Chapter 2

Now, Mr. Crow really knew a great deal, because he had lived many years. And he pretended to know still more, because he liked to appear learned. But this question was a puzzler for him. He simply couldn't answer it.

"You wouldn't understand, even if I explained," he told Frisky Squirrel. And then he flew away, leaving Frisky to run home and wonder what it meant to have nine lives.

As for Mr. Crow, he suddenly made up his mind that he would find out about Miss Kitty Cat's nine lives. He would ask that lady herself. So he flapped himself over to the big elm in the farmyard, where he cawed and cawed, hoping that Miss Kitty Cat would appear to see what all the noise was about.

And sure enough! she soon bounced out of the woodshed door and looked up at Mr. Crow inquiringly.

"I've been hearing a good deal about; you," Mr. Crow called down to her in what he considered his sweetest tones, though anybody else would have said they were quite hoarse. "I know you always manage to land on your feet--and I can understand that. But what's this I hear about _nine lives?_"

Miss Kitty Cat only stared at him.

"Perhaps you don't feel like talking," said Mr. Crow. "If you've just had a fall, maybe you're still a bit shaken up, even if you did land on your feet. Perhaps you'd rather I came back later."

Miss Kitty Cat suddenly found her voice.

"You've been gossiping with that young squirrel!" she snapped. "I'll have you know that I'm not shaken up at all. But I'd shake you up if I could get hold of you!"

Mr. Crow was astonished. He was sure he had been most polite. Yet here was Miss Kitty Cat as rude as she could be!

He amused himself by jeering at her until she turned her back on him and went inside the woodshed. And he had to go away without learning anything at all about the nine lives of Miss Kitty Cat. They always remained a deep mystery. Everybody agreed that the number was nine. But beyond that, nobody could explain about them.

IX

THE STOLEN CREAM

"I DECLARE!" Farmer Green's wife cried one day. "Somebody's been stealing my cream in the buttery."

The buttery was a big bare room on the shady side of the house, where great pans of milk stood on a long table. When the cream was thick enough on the milk Mrs. Green skimmed it off and put it in cans. At one end of the buttery there was a trap door in the floor. When the trap was raised you could look right down into a well. And into its cool depths Mrs. Green dropped her cans of cream by means of a rope, which she fastened to a beam under the floor, so the tops of the cans would stay out of the water.

Mrs. Green made butter out of that cream. So it was no wonder she was upset when she discovered that some one had meddled with one of her pans of milk.

"It can't be the cat," said Farmer Green's wife. "The buttery door has been shut tight all the time."

Miss Kitty Cat was right there in the kitchen while Mrs. Green was talking to her husband. And it was easy to see that Miss Kitty agreed with her mistress. She came close to Mrs. Green and purred, saying quite plainly that she was a good, honest cat and that she deserved to be petted. At least, that was what Mrs. Green understood her to mean.

Often, after that, Mrs. Green discovered traces of the thief in the buttery. Flecks of cream on the side of a milk pan, drops of cream on the table, smudges of cream now and then on the floor! Such signs meant something. But Farmer Green's wife couldn't decide what.

And another strange thing happened. Miss Kitty Cat lost her appetite for milk. She would leave her saucer of milk untasted on the kitchen floor.

Now and then Mrs. Green picked Miss Kitty up and looked closely at her face. At such times Miss Kitty purred pleasantly. She did not seem to be the least bit disturbed.

One evening, after dark, Johnnie Green went into the buttery to get a pail. The moment he opened the door there was a crash and a clatter inside the room.

Johnnie jumped back quickly.

"There's somebody in the buttery!" he shouted.

But when his father brought a light they found no one there. A tin dipper lay on the floor.

"When you opened the door it must have jarred the dipper off the edge of the table," said Farmer Green.

"_Meaow!_" said a voice behind them. There stood Miss Kitty Cat, saying that everything _must_ have happened exactly as Farmer Green said.

"She couldn't have been in here, could she?" Farmer Green puzzled. "Come, Kitty!" And he picked up Miss Kitty and held her where the light fell full upon her face. "Clean as a whistle!" said Farmer Green. "I guess she just followed us in." He set her down again. And once more, with a plaintive _meaow_ she agreed with him perfectly.

