Page:The fireside sphinx.djvu/281

 Rh cats, and where hitherto no human hand had ever dared to assail her. The dripping creature, furious, frightened, outraged in her best feelings, flew to her old friend for protection, went meekly back under her sheltering cloak, and never again sought to return to the now painful scene of her humiliation.

A ship cat loves its home as unswervingly as the happier animal whose lot is cast amid gardens and moonlit walls. To the landsman's prejudiced eye there is little choice in boats, especially in the dismal and dirty cargo boats "that sail the wet seas roun'." They may be "England's pride;" but, as permanent habitations, they seem to lack everything that would appeal to the refined instincts and restless habits of a cat. Yet Pussy is as faithful to her "hollow oak" as poets have ever pretended to be, and will not barter its manifold discomforts for the pleasant firesides of earth. A very beautiful cat, carried in infancy from some remote village in the Apennines, was given as a mascot to the Italian captain of an oil-tank steamer which ran between Savona and Point Breeze, Philadelphia. In the course of time she presented the ship with a family of kittens, who were less than a month old when the Philadelphia docks were reached. Like other sailors, Pussy indulged in some irregularities while on shore; and, as the result of prolonged dissipation, she was found to be missing when the Bayonne