the edge of the table, and laid
it down for a firmer hold; then sprang lightly to the floor. Over to the
basket she walked and dropped it tenderly among her other babies. Then,
having brought the remaining one and deposited that with the same
mother-care, she got into the basket herself and curled down
contentedly--her heart all whole.

And this is how strange a thing mother-love is! The performance was
scarcely believable. Could she be so love-blind as not to see what they
were and not eat them? But when she began to lick the little interlopers
and cuddle them down to their dinner as if they were her own genuine
kittens, there could be no more doubt or fear.

The squirrels do not know to this day that Calico is not their real
mother. From the first they took her mother's milk and mother's love as
rightfully and thanklessly as the kittens, growing, not like the kittens
at all, but into the most normal of squirrels, round and fat and
splendid-tailed.

Calico clearly recognized some difference between the two kinds of
kittens, but _what_ difference always puzzled her. She would clean up a
kitten and comb it slick, then turn to one of the squirrels and wash it,
but rarely, if ever, completing the work because of some disconcerting
un-catlike antic. As the squirrels grew older they also grew friskier, and
soon took the washing as the signal for a frolic. As well try to wash a
bubble. They were bundles of live springs, twisting out of her paws,
dancing over her back, leaping, kicking, tumbling as she had never seen a
kitten do in all her richly kittened experience.

I don't know why, but Calico was certainly fonder of these two freaks than
of her own normal children. Long after the latter were weaned she nursed
and mothered the squirrels. I have frequently seen them let into the
kitchen when the old cat was there, and the moment they got through the
door they would rush toward her, dropping chestnuts or cookies by the way.
She in turn would hurry to meet them with a little purr of greeting full
of joy and affection. They were shamefully big for such doings. The
kittens had quit it long ago. Calico herself, after a while, came to feel
the impropriety of mothering these strapping young ones, and in a weak,
indulgent way tried to stop it. But the squirrels were persistent and
would not go about their business at all with an ordinary cuff. She would
put them off, run away from them, slap them, and make believe to bite; but