CHAPTER IV
THE KITCHEN KITTENS
His chance came that same afternoon. Minette, tired out with her exciting adventure and with all the stories she had told about it, was having a sound sleep, no one was about and the door was open. Tompkins crept through it and down the passage. He was making for the kitchen but on the way he heard a strange noise. It came from a little room next to the kitchen and it made his little heart beat and his tail swell out to twice its size. This curious sound was just the kind of noise that kittens make when they are in the middle of a furious game. Tompkins listened outside the door. “Oh,” he thought, “if I could only get in and join them! what fun it would be, and what an adventure to tell Minette!” and he gave a little plaintive miaou just near the crack of the door. There was a silence for a second, then he heard scratchings inside and a voice called out in cat language, “You push hard and we’ll pull, the door isn’t fastened.” So Tompkins squeezed hard against the door, and at last there was a crack just big enough for him to creep through.
Inside Tompkins saw, to his delight, three small kittens. They were about his own age too, and had got hold of the waste-paper basket with which they were having a splendid game. Next to a ball, I believe, kittens love nice rustling paper, and they were tearing and rumpling these to their hearts’ content.
They had got hold of the waste-paper basket.
Tompkins was a little shy at first, but he soon felt at home with the strange kittens and tore the paper as fiercely as the others. The basket, too, seemed made to be played with. They pretended it was a cage, and one of the kittens got inside and growled so fiercely like a wild beast that Tompkins was almost afraid. At last, when it was upside down and the papers scattered all over the room the kittens began to think they would like a little rest.
They all stared at each other for a bit till Tompkins thought it was time some one made a little conversation.
“What are your names?” he asked.
The kittens looked rather confused and didn’t know what to answer, for somehow no one had thought of christening them. However, they were not going to let a stranger know this, so the prettiest said, “I am generally called ‘Pussy,’ and this”—here she pointed to the kitten next to her—“is ‘Pet.’ Her real name is Perfect-Pet, but we call her Pet for short.”
“And what is your name?” Tompkins asked the third kitten. He, however, pretended not to hear and busied himself running after his own tail, which he caught so unexpectedly that it made him sit down with a bump.
“I can tell you his name,” cried Pussy; “he has been called ‘Ugly,’ and I think it rather suits him, don’t you?”
Tompkins was too polite to say how heartily he agreed for it would have been hard to find a plainer kitten.
“It was cook who called me that,” said Ugly quite cheerfully; “she said I looked scraggy as if I wanted feeding up, so I hope she’ll see it’s done.”