o your kitchen and cellar, if your back is turned
a minute, and eat you out of house and home. I'll give you a splendid
cat. She's a good hunter. I've got more cats than I know what to do
with."

So she presented Jim with a fine, big black and white cat; and Jim named
the cat "Mexican," because a Mexican woman gave her to him.

The first thing Mexican did, after getting herself established in her
new home in the woodpile, was to have a litter of kittens, six of them.
The next thing she did, as soon as they got big enough to eat meat, was
to go out hunting for food for them; and one day, as Mr. Connor was
riding up the hill, he saw her running into the woodpile, with a big fat
gopher in her mouth.

"Ha!" thought Mr. Connor to himself. "There's an idea! If one cat will
kill one gopher in a day, twenty cats would kill twenty gophers in a
day! I'll get twenty cats, and keep them just to hunt gophers. They'll
clear the place out quicker than poison, or traps, or drowning."

"Jim," he called, as soon as he entered the house,--"Jim, I've got an
idea. I saw Mexican just now carrying a dead gopher to her kittens. Does
she kill many?"

"Oh, yes, sir," replied Jim. "Before she got her kittens I used to see
her with them every day. But she does not go out so often now."

"Good mother!" said Mr. Connor. "Stays at home with her family, does
she?"

"Yes, sir," laughed Jim; "except when she needs to go out to get food
for them."

"You may set about making a collection of cats, Jim, at once," said Mr.
Connor. "I'd like twenty."

Jim stared. "I thought you didn't like cats, Mr. George," he exclaimed.
"I was afraid to bring Mexican home, for fear you wouldn't like having
her about."

"No more do I," replied Mr. Connor. "But I do not dislike them so much
as I dislike gophers. And don't you see, if we have twenty, and they
all hunt gophers as well as she does, we'll soon have the place
cleared?"

"We'd have to feed them, sir," said Jim. "So many's that, they'd never
make all their living off gophers."

"Well, we'll feed them once a day, just a little, so as not to let them
starve. But we must keep them hungry, or else they won't hunt."

"Very well, sir," said Jim. "I will set about it at once."

"Beg or buy them," laughed Mr. Connor. "I'll pay for them, if I can't
get them any other way. There is room in the woodpile for fifty to
live."

Jim did not much like the idea of having such an army of cats about; but
he went fa