Preface, Madame, there are moments when one seems to come to life. One looks about and distinguishes a creature whose footprint closely resembles the ace of spades. The thing says, bow, wow, it is a dog. One looks again. The ace of spades is now an ace of clubs. The thing says, p fh, and it is a cat. This is the history of the visible world, and in particular that of my god children, Toby Dog and Kiki the demure. They
are so natural. I use the word in the sense in which it is applicable to the savages of Oceania, that all their acts conspire to make of life a very simple proposition. These are animals in the fullest sense of the word animo. If I may employ the original orthography capable of exclaiming with those of faust, the fool knows it not, he knows not, the pot, he knows not the kettle. And as such, Madame, you have place them exactly where they should be. Their earthly paradise is
the apartment of Monsieur Villi. In your sannon, the probable palm and rubber plant give the impression of luxuriant edenic flora relatively speaking, and illustrate the transmogrification, which is to allow Monsieur Gaston de Champ, critic of a tant Pleucepassy, to announce to the wilderness, where he speaks familiarly of Chateaubriand, and to the College de France, how well he can admire and understand a true poet. For you are a true poet, and I will declare it freely, not concerning
myself more with the legend's. Parisians have the habit of weaving about every celebrity they admire Gauguin and Verleines, not so much for their originality as for their eccentricities. And so it happens that certain persons, unacquainted with the nameless sentiment, the order and purity, the thousand interior virtues which guide you, persist in saying that you wear your hair short and that Willy is bald. Must I, then, living at RTEs, tell tu Paris who you are, present you to all
who know you, I who have never seen you. I will say then that Madame Colette Willie never had short hair, that she does not wear a masculine attire, that her cat does not accompany her when she goes to a concert that her friend's dog does not drink from a tumbler. It is inexact to say that Madame Colette Willie works in a squirrel's cage, or performs upon trapees and flying rings, and can reach with her toe the nape of her neck.
Madame Colette Willie has never ceased to be the plain woman Barich Senance, who rises at dawn to give oats to the horse, maids to the chickens, cabbage to the rabbits, groundsel to the canneries, snails to the ducks, and bran water to the pigs. At eight o'clock summer and winter, she prepares the cafolet for her maid and herself. Scarcely a day passes that she does not meditate upon this
admirable book. A Lady's Country House by Madame Miller. Robine, orchard, kitchen, garden, stable, poultry yard, beehive, and hothouse have no further mysteries for Madame Colette Willie. They say she refused to divulge her secret for the destruction of mule crickets to a great statesman who preyed her on his knees. Madame Colette Willie is in no way different from the description I have
just given of her. I am aware that certain folk, having met her in society, insist upon making her very complex a little more, and they would have ascribed to her the tastes of the mustiest symbolists. And one knows how far from pleasing those muses Robes, how odious the
yellow band above the faces expressionless as eggs. Robes and Bardeux are to day relegated to drawers in the capital at Toulouse, from which they will never be taken more, except when occasion calls for the howling of official Alexandrine in honor of Monsieur Gaston de champ Jeoret or Ras
Saint Getorie. Madame Colette Willie rises today on the world of letters as the poetess at last, who, with the tip of her slipper, sends all the painted laureled cotton lyre carrying muses that from Monsielle Tourna have roused the aspirations of classes in rhetoric, rolling from the top to
the bottom of Parnassus. How charming she is, thus presenting her bulldog and her cat with as much assurance as Diana would her hound or a bercanti her tiger, see her apple cheeks, her eyes like bluemyer soota, her lips
poppy petals, and her ivy like grace. Tell me if this way of leaning against the green barrier of her garden close, or of lying under the murmurous arbor of Midsommer, is not worth the starched manner that old magistrate du Vigny, with his neckcloth wound three times around, and rigid in his trouser straps imposed upon his goddesses. Madame Colette WILLI is a live woman, a real woman who has dared to be natural, and who resembles a little village bride,
far more than a perverse woman of letters. Read her book, and you shall see how accurate are my assertions. It has pleased Madame Colette Willy to embody in a couple of delightful animals, the aroma of gardens, the freshness of the field, the heat of state roads, the passions of men. For through the girlish laughter ringing in the forest, I tell you I hear the sobbing of a well spring. One does not stoop to a poodle or tom cat without feeling the heart wrung with dumb anguish one is
sensible in comparing ourselves to them. Of all that separates and of all that unites us. A dog's eyes hold the sorrow of having, since the earliest days of creation, licked the whip of his incorrigible persecutor in vain. For nothing is mollified man, not the prey brought him by a famishing spaniel, nor the humble girelessness of shepherd dog guarding the peace of the shadowy flocks under the stars.