X

A CREAMY FACE

FARMER GREEN'S wife threw away pan after pan of milk, because she knew somebody had been stealing cream off the top of them. At least, she told Farmer Green to feed the milk to the pigs, because she wasn't going to make butter of any cream that had been tampered with by goodness knew whom or what. And old dog Spot said that feeding good creamy milk to the pigs was just the same as throwing it away. He made that remark to Miss Kitty Cat, adding that it was a shame that somebody was stealing cream and declaring that he hoped to catch the thief.

Miss Kitty Cat made no reply whatsoever.

"Don't you hope I'll catch the guilty party?" Spot asked her.

"Please don't speak to me!" Miss Kitty Cat exclaimed impatiently. "I don't enjoy your talk; and you may as well know it."

"Very well!" said Spot. "But when I catch him I'll let you know."

"She's jealous," Spot thought. "She knows I'm a good watch dog. And she can't bear the idea of my catching a thief."

It was hard, usually, to tell how Miss Kitty Cat felt about anything. She was a great one for keeping her opinions to herself. It seemed as if she wanted to be let alone by every one except Farmer Green's family.

Having boasted about catching the cream thief, old dog Spot began to watch the buttery very carefully. Search as he would, he couldn't find a chink anywhere that was big enough even for a mouse to squeeze through.

One day he happened to catch a glimpse of something moving under the roof of the shed next the buttery. To his amazement he saw Miss Kitty Cat slip through an old stove-pipe hole that pierced the great chimney which led down into the buttery, where there was an ancient fireplace which hadn't been used for years and years. Miss Kitty Cat crept along a tiebeam and hid herself in a pile of odds and ends that somebody had stowed high up under the roof and left there to gather dust and cob-webs.

"Ah, ha!" said Spot under his breath. "This is interesting."

When Miss Kitty Cat visited the kitchen a little later there wasn't a speck of dirt on her coat. And her face was spotless. No one would have guessed that she had ever made her way through an old chimney.

Old dog Spot said nothing to her then. But he chuckled to himself. He had a plan that pleased him hugely.

All this happened on a morning. And late that afternoon when Miss Kitty Cat wasn't anywhere to be seen, and Farmer Green's wife opened the buttery door to get a pitcher of cream for supper, Spot suddenly began to bark in the shed. He scrambled up a stepladder that leaned against the wall and stood on the top of it while he pawed the air frantically, as if he were trying to fly.

The noise brought Mrs. Green hurriedly out of the buttery. And she was just in time to see Miss Kitty Cat peer out of the old stove-pipe hole, with a _creamy_ look about her mouth.

Well, the cat was out of the bag at last. Or perhaps it would be more exact to say that Miss Kitty was out of the buttery. Anyhow, it was very plain to Mrs. Green that she had been in the buttery only a moment before, lapping thick cream off a pan of milk. And she hadn't had time to wash her face.

After that Farmer Green stopped up the stove-pipe hole. And soon Miss Kitty's appetite for milk returned. When Mrs. Green set out her saucer of milk for her Miss Kitty lapped it up greedily--and even licked the saucer clean.

Old dog Spot watched her with a grin.

"I let you know when I caught the cream thief, just as I promised you I would," he jeered.

Miss Kitty wiped her face very carefully before replying.

"Don't boast!" she said. "It's a disagreeable thing to do.... Besides, _I_ knew--_long before you did_--who was taking Mrs. Green's cream."

XI

THE WRENS' HOME

THERE wasn't a bird on the farm that didn't dislike Miss Kitty Cat. And there was only one bird family that didn't live in dread of her. That was the Wren family. And they had a good reason for feeling safe from Miss Kitty.

Miss Kitty Cat always spluttered whenever she unbent herself enough to talk with anybody about Rusty Wren and his busy little wife, who had their home in the cherry tree outside Farmer Green's window.

"The Wrens needn't feel so proud of their house," Miss Kitty Cat sometimes said. "It's nothing but an old syrup can. And I know for a fact that Mrs. Bluebird looked at it last spring when she was hunting for a home. And she said she wouldn't live in such a place. I heard her tell her husband so."

Now, the reason why Mr. and Mrs. Wren liked their house and the reason why Miss Kitty Cat didn't were one and the same: Miss Kitty couldn't get inside it. The mouth of the syrup can, which the Wren family used for a door, was no bigger than a quarter of a dollar. It was entirely too small for Miss Kitty Cat, though it was big enough to admit Rusty Wren and his plump wife.

Miss Kitty said everything she could to persuade the Wren family to build themselves a nest in a crotch of the tree, like other birds.

