Chapter VI: Miss Pussy Tries Fly Paper

IN the back hallway, up stairs, there was a long wooden chest,
half full of old magazines. Behind it mice had established a
home. I did not know this at the time, but was to learn it a few
minutes after the constable left.

We stood in the kitchen, Ethel and I, listening to the heavy
foot-falls of Minerva. She was evidently packing her trunk.
Suddenly there came a mewing at the kitchen door, and I opened
it for the entrance of Miss Pussy, who made a bee line for up
stairs, one of her hunting grounds.

“We might hide Miss Pussy,” said I, “and then Minerva wouldn’t
go.”

Minerva’s voice has a penetrating quality, and in a minute we
could hear her making a confidant of Miss Pussy.

“Miss Pussy, you an’ me is go’n’ back to the lovely city.
Country’s ba-ad ’nough, but livin’ with the frien’s of burglars
is wuss. What you want, Miss Pussy?”

The voice came out into the hall; Minerva had evidently followed
the cat out.

“Yeah, you’ll get a mouse behin’ there. You wait—”

We heard a grunt such as some people make when they lift
something heavy, and then a characteristic chuckle, and then a
half agonized,

“Ooh, come out, come out, Miss Pussy. You’ll git squished. I
can’t hold it. Come out.”

“What _is_ happening now?” said I to Ethel.

“Oh, some of her tomfoolery. I’m out of patience with her.”

“Mist. Vernon! Mist. Vernon! quick! qui-i-ck! I can’t hol’ much
longer! Pussy’ll be squished!”

I rushed up those familiar stairs, followed by Ethel, and there
stood Minerva, her eyes nearly popping out of her head as she
tried with bare success to hold up the heavy chest full of
magazines.

Of the cat nothing was to be seen except a twitching tail that
told me she was underneath the chest watching a mouse in calm
obliviousness of the fact that her mistress was using all her
strength in an effort to save her from becoming only a map of a
cat.

“Hold on a minute,” I cried, rushing to her assistance, but just
as I reached her the chest slipped from her fingers.

But a cat with all its nine lives fresh within its young frame,
is not easily “squished,” even by so heavy a thing as a chest
full of magazines, and Miss Pussy’s body darted out just in
time. Not so the tip of her tail which, whisking behind her as
she turned to rush out, was caught between chest and floor, and
acted like a push button on a call bell, for she emitted a
continuous yawp that lasted until I had lifted the chest again.

Cats generally see where they are going, but Miss Pussy had been
looking behind her at the spectacle of her imprisoned tail, and
when I released her she sprang high in the air and landed
compactly and dexterously on a sheet of sticky fly paper.

Never can I forget the look she gave us over her shoulder as her
feet struck the gluey mass. To give herself a leverage by which
to pull her dainty fore-paws out of the entanglement, she sat
down—temporarily, as she thought—permanently, as the fly paper
decided.

We _were_ sorry for the cat, but being Americans we gave
ourselves over to mirth at the picture she presented. The pencil
of a Frost is needed to adequately represent her agonized
twisting on the sticky sheet. At last, by a Herculean effort,
she extricated her fore paws and walking glue-ily to the head of
the stairs she dragged herself along on the fly paper as if she
were part sled, part cat. Coming to the head of the stairs she
attempted to walk down in the manner of trick cats, but not
being used to the exercise she turned a series of summersaults
instead, and landed at the foot so completely enmeshed in sticky
fly paper that it would have been a small fly, indeed, who could
have found a place for his own little feet upon its yellow
surface.

I have often derided the witless persons who found amusement in
what I call pantomime catastrophes, but this simple conjunction
of cat and fly paper was as funny as anything I ever looked at.

“It’ll spoil her nice fur,” said Minerva, running down stairs
after the cat and overtaking her at the kitchen door, which I
had fortunately closed. A sympathetic hand picked up the papered
cat and attempted to divorce her from her adhesive mantle, but
when I came down it looked to me as if there were far more fur
on the “tanglefoot” than Pussy had herself, and the ungrateful
animal had scratched her benefactress as well as she could with
glue covered talons. Then spitting and swearing, Miss Pussy
dashed through the kitchen window, not waiting for it to be
opened, and went to her first retreat, where she remained for
the rest of the day, ridding herself, after the manner of cats,
of as much as she could of the flies’ last resting place.

It suddenly occurred to me that the time was ripe for more
diplomacy, that even now, at the eleventh hour, I might save
Minerva to the house of Vernon, and things would continue to go
on as smoothly—as before.

“Minerva, you saved Miss Pussy’s life by holding on as you did,”
said I. (I said nothing about her asininity in lifting the chest
for Miss Pussy to creep under it.)

“Might as well be dead as all gawmed up with that fly paper
stuff.”

“Well, she has a cat’s tongue, and she knows how to use it.
She’ll be as sleek as sealskin by to-night. Minerva!”

“Yas’r.”

“Minerva, if I raised your wages, do you think you’d stay with
us? Of course, you know I never saw that man until last night.”

“Then how’d he know so much about them children and all them
people?”

“That was just his funny way. He was making believe—just—just to
make talk. But you haven’t answered my question. ‘Would you stay
if I raised your wages?’”

“How much?”

There was no use in my being mealy mouthed now, and so I flung
economy to the four winds of heaven and said:

“Thirty dollars a month.”

Minerva gasped. The bait was in her throat.

“Thirty dollars a month right through the summer,” said I.

“I’ll stay, Mist. Vernon, jes to help you out, but I do hate the
country and the night time. If it was all day long all the time,
I could stan’ it. If I could git to bed about eight o’clock, I
wouldn’t mind it so much, but you have dinner so late, I don’t
get the dishes washed in time.”

I pondered, and just then Ethel came into the kitchen.

“Ethel, Minerva is going to stay with us for the summer, but she
is afraid of the dark, and thinks that if we could have dinner
earlier she would like it better.”

Ethel sniffed. She sniffed disdainfully.

“When would you like to have it, Minerva?” said I, hoping that
the sniffing would cease. Sniffs are not a part of diplomacy, by
any means.

“If you had it at five o’clock, I’d get to bed at eight.”

“Five o’clock is ridiculous,” burst out Ethel. I looked at her
warningly, but she did not pay any attention to my signal.

“No, Minerva,” said she. “Six o’clock is plenty early enough.”

“Well,” said Minerva, actually putting her hands on her hips, a
new attitude for her, “I’m on’y staying now to oblige, and I’ll
have to go back, I reckon.”

Now this was a little too much, but for the sake of keeping her
and the health of my wife at any cost, I said:

“Well, Minerva, I suppose that in spite of Mrs. Vernon’s
objection to the hour we’ll have dinner at five, but I tell you
plainly that it is because I do not want Mrs. Vernon to be left
without a servant.”

“You’re a very ungrateful girl, Minerva,” said Ethel with a
strange lack of tact. “Mr. Vernon has put up with a great deal
from you, and you act as if you were ill treated.”

“I’m kep’ a prisoner in the country, an’ that’s ill treatment
all right,” said Minerva, sullenly, and I motioned to Ethel and
we left the kitchen together.

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