BOYS’ COMPOSITIONS ON CATS.

COMPOSITION I.

CATS is an insect what has no wings and has a long tail. It looks like fishworms, only fishworms hasn’t got no hair on it like cats has. Cats is black, and sets on back fentses and buzzes its wings, which it hasn’t got any. Cats is like locusts ’bout this, ’sept locust es got wings, an’ cats waves its talze ’bove its head, and don’t set on trees. Cats was a Namerican invention made by a Mr. Pharaoh, of Egypt, Illinois, ’bout one thousand years ago or so; I expect it was so or maybe more so. Anyway this man didn’t get no patent on cats, and they was copied by some fulish man who carried ’em to New Yorick where they have ruled things at night with a tight pair o’ strings, fur some daze. Cats has a hump back with long bristles onto it. It has a pair o’ lungs, which extends clean back to its tail, which is long. It uses all o’ these yere lungs in singin’ low, sweet melodies to the pail, watery mune, ’bout 1 o’clock in the morning. Cats sometimes sits on the comb of a slippery roof, an’ sizen sobs an’ squalls an’ strokes each other’s whiskers. Cats uses two legs to set on, one to stand on an’ t’other to fan his partner with. I know two cats what did this on our woodshed. I guess they did it because they thought they would shed. I know they got up there to shed, for me an’ Jack found half a hatful of catfur, an’ a pocketful o’ claws there the next mornin’. Wonder why they don’t shed in the daytime? Must be mune had something to do with it. Cats, unlike the insecks, don’t have no stingers. The bumblebee has. I onc’t caught a bumblebee an’ gave it to a cat. Cats don’t like bees, espeshly them what hez splinters in ther talez, wich this had. The thing stung all the way down and half way back again; the cat run about seventeen miles an’ then dropped down by the shady side of a stay-hack an’ quickly, without warnin’, he hastily died a sudden death all at once, for want of breath.

Onc’t when Jack an’ me was playin’ fishin’ in our well with a tom-cat tied to a string, Jack got hurt. He had the cat down in the well, waitin’ for a bite, an’ when his back was turned it crawled up the brick an’ clawed the sap outen him. After that Jack didn’t fule with cats.

I once knew a man who was wicked enough to throw a stove-lid through a big tom-cat at night, an’ the very next day he heard that his grandmother had broke her leg in New Orleans and several other places, which prove how wicked and sinful it is to disturb the critters; an’ that’s all I know about cats.

COMPOSITION II.

THE cat which we had afor we got Mose was yeller, and didn’t have no ears, and not eny tail, too, cos they were cut off to make it go way from where it lived, for it was so ugly so it come to our house. One day my mother she sed wudent my father drown it, cos she knew where she cud get a nicer looking one. So my father he put it in a bag, and a brick in the bag, too, and threw it in the pond and went to his office, my father did. But the cat busted the bag string, and wen my father cum home it was lying under the sofa, but cum out to look at him. So they looked at one another for a long wile, and bime by my father sed to my mother: “Well, you are a mity poor hand to go shoppin’ for cats. Thisn is a site uglier than the other.”

COMPOSITION III.

CATS don’t like to swim, and never do except it’s an old cat that you want to get rid of and you do her up in a bag with some bricks and throw her into a mill-pond off the bridge, and then she’ll burst the bag and swim ashore and kite for home, so’s to be there to welcome you there, so’s you won’t feel lonesome.

Our cat lives in the house what times she don’t live over to Jones’s barn. She is real handy to throw stones at and to pull her tail and make her squawk. I make her squawk ten or six times a day, and the backs of my hands is drawed out in lines like a map, where her toe nails has got hitched.

Cats can climb telegraph poles and set on the ridgepoles of four-story houses without being dizzy headed, and they can sleep with one eye open and lay awake with both eyes shut.

I’d rather have a dog than a cat, any day. Dogs can race cats, they can race other dogs, they can race boys, or anything. Nobody ain’t scared of a cat. A mouse is; but not if it ain’t somewheres that it can’t get out of, or a rat, either. A dog can make a cat dead if he bites her enough. When he comes in the yard he can make her tail look like a Christmas tree. He can make her fix her back up like a camel. I ain’t afraid of thieves, but thieves are afraid of dogs. If a thief comes where a dog can get at him he’ll run like the deust; but the dog won’t run. A dog can watch a house better than a policeman. He won’t let the man that owns it come in the back yard in the middle of the night; but a cat would. If a man or any other thief was to sneak in, would a cat care? She’d go over the fence like lightning. That’s what! A dog knows when your home from school. He ain’t sleepy then. He has fun with old hats, if you give him one. You’ve got to pay for keeping him; but you don’t a cat; because a dog’s some good and a cat ain’t. I’d rather have a dog.

COMPOSITION IV.

IF I had invented a cat, I should have made her without nails. Cats is full of music. They have concerts every night in our wood-shed, and no tickets to pay for. The rich and the poor alike are welcome to hear ’em.

Cats live on mice, and what cream and beefsteak they can steal out of the pantry. Sometimes they catch chickens, and that makes the old hen mad, and the old woman that owns the chickens madder. And she goes for the cat with a broom, and the cat climbs a tree and sits there and lafs at her, and goes to sleep and dreams she is in a kitchen again till it comes night, and then she climbs down back end fust and goes off to a concert to see the other cats. Thomas cats has the best voices and can sing bass and tenor both at once. It is nice to hear ’em, but when you sleep alone and wake suddenly by hearing of ’em, there is something or ruther that makes a feller’s flesh creep and the cold shivers run down his backbone.

Cats like to get on the spare bed among the shams and things, and paw ’em all down into a nest, and they like to go to sleep in your best coat. I expect they enjoy the fun of hearing you swear the next day when you brush it. I should if I was a cat.

Kittens is cats when they are first born, and there is an awful sight of ’em. They keep coming right along without regard to wind or weather.

They are dreadful cute, and can unwind more thread and tear up more fancy gimcracks that the girls make than any other known animal.

It ain’t lucky to kill a cat. I don’t know why. It is good luck to have one come to you if you keep her. You get rich right away, or poor, I forget which. Every cat has nine lives, and they don’t never die if let alone unless they have fits, which most of ’em has. A cat in a fit will beat a whole circus all to nothing, and the first thing you know she’ll come right out of it and go to eating milk just as if nothing had happened.