"I'm sure," she told them, "you'd like such a home much better than this. There's no reason why you shouldn't be as fashionable as everybody else. You wouldn't have to look for a place to build. There's room enough right in this old cherry tree for a hundred happy homes if anybody wanted to build them."

"We like our house," Rusty Wren said.

"I wouldn't move, even if he wanted to," Mrs. Wren declared.

"Maybe you'd move because he _doesn't_ want to," Miss Kitty Cat suggested.

But Mrs. Wren shook her head in a most decided way.

"No!" she said. "I'm satisfied with my house. And our neighbors would be far better off if they built as we do, inside a snug sort of box."

"You'll never know what you're missing," Miss Kitty remarked, "if you don't try an open nest sometime. Now, only yesterday I visited Jolly Robin's family over in the orchard. And their youngsters certainly did look beautiful. But you keep yours hidden inside that old syrup can where nobody can see them. It's a shame that the public can't have a chance to admire such fine nestlings as you must have in there."

Miss Kitty Cat was sitting under the cherry tree. And she looked up and smiled most agreeably at Mrs. Wren.

Rusty Wren looked thoughtful.

"There's something in what she says," he whispered to his wife. "It is too bad not to let the neighbors admire the finest nestlings in Pleasant Valley."

"You know they say a cat may look at a king," Miss Kitty simpered. "Well, a fortnight ago I went over to the pine woods and had a look at a Ruby Crowned Kinglet's family. So it seems only fair that I shouldn't be denied a look at your little wrenlets."

XII

JOLLY ROBIN'S NEWS

IN A WAY Miss Kitty Cat was a patient creature. She could play a waiting game. She spent hours watching rat-holes without growing restless.

So after her talk with Rusty Wren and his wife, when she urged them to give up their boxlike house and build themselves an open nest like most other birds, Miss Kitty left them.

"I'll let my words sink in," Miss Kitty muttered to herself. "Of course they'll want to talk things over privately."

It wasn't often that she made herself so agreeable to any of the bird people. Indeed, she had been so pleasant that Rusty Wren began to think that Miss Kitty was a much kinder creature than he had always supposed.

"Miss Kitty's very agreeable," Rusty Wren remarked to his wife. "Did you notice how sweetly she spoke of our children?"

"Huh!" said Mrs. Wren. "She may fool you; but she can't fool me. She's a mealy-mouthed animal, if ever I met one."

"I don't see how you can say that about Miss Kitty Cat," Rusty replied. "She doesn't eat meal."

"I suppose you'll be saying next that she doesn't eat birds!" his wife exclaimed.

"I fear you've been listening to gossip," Rusty ventured. "If Miss Kitty Cat comes back I hope you'll be cordial to her."

He could have bitten his tongue a moment later for saying that, because Mrs. Wren began to scold him. And he flew away and left her as soon as he could think of a good excuse.

He went over to the orchard, where he flitted about for some time. And at last he met Jolly Robin, who appeared most doleful.

"What's the matter?" Rusty Wren asked. "You look terribly upset."

"So I am," Jolly Robin admitted. "We had a caller yesterday."

"Well, well!" said Rusty Wren. "That's nothing to be glum about."

"You'd think so if you were I. It was Miss Kitty Cat. And when she left she took one of our nestlings with her."

"Perhaps she only borrowed it," Rusty Wren suggested. "Maybe she'll return it to-day."

"No!" Jolly Robin told him. "If she comes back again it will only be to take another one."

Suddenly Rusty Wren remembered that he had urged his wife to be cordial to Miss Kitty Cat the next time she called at the cherry tree where they lived.

"I must hurry home!" he cried. "I must warn my wife."

"But your youngsters are safe," Jolly Robin assured him. "Miss Kitty Cat can't reach them inside the tin can where you built your nest."

"That's true," Rusty Wren admitted. "But there's my wife! Miss Kitty might harm her, if she caught her unawares." So he started for home at top speed.

XIII

AN UNWELCOME GUEST

AS he neared his home in the cherry tree, Rusty Wren saw a fearsome sight. Miss Kitty Cat was crouched right on top of the tin syrup can which Johnnie Green had nailed to the tree. Inside that can was the Wren family's nest. And inside the nest were some brand-new youngsters, only two days out of their shells.

It was no wonder that when Rusty Wren came hack from the orchard and saw such a sight he began to shriek.

"What are you doing on my roof?" he shrilled.

