The Hunter Cats of Connorloa Part 3

The cats' breakfast was nearly over. In fact, they had had their usual allowance before Rea came down; but Ah Foo had gone on throwing out meat for Rea to see the scrambling. Presently he threw the last piece, and set the empty plate up on a shelf by the kitchen door. The cats knew very well by this sign that breakfast was over; after the plate was set on that shelf, they never had a mouthful more of meat; and it was droll to see the change that came over all of them as soon as they saw this done. In less than a second, they changed from fierce, fighting, clawing, scratching, s.n.a.t.c.hing, miaowing, spitting, growling cats, into quiet, peaceful cats, some sitting down licking their paws, or was.h.i.+ng their faces, and some lying out full-length on the ground and rolling; some walking off in a leisurely and dignified manner, as if they had had all they wanted, and wouldn't thank anybody for another bit of meat, if they could have it as well as not. This was almost as funny as the first part of it.

After Ah Foo had set the plate in its place on the shelf, he turned to go into the kitchen to help about the breakfast; but just as he had put his hand on the door-handle, there came a terrible shriek from Rea, a fierce sputter from one of the cats, and a faint bark of a dog, all at once; and Ah Foo, looking around, sprang just in time to rescue Fairy from the jaws of Skipper, one of the biggest and fiercest of the cats.

Poor little Fairy, missing her mistress, had trotted downstairs; and smelling on the floor wherever Rea had set her feet, had followed her tracks, and had reached the veranda just in time to be spied by Skipper, who arched his back, set his tail up straight and stiff as a poker, and, making one bound from the ground to the middle of the veranda floor, clutched Fairy with teeth and claws, and would have made an end of her in less than one minute if Ah Foo had not been there. But Ah Foo could move almost as quickly as a cat; and it was not a quarter of a second after Fairy gave her piteous cry, when she was safe and sound in her mistress's arms, and Ah Foo had Skipper by the scruff of his neck, and was holding him high up, boxing his ears, right and left, with blows so hard they rang.

"Cat heap wicked," he said. "You killee missy's dog, I killee you!" and he flung Skipper with all his might and main through the air.

Rea screamed, "Oh, don't!" She did not want to see the cat killed, even if he had flown at Fairy. "It will kill him," she cried.

Ah Foo laughed. "Heap hard killee cat," he said. "Cat get nine time life good;" and as he spoke, Skipper, after whirling through the air in several somersaults, came down on his feet all right, and slunk off into the woodpile.

"I tellee you," said Ah Foo, chuckling.

"Thatee isee heapee goodee manee," cried Jusy. "I havee learnee talkee oneee language already!"

A roar of laughter came from the dining-room window. There stood Uncle George, holding his sides.

"Bravo, Jusy!" he exclaimed. "You have begun on pigeon English, have you, for the first of your nine languages?"

"Isn't that Chinese?" said Jusy, much crestfallen.

"Oh, no!" said Uncle George, "not by any manner of means. It is only the Chinese way of talking English. It is called pigeon English. But come in to breakfast now, and I will tell you all about my cats,--my hunting cats, I call them. They are just as good as a pack of hunting dogs; and better, for they do not need anybody to go with them."

How pleasant the breakfast-table looked!--a large square table set with gay china, pretty flowers in the middle, nice broiled chicken and fried potatoes, and baked apples and cream; and Jusy's and Rea's bright faces, one on Mr. Connor's left hand, the other on his right.

As Jim moved about the table and waited on them, he thought to himself, "Now, if this doesn't make Mr. George well, it will be because he can't be cured."

Jim had found the big house so lonely, with n.o.body in it except Mr.

Connor and the two Chinese servants, he would have been glad to see almost anything in the shape of a human being,--man, woman, or child,--come there to live. How much more, then, these two beautiful and merry children!

Jusy and Rea thought they had never in all their lives tasted anything so good as the broiled chicken and the baked apples.

"Heapee goodee cookee, Uncle George!" said Jusy. He was so tickled with the Chinaman's way of talking, he wanted to keep doing it.

"Tooee muchee putee onee letter e, Master Jusy," said Uncle George.

"After you have listened to their talk a little longer, you will see that they do not add the 'ee' to every word. It is hard to imitate them exactly."