The tragic fear shines in the cat's eyes. What are you going to do to me, it seems to ask, lying on the rubbish heap, a prey to mange and hunger, and feverishly it waits the new torture that will shatter its nervous system. But have no fear. Madame Colette Willie is very kind. She quickly dispels the hereditary dread of Toby Dog and Kiki the demure. She meliorates the race, so that dogs and cats will learn in the end that it is less dull to frequent a poet than
an unhappy College de France candidate. Had this candidate proven more copiously still, but the author of memoir Dettle Tomes had Topsy turvily described the jawbone of the crocodile. Toby Dog and Kiki the Demure know well that their mistress is a lady who would do no harm, neither to a piece of sugar nor to a mouse. A lady who, for our delight jumps a rope she has woven of flower words which she never bruises, and with which she
perfumes us. A lady who sings with the voice of a clear French rivulet, that wistful tenderness which makes the hearts of animals beat so fast. Francis jam End of Prefacemtis Personi.
Toby Dog a French bulldog read by Troy Bard.
Kiki the Demure a Maltese cat read by Bob Gonzales.
He Master of Minor Importance read by Matthew Reyese.
She Mistress of Minor Importance read by Roseanne Schmidt.
The Little Dog read Byshadah.
The Narration read by Sandra Sentimentalities the Sunny Porch, Toby Dog and Kiki the Demure sprawl on the hot stone flags, taking their after luncheon nap. The silence of Sunday prevails yet Toby Dog is not asleep. The flies and a heavy luncheon torment him hind quarters flattened out frog fashion, he drags himself on his belly up to Kiki the Demure, whose body is perfectly quiet.
Are you asleep?
The demure purse feebly.
Are you even alive? You're so flat you look like the empty skin of a cat.
Kiki the Demure, in faltering tones.
Let me alone, not sick? Are you?
No? Let me alone? I'm asleep. I'm not even conscious of my body. What's torments to live with you? I've eaten, it's two o'clock. Let's sleep.
I can't. Something's made a ball in my stomach. It means to go down, I guess, but very slowly. And then these flies, these flies, the eyes start out of my head. At the sight of one of them, I'm all jaws bristling with terrible teeth. Just hear them snap. Yet the infernal things escape me. Oh my ears, Oh my poor sensitive brown belly. My fever knows there you see right on my nose. What shall I do? I squint all I can two of them? Now, No, only one, No two? I toss em up like bits of sugar,
and it's the empty air. I snap, I'm worn out. I detest the sun and the flies and everything.
Ooh, he wails Tiki the Demure, sitting up, his eyes pale from the light and sleepiness.
Well, you've succeeded in waking me. That's all you wanted, isn't it. My dreams are gone, these flies that you are pursuing, I hardly felt their little teasing feet through my thick fur. The nearest touch like a caress now and then thrilled along the silky sloping hairs, which clothed me. But then you never act with any discretion. Your vulgar gaiety is a nuisance, and when sad, you howl like a low comedian.
Toby Dog bitterly.
If you woke up, just tell me that.
Tiki the Demur correcting.
Of course you'll remember twas you woke me.
I was so uncomfortable. I wanted someone to help me, to give me a word of encouragement.
I don't know any digestive words. Fancy they're giving me a bad character. When just examine your conscience a bit and compare us. Hunger and heat wear you out and drive you mad. Cold makes your blood curdle.