Miss Kitty Cat looked up calmly and watched him as he hopped about in the top of the tree above her head.

"I've come to make another call on your wife," she explained.

Then a muffled voice chirped, "She's been here a long time and I can't get her to go away."

The moment he heard that, Rusty Wren felt better. It was his wife's voice and it meant that she was safe. To be sure, Rusty knew that she was a prisoner in her own house; for it was plain that she dared not leave it so long as Miss Kitty Cat stayed on the roof, ready to grab Mrs. Wren the moment she stepped out of her doorway.

"Your wife is very shy," Miss Kitty remarked to Rusty Wren with a sly smile. "I've been hoping to get more acquainted with her. That's why I climbed up and sat on your roof. When people are shy and don't invite me inside their houses I believe in making myself at home outside, while I wait for them to appear."

From her doorway Mrs. Wren called to her husband, "Don't let her deceive you with her pretty talk! Remember what I told you! She's mealy-mouthed.... If you had seen her trying to reach her paw through the door you'd know how dangerous she is."

"There!" said Miss Kitty Cat with a sigh. "People never seem to understand my ways. I was only trying to shake hands!"

"With her claws!" cried the muffled voice of Rusty Wren's wife. "Ugh! She's a wicked creature if ever there was one."

"Go away!" Rusty Wren scolded. "Get off my roof! Get out of my cherry tree!"

By this time feathered neighbors of the Wren family were arriving from all directions. They didn't hesitate to call Miss Kitty Cat names. And some of them even darted quite near her, as if they meant to peck her eyes out.

Miss Kitty began to have a worried look.

"Goodness! Where do they all live?" she asked herself. "I had no idea there were so many birds around here. There's better hunting than I supposed."

Try as they would, the birds couldn't budge Miss Kitty Cat from the top of Rusty's house. He was frantic, poor fellow!

"I don't know what to do," he wailed. "My wife will starve in there--and the children, too."

Just then little Mr. Chippy came hurrying up to him.

"Don't worry!" Mr. Chippy cried. "He's coming! He's on the way now; and he can get you out of your trouble if anybody can."

Miss Kitty Cat pricked up her ears. She couldn't help hearing what Mr. Chippy said.

"I shall stay right where I am," she declared. "Nobody can make me move."

She had scarcely finished speaking when a most unexpected sound startled her.

It was "_Meaow!_"

XIV

CATCALLS

PERCHED on top of Rusty Wren's tin house, Miss Kitty Cat had been enjoying herself thoroughly, while the birds made a great how-dy-do and tried in vain to frighten her away.

When she heard all at once an unexpected _meaow_ she showed that it startled her.

"A cat!" cried Miss Kitty. "I didn't suppose there was another cat for miles around." She looked about on all sides, on the ground and in the tree-tops. And there was no cat anywhere in sight.

Meanwhile the birds were all exclaiming, "There! He's here. Now Miss Kitty Cat had better watch out."

Again a strange, mocking catcall sounded from somewhere. There was a sort of jeer about it that aroused Miss Kitty Cat's anger.

"He's come, has he?" she exclaimed to little Mr. Chippy, who chattered at her from a good, safe distance. "If he's looking for a fight I'd be pleased to have him come and get it."

Whoever the stranger was, and wherever he was, he knew how to tease Miss Kitty Cat. Now he howled at her from the thicket of lilac bushes on the edge of the flower garden. Now he mewed at her from the hedge in front of the farmhouse. And though Miss Kitty Cat tried to get a glimpse of him, she couldn't see anything that even faintly resembled a cat.

The annoying cries moved from one place to another. She was sure of that. But the one that made them managed to stay hidden.

"This is queer!" Miss Kitty Cat said to herself. "Can it be that there's a cat's voice around here, and nothing more? A cat without a voice wouldn't be so strange. But a voice without a cat--that's the oddest thing I ever heard of!"

At last Rusty Wren seemed to take heart. And his wife, inside their house, abused Miss Kitty Cat loudly--or as loudly as she could from inside the tin syrup can.

"I always knew you were a coward," she told Miss Kitty. "You're always ready to attack us small people. But you don't dare fight anybody of your own size."

"How can I fight a person that I can't see?" Miss Kitty asked. "If this noisy stranger would come out in the open I'd soon show you whether I'd fight him or not. I'd teach him--if I could get hold of him--not to come here and interfere when I'm making a neighborly call."

"Nonsense!" cried Mrs. Wren. "You don't mean half you say. If you weren't a fraud you'd go and find this person that's jeering at you."

