THE KITTENS COME TO THE FOREST
One day the three big Kittens who lived with their mother in thefarmer's barn had a dreadful quarrel. If their mother had been withthem, she would probably have cuffed each with her fore paw and scoldedthem soundly. She was not with them because she had four little newKittens lying beside her in the hay-loft over the stalls.
You would think that the older Kittens must have been very proud oftheir baby brothers and sisters, yet they were not. They might have donekind little things for their mother, but they didn't. They just huntedfood for themselves and never took a mouthful of it to her. And thisdoes not prove that they were bad Kittens. It just shows that they wereyoung and thoughtless.
The Brown Kitten, the one whose fur was black and yellow mixed so finelyas to look brown, had climbed the barn stairs to see them. When hereached their corner he sat down and growled at them. His mother saidnothing at first, but when he went so far as to switch his tail in athreatening way, she left her new babies and sprang at him and told himnot to show his whiskers upstairs again until he could behave properly.
His sisters, the Yellow Kitten and the White Kitten, stayed downstairs.They didn't dislike babies so much as their brother. They just didn'tcare anything about them. Cats never care much about Kittens, you know,unless they are their own, and big brothers always say that they can'tbear them.
Now these three older Kittens were perfectly able to care forthemselves. It was a long time since their mother stopped feeding them,and they were already excellent hunters. They had practised crouching,crawling, and springing before they left the hay-loft. Sometimes theyhunted wisps of hay that moved when the wind blew in through the opendoor. Sometimes they pounced on each other, and sometimes they huntedthe Grasshoppers who got brought in with the hay. It was when they weredoing this once that they were so badly scared, but that is a storywhich has already been told.
There was no reason why they should feel neglected or worry aboutgetting enough to eat. If one of them had poor luck in hunting, all hehad to do was to hang around the barn when the Cows were brought up, andgo into the house with the man when he carried the great pails full offoamy milk. Then if the Kittens acted hungry, mewed very loudly, andrubbed up lovingly against the farmer's wife they were sure to get agood, dishful of warm milk.
You can see how unreasonable they were. They had plenty to eat, andtheir mother loved them just as much as ever, but they felt hurt andsulked around in corners, and answered each other quite rudely, andwould not run after a string which the farmer's little girl dangledbefore them. They were not cross all the time, because they had been upthe whole night and had to sleep. They stopped being cross when theyfell asleep and began again as soon as they awakened. The Hens who werefeeding around became so used to it that as soon as they saw a Kittentwist and squirm, and act like awakening, they put their heads down andran away as fast as they could.
They did not even keep themselves clean. Oh, they licked themselvesover two or three times during the day, but not thoroughly. The YellowKitten did not once try to catch her tail and scrub it, and actuallywore an unwashed tail all day. It didn't show very plainly because itwas yellow, but that made it no cleaner. The White Kitten went aroundwith her fore paws looking really disgraceful. The Brown Kitten scrubbedhis ears in a sort of half-hearted way, and paid no attention to theplace under his chin. When he did his ears, he gave his paw one lick andhis ear one rub, and repeated this only six times. Everybody knows thata truly tidy Cat wets his paw with two licks, cleans his ear with tworubs, and does this over and over from twenty to forty times before hebegins on the other ear.
Toward night they quarrelled over a dishful of milk which the farmer'swife gave them. There was plenty of room for them all to put their headsinto the dish at once and lap until each had his share. If it had notbeen for their whiskers, there would have been no trouble. These hit,and each told the others to step back and wait. Nobody did, and therewas such a fuss that the farmer's wife took the dish away and none ofthem had any more. They began to blame each other and talk so loudlythat the man drove them all away as fast as they could scamper.
Now that they were separated, each began to grow more and morediscontented. The Brown Kitten had crawled under the carriage house, andas soon as it was really dark he stole off to the forest.
"My mother has more Kittens," he said, "and my sisters get my whiskersall out of shape, and I'll go away and never come back. I won't saygood-by to them either. I guess they'll feel badly then and wish they'dbeen nicer to me! If they ever find me and want me to come back, I won'tgo. Not if they beg and beg! I'll just turn my tail toward them andwalk away."
The Brown Kitten knew that Cats sometimes went to live in the woods andgot along very well. He was not acquainted with one who had done this;his mother had told him and his sisters stories of Cats who chose tolive so. She said that was one thing which showed how much more cleverthey were than Dogs. Dogs, you know, cannot live happily away from men,although there may be the best of hunting around them.
"I will find a good hollow tree," said he, "for my home, and I willsleep there all day and hunt at night. I will eat so much that I shallgrow large and strong. Then, when I go out to hunt, the forest peoplewill say, 'Sh! Here comes the Brown Cat.'"
As he thought this he was running softly along the country road towardthe forest. Once in a while he stopped to listen, and stood with hishead raised and turned and one fore foot in the air. He kept his earspointed forward all the time so as to hear better.
When he passed the marsh he saw the Fireflies dancing in the air.Sometimes they flew so low that a Kitten might catch them. He thought hewould try, so he crawled through the fence and toward the place wherethey were dancing. He passed two tired ones sitting on a leaf and neversaw them. That was because their wings covered their sides so well thatno light shone past, and their bright bellies were close to the leaf. Hehad almost reached the dancers when he found his paws getting wet andmuddy. That made him turn back at once, for mud was something hecouldn't stand. "I wish I had something to eat," he said, as he took abite of catnip. "This is very good for a relish, but not for a wholemeal."
He trotted on toward the forest, thinking about milk and Fireflies andseveral other things, when he was stopped by some great winged personflying down toward him and then sweeping upward and alighting on abranch. The Brown Kitten drew back stiffly and said, "Ha-a-ah!"
