Kitty asked. "If this
noisy stranger would come out in the open I'd soon show you whether I'd
fight him or not. I'd teach him--if I could get hold of him--not to come
here and interfere when I'm making a neighborly call."

"Nonsense!" cried Mrs. Wren. "You don't mean half you say. If you
weren't a fraud you'd go and find this person that's jeering at you."

_"Meaow-ow-ow!"_ Again that mocking call grated on Miss Kitty's ears.

"There!" Mrs. Wren exclaimed. "There it is again. It would make me
pretty angry to be talked to like that. But I don't suppose it bothers
you. Probably you're used to having people caterwaul at you."

That was a little more than Miss Kitty Cat could stand. She scrambled
down from the old cherry tree and ran across the yard to the row of
currant bushes, whence the last catcalls had come.

As she drew near, a slim slate-colored bird gave a harsh laugh as he
flew up from the bushes. It was Mr. Catbird. And Miss Kitty Cat felt
sheepish enough when she saw him. She knew that he had succeeded in
fooling her with his mocking cries.

The birds--with Mr. Catbird among them, and Mrs. Wren, too--all gathered
round Miss Kitty and made such a clamor that she crept away and hid in
the haymow. She never could endure much noise, unless she made most of
it herself--by the light Of the moon.

XV

MOUSETRAPS

"I DON'T understand," said old dog Spot to Miss Kitty Cat one day, "why
Mrs. Green wants to keep you around the house when she can buy
mousetraps at the village." Old Spot eyed Miss Kitty slyly. He dearly
loved to watch her whiskers bristle and her tail grow big. And he could
make both those things happen almost any time he wanted to.

If anybody wished to see Miss Kitty Cat turn up her nose he had only to
mention mousetraps. Of all worthless junk she thought they were the
worst.

"They can't catch any but the dull-witted mice," she used to say. "A
mouse that knows anything won't go near a trap unless he's hungry. If he
wants to go to a little trouble to get a piece of stale cheese he can
usually spring the trap without getting caught in it--even if he has to
use his tail to do it."

"But a mousetrap," Spot objected, "is little or no care. One doesn't
have to feed it except when he wants it to catch a mouse. And everybody
knows that Mrs. Green feeds you several times a day. Besides, the fewer
mice you catch, the more food she has to waste on you."

"Rubbish!" Miss Kitty Cat sniffed. "Yo