_"Meaow-ow-ow!"_ Again that mocking call grated on Miss Kitty's ears.

"There!" Mrs. Wren exclaimed. "There it is again. It would make me pretty angry to be talked to like that. But I don't suppose it bothers you. Probably you're used to having people caterwaul at you."

That was a little more than Miss Kitty Cat could stand. She scrambled down from the old cherry tree and ran across the yard to the row of currant bushes, whence the last catcalls had come.

As she drew near, a slim slate-colored bird gave a harsh laugh as he flew up from the bushes. It was Mr. Catbird. And Miss Kitty Cat felt sheepish enough when she saw him. She knew that he had succeeded in fooling her with his mocking cries.

The birds--with Mr. Catbird among them, and Mrs. Wren, too--all gathered round Miss Kitty and made such a clamor that she crept away and hid in the haymow. She never could endure much noise, unless she made most of it herself--by the light Of the moon.

XV

MOUSETRAPS

"I DON'T understand," said old dog Spot to Miss Kitty Cat one day, "why Mrs. Green wants to keep you around the house when she can buy mousetraps at the village." Old Spot eyed Miss Kitty slyly. He dearly loved to watch her whiskers bristle and her tail grow big. And he could make both those things happen almost any time he wanted to.

If anybody wished to see Miss Kitty Cat turn up her nose he had only to mention mousetraps. Of all worthless junk she thought they were the worst.

"They can't catch any but the dull-witted mice," she used to say. "A mouse that knows anything won't go near a trap unless he's hungry. If he wants to go to a little trouble to get a piece of stale cheese he can usually spring the trap without getting caught in it--even if he has to use his tail to do it."

"But a mousetrap," Spot objected, "is little or no care. One doesn't have to feed it except when he wants it to catch a mouse. And everybody knows that Mrs. Green feeds you several times a day. Besides, the fewer mice you catch, the more food she has to waste on you."

"Rubbish!" Miss Kitty Cat sniffed. "You eat ten times as much as I do. And I never heard of your catching a mouse, either."

"Ah!" said Spot. "Don't forget that I drive the cows and watch the house and the barns at night. And during my spare moments I hunt woodchucks. You couldn't expect a person of my importance to fritter away his valuable time catching mice. Mousetraps couldn't do my work," old dog Spot continued. "There never was a mousetrap made that could drive a cow."

"That's one reason why I don't like them," said Miss Kitty Cat. "They're not only poor at catching mice, but they're useless at anything else. Now, whenever I capture a mouse I always make matters as pleasant as possible for, him. I always play with him for as long a time as I can spare. But a trap just goes _snap_! A trap doesn't seem to _want_ to make friends with anybody."

Old dog Spot laughed right in Miss Kitty's face.

"Much you care for your friends the mice!" he chuckled. "And much they care for you! If you knew what they call you, you'd be pretty angry."

"What's that?" Miss Kitty demanded.

"I don't want to tell you," said Spot. "I don't want to hurt your feelings." He knew (the rogue) that he could tease Miss Kitty more by leaving her to wonder what name the mice had for her.

Much as she wanted to know it, Miss Kitty Cat was too proud and haughty to ask him again. And, jumping up suddenly, she walked stiffly away.

"I shall have to find a mouse somewhere," she muttered under her breath. "I shall have to find a mouse somewhere and make him tell me what old Spot won't."

XVI

A MIDNIGHT MEAL

DOWN in the cellar of the farmhouse a fat couple known as Mr. and Mrs. Moses Mouse crept out of a hole under the pantry floor and ran down a post to the cellar bottom.

"Things have come to a pretty pass!" Mr. Mouse grumbled. "Mrs. Green never did leave more than a crumb or two in the pantry where a fellow could get it. And since Miss Snooper came to live here there's less to eat than ever."

Mrs. Mouse nodded her head somewhat dolefully.

"Do you remember, Moses," she said to her husband, "what delicious bits of stale cheese Mrs. Green used to serve for us here in the cellar, stuck on a short piece of wire? To be sure, she was somewhat thoughtless--the way she left that dangerous loop caught back, so it would snap over and catch you behind the ears if you weren't careful. But you were always very skillful at avoiding that."

"Ah! Those were happy days--or, I should say, _nights_!" Mr. Mouse exclaimed with a sigh. "It makes me sad just to think of that fine, old, stale, moldy cheese."