly much less of a problem than these adopted infants in whom she had taken such pride and interest.

But the puppies were soon old enough, and strong enough, thanks to her loving care, to be returned to their mistress. And Arista no longer had to try'to puzzle out the meaning of their baby language. Now she has a brand new set of children of her very own, and is happily bringing them up, secure in the knowledge that their first efforts to talk will not be in some foreign language but in perfectly plain Kittenese.