Tuby dog vexed.
Mine is a sentenive nature, a demoniacal nature.
You mean no, I don't mean that you. You're a monstrous egoist.
Perhaps you and the two paws don't understand what you're pleased to call a cat's egoism, our instinct of self preservation, our dignity, our modest reserve, our attitude of weary renunciation, which comes of the hopelessness of ever being understood by them, They dub in haphazard fashion egoism. You are not a very discriminating dog, but at least you are free from prejudice. Will you understand me better? A cat is a guest in the house, not a plaything. Truly, these are strange
times we're living in the two paws. He and she have they alone the right to be sad or joyful, to lick plates, to scold, or to go about the house indulging their capricious humors. I too have my whims, my sorrows, my irregular appetite, my hours of reverie when I wish to be alone.
Toby Dog attentive and conscientious.
I'm listening, but I can hardly follow what you say. It's so complicated, A bit over my head, you know. But you astonish me. Are they in the habit of hindering you in your changeful moods? You mew and they open the door. You lie on the paper, the sacred paper he's scratching on. He moves away, marvelous condescension, and leaves you a soil page. You meander up and down a scratching table, obviously in question of mischief, your nose wrinkled up, your tail giving quick little jerks back and
forth like a pendulum. She watches you, laughing while he announces the promenade of devastation. How then can you accuse them?
Kiki the demure, insincere.
I don't accuse them, after all, psychological subtleties are not in your line.
Don't speak so fast. I need time to understand, it.
Seems to me, Kiki the Demure slyly pray.
Don't hurry. Your digestion might suffer in consequence.
Toby Dog, unconscious of the irony.
You're right, I've some trouble in expressing myself to day. Well, here goes. It seems to me that of the two of us, it's you they make the most of and yet you do all the grumbling.
A dog's logic that the more one gives, the more I demand.
That's wrong, it's indiscreet.
Not at all. I have a right to everything, to everything, and I I don't imagine you lack anything, do you?
I don't know. Sometimes in my very happiest moments, I feel like crying. My eyes grow dim, my heart seems to choke me. I would like to be sure, in times of such anguish, that everybody loves me, that there is nowhere in the world a sad dog behind a closed door, that no evil will ever come.
Kiki is a demure jeering And then what dreadful thing happens?
You know very well inevitably at the moment she appears, carrying a bottle with horrible yellow stuff floating in it, castor oil. Wilful and unfeeling, she holds me between her strong knees, opens.
My jaws close them tighter, but I'm.
Afraid of hurting her, and my tongue horrified taste the slimy, mawkish stuff, I choke and spit. My poor face is convulsed. In the end of this torture is long and coming. You've seen me afterwards, dragging myself around melon Collie, my head hanging, listening to the unwholesome glue, glue the oil makes in my stomach.
Once, when I was little, she tried to give me castor oil. I scratched and bit her, so she never tried again.
Ha.
She must have thought she held the devil between her knees. I squirmed, blue fire through my nostrils, multiplied my twenty claws by a hundred, my teeth by one thousand, and finally disappeared, as if by magic.
I wouldn't dare do that. You see, I love her. I love her enough to forgive her even the torture of the bath.
Kiki, the demure interested.
You do, tell me how it feels. It makes me shiver all over just to see her putting you in the water.
Alas, listen then and pity me. Sometimes, when she's come out of her tub with nothing on but her skin, her soft, hairless skin, that I look respectfully, she spills out more warm water, throws in a brown brick which smells them tar, and calls Toby. That's enough. The soul quits my body. My legs shake under me. Something shines on the water the pitcher of a window, all twisted out of shape, It dances about and blinds me. She seizes me, poor swooning thing that I am, and plunges
me in e Gods. From that time on, I'm lost. My one hope isn't her. My eyes fasten themselves on to hers, while a close warmth sticks to me like another skin on top of mine. The brick's all foamy. Now I smell tar, my eyes and nostrils smart. There are storms in my ears. She grows excited, breathes loud and fast, laughs, and scrubs me lightheartedly. At last she rescues me, fishing me out by the nape of my neck.
