Helen Hunt Jackson

“ As soon as he saw me, he set the lamp down on the cellar bottom, and laughed so that he could hardly move. I thought this was the most cruel thing I ever heard of. If I had not been, as it were, at death's door, I should have laughed at him, too, for even with my eyes full of that dreadful stuff, I could see that he looked very funny in his red night cap, and without his teeth. He called out to Mary, and your mother, who stood at the head of the stairs, "Come down, come down; here's the cat 'in the soft-soap barrel!" ”

“ At last your dear mother said, "Poor pussy, it is too bad to laugh at you, when you are in such pain" (I had been thinking so for some time) . "Mary, bring the small washtub. The only thing we can do is to wash her."
When I heard this, I almost wished they had left me to drown in the soft soap; for if there is any thing of which I have a mortal dread, it is water. However, I was too weak to resist; and they plunged me in all over, into the tub full of icecold water, and Mary began to rub me with her great rough hands, which, I assure you, are very different from yours and your mother's. ”

“ By that time I was so cold and exhausted, that I could not move, and they began to think I should die. But your mother rolled me up in one of your old flannel petticoats, and made a nice bed for me behind the stove. By this time even Mary began to seem sorry for me, though she was very cross at first, and hurt me much more than she need to in washing me; now she said, "You're nothing but a poor beast of a cat, to be sure ”