Setting Variable to readlines() index

Question

I am simply opening a .txt and trying to set the first line to the variable x. My print function works just fine, but when I set it to a variable, all hell breaks loose. Am I missing something?

My .txt

cat
dog
horse
brid

Code

txt = open('C:/Users/z/OneDrive/Desktop/New_Text_Doc.txt', 'r')
print(txt.readlines(0)[0])
x = txt.readlines(0)[0]

Output

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "D:/KivyPractice/practice.py", line 4, in <module>
    x = txt.readlines(0)[0]
IndexError: list index out of range
cat

Answer 1

Try:

txt = open('path', 'rt')
lst = txt.readlines() 

print(lst[0])