Roof and Meadow by Dallas Lore Sharp — Read

No, "Mux" is not an elegant name -- not to to be compared with Ronald or Claudia, for instance; and I want to say it is not the name of one of my children, though its owner was once a member of my household. Mux was a tame half-grown coon, with just the ordinary number of rings around his tail, but with the most extraordinary amount of mischief in his little coon soul. Perhaps he had no real soul, and I should have located his mischief somewhere else. If so, then I should say in his feet. I never saw any other feet so expressive. The essence of the little beast seemed concentrated in his lore paws. If they made trouble, whose fault was it? They were designed for trouble. You could see this purpose in them as plainly as you could see the purpose in a swallow's wings. Whenever Mux ran across the yard these paws picked up trouble out of the turf, just as if the grass were trouble-filings, and Mux a kind of four-footed magnet. He never went far before they clogged and stopped him.

One day, the first day that Mux was given the liberty of the yard, who should he run foul of but Tom! The struggle had to come sometime, and it was just as well that it came thus early, while Tom and Mux were on an equal footing as to size, for Mux was young and growing.