I paw the air, begging for life. Then comes the rough towel and the warm coverlet, where, exhausted, I relish my convalescence.
Kiki the demure, deeply.
Impressed, Calm yourself, jove the telling it alone.
But you old sly boots, didn't I see her one day, armed with a sponge, standing over you, holding you down on the toilet table.
Do you give it a mule? Quite embarrassed, lashing his.
Tail an old story, the long fluffy hairs on my legs, which gave them the outline of a zwoves had somehow gotten dirty. She insisted upon washing me. I persuaded her that I suffered atrociously under the sponge.
What a fivery you are? Did she believe you?
Um? At first it was my own fault, though when she didn't turned over on my back, I proffered the candid belly, the terrified and forgiving eyes of a lamb about to be sacrificed. I felt a slight coolness, nothing more. A fear that my sensibilities might be destroyed took possession of me. My rhythmical wailings increased, then subsided, then went up again, like the noise of the sea. You know the strength of my voice. I imitated the calf, the whipped child, the cat in the night, the wind under
the door. Little by little I grew enraptured with my own song, so that long after she finished soiling me with the cold water, I continued wailing, my eyes fixed on the ceiling. Then she laughed tactlessly and cried out, you're as untruthful as.
A woman toby dog, with conviction.
That was annoying.
I was angry with her the entire afternoon.
Oh as to sulking, you do your share. I never can I forget injuries.
Kiki the Demure, dryly.
You lick the hand that chastens you. Oh, it's well.
Known, Toby dog gullible.
I looked the hand that Yes, that's it, exactly, an awfully pretty expression.
Not mine. Dignity doesn't trouble you any my word. I'm often ashamed for you. You love everybody, You take all sorts of rebuffs without even raising your back. You're as pleasant and as banal as a public garden.
Don't you believe it? You ill bred cat. You think you know everything, and you don't understand simple politeness. Frankly, now, would you have me snarl at his or her friend's heels? Well dress people who know my name? Lots of people I don't know know my name, and good naturally pull my ears.
I hate new faces.
I don't love them either, whatever you say, I love her.
And him and I him and her.
Oh I guess your preference long ago. There's a sort of secret understanding between you two.
Jikit the Demure, smiling mysteriously and abandoning himself to his referee.
An understanding, yes, secret and profound. He rarely speaks, but makes a noise like a mouse scratching his paper. It's for him. I've treasured up my little heart, my precious cat's heart, and he, without words, has given me his. This exchange makes me happy and reserved. Now and then, with the pretty wayward ruling instinct which makes us cat's rivals of women, I try my power over him. When we are alone, I point my ears forward devilishly as a sign that I am about to spring upon his
scratching paper. The tap tap tap of my paws, straight through pens and letters and everything scattered about, is addressed to him, as well as the insistent meowling. When I beg for liberty him to the door knob, he laughingly calls it or the plaint of the sequestered cat. The tender contemplation of my inspiring eyes is for him alone.
They weigh on his bent head until the look I'm calling searches and meets mine in a shock of souls so foreseen and so sweet that I must needs close my lids to hide the exquisite shyness I feel as for her. She flutters about too much, often jostles me, holds my paws together, and rocks me in the air, pets me in excited fashion, laughs aloud at me, imitates my voice too well.
Toby Dog moved with indignation.
You're very hard to please. I certainly love him. He's good and pretends not to see my faults so that he won't have to scold. But she's the most beautiful thing in the world to me, the dearest and the most difficult to understand. The sound of her step enchants me. Her changeful eyes dispense happiness and trouble. She's like destiny itself. She never hesitates, even torture from her hands. You know how she teases me cruelly, No, not cruelly, but artfully.
