Motor-Cat

Long ago, a boy named Roland lived in the kingdom of France. He was a very precocious boy, and ever as he was growing up, he created intriguing devices and mechanisms to play with.

One day, when he was walking through the woods on the way to Orleans, he came upon a cat by the side of the road. The cat was horribly mutilated; it had no legs, though from birth or from accident Roland could not tell. Still it struggled to live, pushing with its tiny stubs and mewing desperately. Roland was not a heartless boy. He took the cat in his arms and fed it and took it with him. And as he walked, he thought: Surely it is not right to leave it like this.

His first attempt to improve its state of living was to provide it with a tiny cart, on which it could roll about. But it could not move the cart! Its legs were too short. Roland thought about this, and stroked his tiny little beard (which he fancied far more magnificent than it was in fact), and attached little pedals to the cart. Now the cat - a clever cat indeed, quickly realizing the operation of the pedals - could push itself around, turning the wheels with the pedals. This was a vast improvement over its previous state, and the cat seemed happy indeed - but it was confined to the small area to which it could pedal. Up stairs or steep inclines it could not go; and it was sometimes trapped tragically in corners, mewing pathetically until Roland rescued it from its predicament.

Roland considered the problem for two days; then laboured for another two to manufacture his greatest device yet - on which, we should note, he spent the greater part of his carefully hoarded pocket-money, for the sake of his pet cat. After these four days, he took the cat off its cart with kind words and much stroking, and rested it on its new location. The cat's new vehicle was equipped with pedals, like before, and treads, so as to climb stairs - but its efforts were augmented by a belching steam engine, resting alongside. This was a cat who would never be trapped again.


And Roland fed the cat well, and watered it, and kept it well supplied with coal; and for the rest of that cat's days with Roland, as he moved towards ever greater heights of invention, it was never trapped again - but rather, it was a Motor-Cat, faster than any other cat alive. And it purred as the steam engine roared.