The tale begins with three feline siblings - Tom Kitten and his sisters Moppet and Mittens - tumbling about the doorstep and playing in the dust. Their mother, Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit, expects "fine company" for tea so she fetches the children indoors to wash and dress them before her friends arrive. Tom is "very naughty" and scratches his mother while she grooms him. Tabitha dresses Moppet and Mittens in clean pinafores and tuckers, and Tom in "all sorts of elegant uncomfortable clothes" taken from a chest of drawers. Tom is fat and bursts several buttons, but his mother sews them back on again

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