I never can tell what's coming next. This morning, she bent down as if to speak to me, lifted one of my tiny elephant's ears, as she calls them, and sent a sharp cry into it, which went to the very back of my brain horrors. Was it right or wrong? I can't decide Even now. It started waves of nervis running madly through me. Then she has a fancy for making me do tricks. Almost every day. I must do the fish, Toby Dear. She lifts me in her arms
and squeezes me until I gasp. My poor dumb mouth opens as the carpst does when they're drowning it in air.
That's just like her.
Suddenly I find myself free and still alive, miraculously saved by the power of her will. How beautiful life seems to me. Then, how fondly I locked the hend hanging at her side, the hem of her.
Dress kikika demure contemptuously, a pretty thing to do.
All good and evil come to me from her. She is my worst torment and my one sure refuge. When I run to her, my heart's sick with fear. How soft her arms are, and how sweet her hair falling in my face. I'm her black baby, her toby dog, her little bit of love. She sits on the ground to reassure me, making herself little like me, lies down altogether, and I go wild with delight at the sight of her face and her mind, her own back, and her fragrant hair. My feelings overflow. I can't resist such a
chance for a jolly good game. I rummage and fumble about, excitedly, poking my nose everywhere till I find the crispy tip of a pink ear her ear. I nibble it just enough to tickle her to make her cry out. Stop, Toby, that's awful. Help help this dog's devouring me.
Hm, simple, homely, wholesome joys. And then off you go to make friends with the cook, and you with the cat.
At the farm.
TI keep the demule coldly enough.
I pray that concerns no one but myself and the little cat.
A pretty conquest. It should make you blush. A seven months old kitten.
TI keep the demule roused for me.
She has all the charm of forbidden fruit, and no one dares steal her from me. She is slim as a bean.
Pole Toby dog aside.
You'll rascal, and long poised on long legs. She walks with the uncertain step common to all young things. She hunts field mice, shrew mice, even partridge, and this hard work in the fields has toughened her young muscles and given a rather gloomy expression to her kitten face. She's ugly, no, not ugly, but odd looking. Her muzzle, with its very
pink nostrils, strongly resembles that of a goat. Her large ears remind one of a peasant's koif her eyes, the color of old gold, are set slantwise, and their naturally keen expression is varied by an occasional piquant squint. With what a will? Does she fly me? Confounding modesty, with fear. I pass slowly by. One would think me quite uninterested. Draped in my splendid coat, she's struck by its stripes.
Oh she'll come back, a little love sick kitten, and putting aside all constraint, she'll throw herself at my feet like a supple white scarf.
I've no objection. You know, I'm comparatively indifferent to all the concerns love here. My time so completely filled physical exercise, my cares of watchdog. I hardly give a thought to the bagatelle.
Kiki, the demuur.
Aside bagatelle, he indulges in the persiflage of a traveling salesman.
I love her and him devotedly, with a love that lifts me up to them. It suffices to occupy my time and heart. The hour of ar siesta is passing, My scornful friend, do you know I like you in spite of your scorn, and you like me too. Don't turn your head away, you peculiar modesty would hide what you call frailty and what I call love. Do you think me blind? How often on coming back to the house with her, have I seen your little triangular face at the window light up and smile at my approach?
The time to open the door, and you'd already put on your cat's mask, your pretty Japanese mask with its narrow eyes, isn't it so?
Kiki? The demure resolved not to hear.
The hour of the siesta is passing. The cone shaped shadows of the pear trees grow long on the gravel path. We've talked away our sleepiness. You've forgotten the flies, your uneasy stomach, and the heat which dances and waves on the meadows. The beautiful sultry day is dying already. There's a breeze bringing perfume from the pines. Their trunks are melting into bright tears.
Here she is. She's left her worker chair, stretched her lovely arms, and judging from the movement of her dress, I think we're going to take a walk. See her behind the rose bushes now with her nails, she breaks a leaf from the lemon tree. She's crumpling it up and smelling it ah. With my eyes closed, I can divine her presence.
