The life and adventures of a cat — Themes and Context

er, and though he made several attempts upon her larder, he seldom availed himself of the expedition, being glad to get off with whole bones, he being a rival in these purloinings with the old taylor, his master, who was as narrowly watched as himself in these kind of invasions, and whom his wife had starved, cudgel’d, and cuckolded into the bargain. However, one day, Tom laid a plot, and being determined to assuage the cries of hunger, he resolutely attacked two pound of beef-stakes, which were contrary to former caution left to his mercy, as the mistress had indulged herself too plentifully with the ratifai of St. _Giles_’s, commonly called _Gin_. The maid had been absent by accident, at the time of this depredation, Tom prudently withdrew, when he had eat up his delicious cates, and left the blame to fall upon either the maid, or the old taylor, the former of which fasted that day for her negligence, and was discharged without payment of her wages, while old snip had like to have been destroyed by the weight of the goose, with which his tender rib did belabour him to his no small mortification, and of which he lay ill for three days to his wife’s utter discontent, as she was forced to hire a journeyman to finish some work he had begun.

_The Maid Servant takes out a warrant against Tom: He is arrested, and put into a Jail, where he is forced to pay garnish._

The maid servant being thus deprived of her wages by her rapacious mistress, and knowing that ridicule would be the best method to expose her, went to a bailiff, a relation of her own, and told him the case, adding, that she thought the nearest way to obtain an effectual remedy both for her wages and her private satisfaction, was to expose her mistress by some stroke of ridicule, which would be matter of laughter to all the neighbours, who hated her for her avarice and rapine, and that a comical revenge had struck into her head on a sudden, which she determined that very day, with his assistance to put into execution, he promised not only to give her the best assistance in his power, but also to be himself the instrument of her immediate revenge, whereupon she asked him if he would take upon him to arrest the Cat, who by eating the beef stakes, had been the occasion of her being deprived of her place, together with her wages; she owned that she had no particular pique of resentment against the Cat, who had been for many weeks a fellow sufferer with herself in the article of starving, and she protested that she would have done the same had she been a Cat, but as she was a Woman, and not used to eat raw beef, she therefore had never thought of stealing them; that it often happened, she used to steal a slice of bread and cheese for her poor old master, whom her barbarous mistress had also locked up the victuals from, and that she had run the risque to serve him, though his wife had privately marked the bread and cheese. Certainly said the bailiff, your cause is just, and you have sufficient reason to complain. There is no law why a Cat may or may not be taken for theft; horses are subject to be impounded, and so are cows, sheep and pigs liable to imprisonment for misdemeanors of this nature; therefore as no law exists why your fellow servant should not be arrested, I will take it upon my self to make out his _Mittimus_, and if his mistress thinks fit to remove him by _habeas Corpus_, she may, but it shall cost her something, besides the procuring you your wages; I don’t regard, says the girl, my wages so much as my private revenge to have her exposed to her neighbours. That, answered the bailiff, shall be done, for I will have a whole posse of constables with me, and we will beset the house, and take her favourite before the whole street. They parted, she to observe the execution of her comical revenge, and he to raise the posse.