A Cat Can Find Its Way Home

4.8

For some years I lived in London and had a small room in the house of Mrs. Brown. Mrs. Brown had two daughters; they were schoolgirls. In summer when school was over, she usually sent the girls to their grandmother, who lived on a farm a hundred kilometers from London.

There was a cat in Mrs. Brown’s house which had a kitten seven months old. Mrs. Brown decided that the cat and its kitten must go to the country too. They put the cat and the kitten into a basket and the girls left London by the morning train. Two days later, Mrs. Brown got a letter from her mother, which said that the girls were on the farm, the cat was there too, but the kitten ran away the same evening.

A month passed and one morning a dirty cat ran into Mrs. Brown’s kitchen. Mrs. Brown tried to catch it, but she could not; the cat ran into a corner under the cupboard. Then Mrs. Brown called it by the kitten’s name and the poor cat came out of the corner and went up to her. Mrs. Brown brought the kitten into my room and showed it to me. We decided that it was her kitten, but it was very dirty and very thin. How the cat could run a hundred kilometers over the country and then find its way in the streets of London we did not understand.