Yes, I see her. She is quiet and gentle for the time being. He'll leave his paper now to follow her. He'll come out, calling where are you? And sit on the bench tired out for him. I shall rise politely and go do my nails along the leg of his trousers. Silent, happy companions, we'll listen for the day's departing footsteps. The perfume of the lindens will become sickeningly sweet at the same hour that my seer's eyes grow big and black
and read mysterious signs in the air. Later on, a calm fire will be lit down there behind the pointed mountain, a circle of glistening rose color in the gray blue of the night, a sort of luminous cocoon from which will burst the dazzling edge of the moon. She will sail along, cleaving the clouds. Then it will be time to go to rest. He'll carry me in on his shoulder, and I'll sleep close to his feet, which are ever
mindful of my repose. Dawn will find me shivering but rejuvening, sitting face to the sun in a silvery halo of incense offered me by the dew. Thus I am a perfect picture of the God I was in the old old days.
On the train, Kiki the demure Toby dog. She and he have taken their places in a first class compartment. The train rolls along towards distant mountains and the freedom of summertime. Toby, on a leash, lifts an inquiring nose to the window. He has strewn the carriage with newspapers. Kiki, the demure, silent and invisible in a closed basket, is
under his immediate protection. She, leaning against the dusty cushions, is dreaming of the mountain she loves best, and of the low house on it, weighed down with Jasmin and Virginia creeper.
How fast this carriage goes? It can't be our regular coachman. I haven't seen the horses, but they smell very bad and make black sis smoke. Oh, silent dreamer, look at me and tell me, shall we arrive soon?
No response. Toby is fidgety and blows through his nostrils.
Hush, Toby, Hush.
I've hardly said a word. Shall we arrive soon?
He turns towards his master, who is reading and puts a discreet paw on the edge of his knee. Sh Toby dog resigned hard luck.
No one wants to talk to me. I'm bored, and what's more, I don't know this carriage well enough. I'm tired out. They woke me very early this morning. I amused myself by running all over the house. They had hidden the chairs under sheets, wrapped up the lamps, rolled up the rugs. Things were white and changed and awful. There was a horrid smell of camphor everywhere. My eyes filled with water. I sneezed under the chairs and slid on the bare floor in my haste to follow the
maid's white aprons. They bustled about among trunks with such unwonted zeal that I would sure something exceptional was going to happen. At the last minute, just as she came in, calling Toby's collar in the cat's basket. Quick put the cat in his basket, just as she was saying that my chum disappeared. It was indescribable. He terrible to see, swore by all the gods and struck the floor with his cane, furious because they had allowed his kiki to
get away. She called Kiki, at first supplicatingly, then in threatening tones, and the maids brought empty plates meant to deceive, and yellow paper from the butcher's. I really thought my chum had left this world, when suddenly there he was, perched on top of the bookcase, looking down on us, with an expression of contempt in his green eyes. She put up her arms, Kiki, will you come down immediately.
You're going to make us lose the train. But he didn't come down, and it made me dizzy, though I was on the ground, to see him way up there, walking and turning about and muling shrilly to tell us how impossible he found it to obey. He was about frantic and kept saying, heavens, he's going to fall. But she smiled, skeptically, went out of the room and came back armed with the whip. The whip said crack twice.
Only then a miracle happened, I think, because the cat leaped to the floor softer and more bounty than our plaything, the ball of wool I would have broken to piece if falling like that. He has been in this basket ever since.
Toby goes to the basket.
Ah, here's a little peak hole. I see his whiskers. They're like white needles. Who what eyes?
He jumps back.
I'm rather afraid one can't really shut a cat up. He always manages to get out. Somehow he must suffer, poor fellow. Perhaps if I speak kindly.
To him, he calls, very politely, got Tiki the demure, spitting furiously, Toby Dog jumping back.
Oh you said a bad word. You look awful. Have you pain anywhere?
Go away? I'm a martyr. Go away, I tell you, or I'll blow fire at you.
Toby Dog? Ingenuous?
But why why? Because you're free, because I'm in this basket, because the basket's in a foul carriage, which is shaking me to pieces, And because the serenity of those two exasperates me.
