The Cat

So little Dick Whittington had a warm, dry place to sleep near the kitchen cooking fire--right next to the big bricked bin where the firewood was kept--and part of his job was to keep plenty of the right sort of firewood handy for the cook. 

He also peeled vegetables and washed the dishes, pots and pans and cooking tools. 

He was even allowed to polish the silverware when the adults were certain he was no thief.

In fact, he slowly became a handy young person to have around. He might have learned to read a little bit and to calculate numbers so he could count the silver spoons.

And one lucky day, he found a cat--or more likely, a cat found him.

One tradition says  that Dick polished a gentleman's shoes for a coin and bought the cat, but I rather think that some stray alley-cat wandering by the warm kitchen, smelled the good food and decided that he would befriend the boy.

However it happened, Dick "owned" a cat as the story goes--and the cat was Dick's only possession.

I would like to name this cat--Morganstern maybe or Felix or Cato, but in the old story, the cat is always and only called "Dick Whittington's Cat--so that is what we will have to call him.

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