why Cook has accused Bertie of stealing his cat, even though he was not on the scene and has never met Cook: "I think I can explain, sir."It seemed incredible. I felt like Doctor Watson hearing Sherlock Holmes talking about the one hundred and forty-seven varieties of tobacco ash and the time it takes parsley to settle in the butter dish."This is astounding, Jeeves," I said. "Professor Moriarty wouldn't have lasted a minute with you. You really mean the pieces of the jig-saw puzzle have come together and fallen into their place?""Yes, sir.""You know all?""Yes, sir.""Amazing!""Elementary, sir. I found the habitués of the Goose and Grasshopper a ready source of information." At one point in the novel, Bertie returns the kidnapped cat but then finds that the cat has ended up back at his place and does not know how this happened. Wodehouse scholar Elliott Milstein speculated that Jeeves is responsible, writing that "Jeeves wants Bertie to leave Maiden Eggesford and go to New York, which they eventually do. What better way to get the young master to shift-ho than to keep him festooned with hot cats? Besides, we never learn anything about this aunt of his. Is it not possible that she didn't really own the cat, but that Jeeves had her claim ownership in order to straighten everything out?" Milstein also commented that the fact that such speculation is possible, since Bertie learns little about Jeeves's machinations in the end unlike in the previous novels, shows that in this novel Wodehouse is making the reader work harder to learn all the facts. Background According to his notes, Wodehouse considered having "someone landing B with the racetrack cat" in Jeeves in the Offing (1960). Ultimately, the idea was not included in that novel, but became a major part of the plot of Aunts Aren't Gentlemen. Wodehouse's notes suggest that he initially wrote the novel's basic action and dialogue, then added humorous lines and quotations later. The Briscoe family and the town of Maiden Eggesford that feature in this novel had appeared previously in the Drones Club short story "Tried in the Furnace" (1935). Angelica Briscoe, who is the daughter of Colonel Briscoe and the niece of a parson in Aunts Aren't Gentlemen, was originally the parson's daughter in "Tried in the Furnace". Reception Susan Hill, The Times (17 October 1974): "The master is now spreading himself a bit thin—a