Would you like me to look out and tell you what one sees from the carriage window?
Everything is equally odious to me.
Toby Dog, having looked out, comes back.
I haven't seen anything, thanks, just the same. I mean, I haven't seen anything that's easy to describe. Some green things which pass right close to us, so close and so fast that they give one a slap in the eye. A flat field turning round and round, and over there, a little pointed steeple. It's running as fast as the carriage. Another field, all red with blossoming clover, has just giving me another slap in the eye, a red slap. The
earth is sinking in or else we're going up. Sure wedg, I see way off far away, some green lawns, daughter with white daisies. Perhaps they're cows.
Kiki the Demure with sarcasm or wafers for sealing letters or anything you.
Like, aren't you the least little bit amused?
Kiki the Demure with a sinister laugh.
Hah, ask of the damned, of whom.
Kiki the Demure, more and more melodramatic, but without conviction of.
The damned in his vat of boiling oil. If anything amuses him, mine is not physical torment. I suffer imprisonment, humiliation, darkness, neglect.
The train stops. A conductor on the platform cries all aboard, All aboard. Toby Dog bewildered.
Someone's crying out, there's an accident. Let's run.
He throws himself against the carriage door and scratches at it. She half asleep, Toby Dear, You're a nuisance. Toby Dog distracted oh, you inexplicable person.
How can you sit there quietly? Don't you hear those cries? They're stopping now the accident has gone away.
Wish i'd know the train starts again, he throwing down his paper.
The poor beast is hungry.
She now very wide awake.
You think so well, I am too, But Toby is to eat very little.
He anxiously.
And Kiki the Demure she peremptorily.
Kiki socks, and he hid this morning, so they'll have even less than Toby.
He isn't making a sound. Aren't you afraid he's sick.
No, he's simply vexed.
Kiki the Demure as soon as there's a question of himself, me ow, he tenderly and eagerly.
Come, my beautiful Kiki, my imprisoned one. Come, you shall have cold roast beef and some breast of chicken.
He opens the prison basket, and Kiki puts forth, his head flattened on top like that of a serpent, then his long striped body cautiously and so very slowly that one begins to think it's coming out by the yard. Toby dog pleasantly.
Ah, there you are, cat well, now proclaim.
Your freedom, Kiki, without replying, smoothed his ruffled fur.
Proclaim your freedom. I tell you. It's the custom. Whenever a door is open, one must run, jump, twist one's self into half circles, and cry.
Out one who's one? Pray we dogs?
Kiki the Demure, seated and very dignified.
Would you have me bark too? We have never followed the same rules of conduct that I know of.
Toby Dog vexed, Oh.
Very well, I don't insist.
How do you like this courage, Kiki the Demure, smiffing fastidiously.
It's frightful. However, the cushions are rather good for one's nails.
He suits the action to the word Toby Dog aside.
Now if I did.
That, Kiki the Demure, continuing to scratch the upholstery.
Han, may this spongy gray cloth soothe my rage? Since morning, the whole universe has been in a state of monstrous revolt. He whom I love and who venerates me, made not the least effort to defend me. I've submitted to humiliating contacts, been jolted to death. Piercing whistles have shot through my head from ear to ear. Ho ho, how good it is to relax the nerves, and to imagine that with gleeful claws one tears the enemy's flesh and bloody shreds. Ho Ho, scretch and lift the paws on high, lift
them high as possible. It's a supremely insolent gesture.
I say, Kiki, when are you going to stop that?
He indulgent and admiring.
Let him alone. He's doing his nails.
He has spoken for me. I forgive him, But since it's allowed, I don't care any more about tearing the cushions. When will I get out of this? Not that I'm afraid. They are both there, and the dog too, with their everyday faces. I've twinges in my stomach.
He yawns. The train stops. A conductor on the platform cries all aboard, All aboard. Toby Dog excited.
Screaming again, another accident, Let's run, heavens, what a tiresome dog.
