My advice is, if you wish to keep them respectable, don't give
them a chance to get at it. I knew a pony--But never mind him; we are
talking about my grandmother's cat.
A leaky beer-tap was the cause of her downfall. A saucer used to be
placed underneath it to catch the drippings. One day the cat, coming in
thirsty, and finding nothing else to drink, lapped up a little, liked it,
and lapped a little more, went away for half an hour, and came back and
finished the saucerful. Then sat down beside it, and waited for it to
fill again.
From that day till the hour she died, I don't believe that cat was ever
once quite sober. Her days she passed in a drunken stupor before the
kitchen fire. Her nights she spent in the beer cellar.
My grandmother, shocked and grieved beyond expression, gave up her barrel
and adopted bottles. The cat, thus condemned to enforced abstinence,
meandered about the house for a day and a half in a disconsolate,
quarrelsome mood. Then she disappeared, returning at eleven o'clock as
tight as a drum.
Where she went, and how she managed to procure the drink, we never
discovered; but the same programme was repeated every day. Some time
during the morning she would contrive to elude our vigilance and escape;
and late every evening she would come reeling home across the fields in a
condition that I will not sully my pen by attempting to describe.
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