your house, and grab half your side with one huge paw, is a
thing well calculated to alarm a person of delicate organization.

Then I said to myself, this cat thinks she has struck a placer, and a
hundred to one she will be driving her pick in here again directly. So
I removed the cage immediately, and set it on a high bureau, with a
"whisking-stick" close by it. Sure enough I was awakened the next
morning before day by a prolonged and mournful "maeouw" of
disappointment from the old dragon at not finding the prey where she
had expected. Before she had time to push her researches to success,
she and I and the stick were not letting the grass grow under our feet
on the stairs. Long after, when the fright and flurry had been
forgotten, the cage was again left in a rocking-chair in the upper
front entry, where I had been sitting in sunshine all the afternoon
with Cheri, who thinks me, though far inferior to a robin or a finch,
still better than no company at all. In the course of the evening I
happened to open the lower entry door, when the cat suddenly appeared
on the lower stair. I should have supposed she had come from the
sitting-room with me, but for a certain elaborate and enforced
nonchalance in her demeanor, a jaunty air of insouciance, as far
removed, on the one hand, from the calm equilibrium of dignity which
almost imperceptibly soothes and reassures you, as from the guileless
gayety of infantile ignorance, which perforce "medicines your
weariness," on the other,--a demeanor which at once disgusts and alarms
you. I felt confident that some underhand work was going on. I went
upstairs. There was Cheri again, this time with his right wing gone,
and a modicum of his tail. The cage had retained its position, but the
Evil One had made her grip at him; and the same routine of weariness,
silence, loss of appetite and spirits was to be gone through with
again, followed by re-pluming and recuperating. But every time I think
of it, I am lost in wonder at the skill and sagacity of that cat. It
was something to carry on the campaign in a rocking-chair, without
disturbing the base of operations so as to make a noise and create a
diversion in favor of the bird; but the cunning and self-control which,
as soon as I opened the door, made her leave the bird, and come purring
about my feet, and tossing her innocent head to disarm suspicion, was
wonderful. I look at her sometimes, when we have been sitting together
a w