Norwich bulletin., 1916-07-21


 in this misguided 'world,' gloomingly began the girl who likes to talk, there are thrown in for good meas ure about thousand pests trying to snatch it awayl
 q thought I had reached the limit of human endeavor making my garden. but that effort was not small cdr- cunns tance compared with my heart breaking struggles to keep it, now that have iti feel toward that garden as a mother does toward a child that is crippled and blind and snubnosed and sickly-I have a, fierce csherishtng passion for it which brooks no interference. And the first radish was scarcely up before all the cats in Cook county congregated in our al- ley and engaged seats for the season on the top of the high board fence. Consequently I spend all my waking hours sitting on the back steps ready to pounce in defense of the radish.
 'fWhen it rains remain glued to the rear dining room window. Once when it was necessary to make a flying sOrtie I leaPed completely over the cook, who was scrubbing the kitchen lnOleum. She is a nervous woman and when she sat back suddenly she hurled the scrUibbing brush through a window on to the head of the iceman just going in next dOOr-and the hum dred pounds of ice he dropped on his foot will COnnne him to the hospital a episode was that, having no ice in her refrigeration, the frantic woman next door set the whipped cream for her company luncheon on the ice cake the ice man had dropped outside. The Russian walfhOund from down the block leisurely ate it up, with royal disregard for her fearsone pleas to cease. She blamed it all on me!
 That's always the way! When you have so many troubles that you are nearly dead everybody goes to work and unloads on you! There simply cannot be propOrtiOnately as many cats in the world as torment me in my garden-Pve counted up and if the percentage held good all over the globe there would be no room left for human beings and convention halls and other necessary things.
 "The intelligence of those cats is past belief. They have gone at the affair systematically and proceed in relays. While one set sleeps the next lot approaches my back yard, each draws a long breath and they start in, with their deadly work, every member keeping one eye toward the house, waiting for me to sally forth. 1 think they enjoy watching my swift, bird like motions.
 There is a large, custard colored y fly on the brick border to the garden. He puts down each paw carefully, as if to show that he is a sensible, SnD- pathetic cat with every intention of sympathiZing with a young and help less garden and with great and ardent respect for the lady who dug and delved therein.
 Nobody could possibly object to such careful progress across the yard on the part of sober cat intent only on getting to the other side. Half way across, when I am beginning really to commend him for an e2lcep- tiOn, he gives a leap and lands square ly in the middle of the young lettuce. Either he rolls in it and crushes it fatally or else gives it an awful swipe with his claws and sends it flying through the air, disappearing with agility himself as l come shrieking down the breeze.
 "Then there is a black demon which chooses the cuCumbers that the cut worms have left. l carefully foil these by putting tin collars around the strug- gling sprouts, and the black cat goes and digs the tin cans up and off and plays rolling the hoop with them, un- less he decides to take a nap on the cucumbers themselves.
 Whenever l look out there are dozens and thousands of cats either strOlling through the SprOuting bantam corn or sitting on the fence watching for an empty spot in which to leap and join the throng below.
 T chased the custard cut through the back gate one day full tilt and colEded with the grocery boy bearing a huge basket filled with our order When the mortified ashman picked us up the grocery boys head was a streaming river Of eggs punctuated with lard and I was so gory with crushed strawberries that somebody tore shriekng into my house with the news that had passed away, and a