"Who? Who? To who?" asked the person on the branch.
The Brown Kitten answered, "It is I." But the question came again: "Who?Who? To who?"
That made the Brown Kitten remember that, since his voice was not knownin the forest, nobody could tell anything by his answer. This time hereplied: "I am the Brown Kitten, if you please, and I have come to livein the forest."
"Who? Who? To who?" was the next question, and the Brown Kitten thoughthe was asked to whose home he was going.
"I am not going to anybody," he said. "I just wanted to come, and leftmy old home suddenly. I shall live alone and have a good time. I didn'teven tell my mother."
"Who? Who? To who?" said the Great Horned Owl, for it was he.
"My m-mother," said the Brown Kitten, and then he ran away as fast as hecould. He had seen the Owl more clearly as he spoke, and the Owl's facereminded him a little of his mother and made him want to see her. He ranso fast that he almost bumped into the Skunk, who was taking a dignifiedstroll through the forest and sniffing at nearly everything he saw. Itwas very lucky, you know, that he did not quite run into the Skunk, forSkunks do not like to be run into, and, if he had done so, other peoplewould soon have been sniffing at him.
The Brown Kitten thought that the Skunk might be related to him. Theywere about the same size, and the Brown Kitten had been told that hisrelatives were not only different colors, but different shapes. Hismother had told of seeing some Manx Kittens who had no tails at all, andhe thought that the Skunk's elegant long-haired one needn't prevent hisbeing a Cat.
"Good evening," said the Bro
wn Kitten. "Would you mind telling me if youare a Cat."
"Cat? No!" growled the Skunk. "They sometimes call me a Wood-Kitty, butthey have no right to. I am a Skunk, _Skunk_, SKUNK, and I am related tothe Weasles. Step out of my path."
A family of young Raccoons in a tree called down teasingly to him tocome up, but after he had started they told him to go down, and thenlaughed at him because he had to go tail first. He did not know thatforest climbers turn the toes of their hind feet backward and scamperdown head first. Still, it would have made no difference if he hadknown, for his toes wouldn't turn.
He found something to eat now and then, and he looked for a hollow tree.He found only one, and that was a Bee tree, so he couldn't use it. Allaround him the most beautiful mushrooms were pushing up from the ground.White, yellow, orange, red, and brown they were, and looked so plump andfair that he wanted to bite them. He knew, however, that some of themwere very poisonous, so he didn't even lick them with his eager, roughlittle pink tongue. He was just losing his Kitten teeth, and his new Catteeth were growing, and they made him want to bite almost everything hesaw. One kind of mushroom, which he thought the prettiest of all, grewonly on the trunks of fallen beech trees. It was white, and had a greatmany little branches, all very close together.
Most of the plants which he saw were sound asleep. Every plant has tosleep, you know, and most of them take a long nap at night. Some ofthem, like the water-lilies, also sleep on cloudy days. He was very fondof the clovers, but they had their leaflets folded tight, and only themushrooms, the evening primroses, and a few others were wide awake.Everybody whom he met was a stranger, and he began to feel very lonely.Cats do not usually mind being alone. Indeed, they rather like it;still, you can see how hard it would be for a Kitten who had always beenloved and cared for to find himself alone in a dark forest, where greatbirds ask the same questions over and over, and other people make fun ofhim. You wouldn't like it yourself, if you were a Kitten.
At last, when he was prowling along an old forest road and hoping tomeet a tender young Wood-Mouse, he saw a couple of light-coloredanimals ahead of him. They looked to him very much like Kittens, but heremembered how the Skunk had snubbed him when taken for a Cat, and hekept still. He ran to overtake them and see more clearly, and just as hereached them they all came to a turn in the road.
Before he could speak or they could notice that he was there, the windroared through the branches above, and just ahead two terrible greateyes glared at them out of an old log. They all stopped with theirback-fur bristling and their tails arched stiffly. Not a sound did oneof them make. They lifted first one foot and then another and backedslowly and silently away. When they had gone far enough, they turnedquickly and ran down the old road as fast as their twelve feet couldcarry them. They never stopped until they were in the road for home andcould look back in the starlight and be sure that nobody was followingthem. Then they stared at each other--the Yellow Kitten, the WhiteKitten, and the Brown Kitten.
"Did you run away to live in the forest?" asked the sisters.
"Did you?" asked the Brown Kitten.
"You'll never tell?" said they.
"Never!" said he.
"Well then, we did run away, and met each other just before you came. Wemeant to live in the forest."
"So did I," said he. "And I couldn't find any hollow tree."
"Did you meet that dreadful bird?" said they,--"the one who never hearsyour answers and keeps asking you over and over?"
"Yes," said he. "Don't you ever tell!"
"Ha-ha!" screamed a laughing little Screech-Owl, who had seen what hadhappened in the old forest road and flapped along noiselessly behindthem.
"Three big Kittens afraid of fox-fire! O-ho! O-ho!"
Now all of them had heard about fox-fire and knew it was the light whichshines from some kinds of rotten wood in the dark, but they held uptheir heads and answered, "We're not afraid of fox-fire."
"Ha-ha!" screamed the Screech-Owl again. "Thought you saw big eyesglaring at you. Only fox-fire. Dare you to come back if you are notafraid."
"We don't want to go back," answered the Brown Kitten. "We haven'ttime."
"Ha-ha!" screamed the Screech-Owl. "Haven't time! Where are you going?"
"Going home, of course," answered the Brown Kitten. And then hewhispered to his sisters, "Let's!"
"All right," said they, and they raced down the road as fast as theycould go. To this day their mother does not know that they ever ran awayfrom home.
But it was only fox-fire.