Jusy was crestfallen. He thought he had learned a new language in half an hour, and he was proud of it. But no new language was ever learned without more trouble and hard work than that; not even pigeon Englis.h.!.+

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III.

It had come about by chance, Mr. Connor's keeping this pack of hunting cats. He had been greatly troubled by gophers and rabbits: the gophers killed his trees by gnawing their roots; the rabbits burrowed under his vines, ate the tender young leaves, and gnawed the stems.

Jim had tried every device,--traps of all kinds and all the poisons he could hear of. He had also tried drowning the poor little gophers out by pouring water down their holes. But, spite of all he could do, the whole hill was alive with them. It had been wild ground so long, and covered so thick with bushes, that it had been like a nice house built on purpose for all small wild animals to live in.

I suppose there must have been miles of gophers' underground tunnels, leading from hole to hole. They popped their heads up, and you saw them scampering away wherever you went; and in the early morning it was very funny to see the rabbits jumping and leaping to get off out of sight when they heard people stirring. They were of a beautiful gray color, with a short bushy tail, white at the end. On account of this white tip to their tails, they are called "cotton-tails."

When Mr. Connor first moved up on the hill, Jim used to shoot a cottontail almost every day, and some days he shot two. The rabbits, however, are shyer than the gophers; when they find out that they get shot as soon as they are seen, and that these men who shoot them have built houses and mean to stay, they will gradually desert their burrows and move away to new homes.

But the gopher is not so afraid. He lives down in the ground, and can work in the dark as well as in the light; and he likes roots just as well as he likes the stems above ground; so as long as he stays in his cellar houses, he is hard to reach.

The gopher is a pretty little creature, with a striped back,--almost as pretty as a chipmonk. It seems a great pity to have to kill them all off; but there is no help for it; fruit-trees and gophers cannot live in the same place.

Soon after Mr. Connor moved into his new house, he had a present of a big cat from the Mexican woman who sold him milk.

She said to Jim one day, "Have you got a cat in your house yet?"

"No," said Jim. "Mr. George does not like cats."

"No matter," said she, "you have got to have one. The gophers and squirrels in this country are a great deal worse than rats and mice.

They'll come right into your kitchen and cellar, if your back is turned a minute, and eat you out of house and home. I'll give you a splendid cat. She's a good hunter. I've got more cats than I know what to do with."

So she presented Jim with a fine, big black and white cat; and Jim named the cat "Mexican," because a Mexican woman gave her to him.

The first thing Mexican did, after getting herself established in her new home in the woodpile, was to have a litter of kittens, six of them.

The next thing she did, as soon as they got big enough to eat meat, was to go out hunting for food for them; and one day, as Mr. Connor was riding up the hill, he saw her running into the woodpile, with a big fat gopher in her mouth.

"Ha!" thought Mr. Connor to himself. "There's an idea! If one cat will kill one gopher in a day, twenty cats would kill twenty gophers in a day! I'll get twenty cats, and keep them just to hunt gophers. They'll clear the place out quicker than poison, or traps, or drowning."

"Jim," he called, as soon as he entered the house,--"Jim, I've got an idea. I saw Mexican just now carrying a dead gopher to her kittens. Does she kill many?"

"Oh, yes, sir," replied Jim. "Before she got her kittens I used to see her with them every day. But she does not go out so often now."

"Good mother!" said Mr. Connor. "Stays at home with her family, does she?"

"Yes, sir," laughed Jim; "except when she needs to go out to get food for them."

"You may set about making a collection of cats, Jim, at once," said Mr.

Connor. "I'd like twenty."

Jim stared. "I thought you didn't like cats, Mr. George," he exclaimed.

"I was afraid to bring Mexican home, for fear you wouldn't like having her about."

"No more do I," replied Mr. Connor. "But I do not dislike them so much as I dislike gophers. And don't you see, if we have twenty, and they all hunt gophers as well as she does, we'll soon have the place cleared?"

"We'd have to feed them, sir," said Jim. "So many's that, they'd never make all their living off gophers."

"Well, we'll feed them once a day, just a little, so as not to let them starve. But we must keep them hungry, or else they won't hunt."

"Very well, sir," said Jim. "I will set about it at once."