What does it matter to him if there is an accident? I don't believe in it. Moreover, it's the cry of a man, and men cry out for the pleasure of hearing their own voices.
Toby Dog calm again.
I'm hungry, can't we hope to eat soon, my mistress, I don't know what time. It isn't a strange country, but it seems to me.
Come now, we'll all have our luncheon.
She takes the things out of the basket, crumbles up some tissue paper, and breaks a crisp brown row. Toby dog chewing.
What she gave me then must have been very good. Indeed, seemed such a tiny bit it melted in my mouth. There's not even the memory of it left.
Kiki the demure, chewing breast of chicken.
Goodness me, I was purring without knowing it. That won't do. They'll think me resigned to this journey. I must eat, slowly, grim and undeceived, eat for the sole purpose of keeping myself alive.
She to the dog and cat, allow me to have my luncheon now, if you please. I too, like cold chicken and hearts of lettuce tipped in salt.
He anxiously.
What shall we do to make this cat go into his basket again?
I don't know. We'll see presently.
Finished already I could swallow three times that much. I say, cat, you're eating rather well for a martyr.
Kiki the Demure, fibbing.
Trouble digs a hole in one's interior. Move away, please, I want to sleep now. If I can, perhaps a merciful dream will take me back to the house I've left, to the flowered cushion. He gave me home, sweet home, rugs of bright colors for the delight of my eyes, a palm with nice shoots for me to eat, deep arm chairs under which I hide my woolen ball as a future surprise for myself. Ah in the cork hanging by a string to the door latch. The tables covered
with bibelots. I thread my way in and out among them, and occasionally it amuses me to break some brittle thing. The dining room, who is a temple? The vestibule full of mystery. There unseen, I can watch those who come and go. Oh narrow back stairway, where the step of the milkman rings out for me like a morning angelus, farewell, farewell. My destiny carries me on, and who knows if ever, but this is too sad. All the pretty things I've been saying have really begun to make me feel badly.
He begins a minute and mournful toilet. The train stops, a conductor on the platform, cries, all the board on the.
Board there it is again an accent, Oh bother, I've had enough of that.
He anxiously.
We're going to change trains in ten minutes. How about the cat? He'll never allow us to shut him up.
We'll see. Suppose we put some meat in his basket.
Or perhaps petting wood.
They approached the redoubtable Kiki and both speak together.
Kiki, my beautiful Kiki, Come jump on my knee or on my shoulder. You like that? As a rule, you'll doze there and then I'll put you gently into the basket. After all, it's open work and has a comfortable cushion to protect you from the rough wicker. Come, my dear.
Listen, Kiki. You must learn to act properly and to take life as it is. You can't stay there like that. We're going to change trains, and a horrible guard will appear and say insulting things of you in your race. Besides, you'd better obey, because if you don't, I I'll give you a good whippon.
But before she can lift her hand against his sacred fur, Kiki gets up, stretches himself, arches his back, yawns, to show the rosy lining of his mouth, and then walks to the open basket, where he lies down with an admirable air of quiet insolence. He and she exchange eloquent glances. Dinner is late a parlor in the country, at the close of a long summer's day. Kiki the Demure and Toby Dog does ears twitching and eyelids obstinately shut. Now Kiki's lids part in a narrow slit and disclosed eyes
the color of purple grapes. He yawns with the ferocious expression of a small dragon. Kiki the Demure.
Haughtily, you're snoring.
Toby Dog, who is not really asleep.
I'm not.
It's you impossible. I don't snore.
I pur same thing, Kiki the Demure, not condescending to a discussion.
Thank Heaven, it isn't a silence. I'm hungry. One doesn't hear the noise of plates in the next room. Isn't it dinner time?
Toby Dog gets up, slowly, stretches his forepaws, and yawns, darting forth a heraldic tongue with curly end.
Oh, I don't know, I'm hungry.
Where is she? How is it. You're not at her heels.
Toby Dog, embarrassed, nibbling his nails.
She's in the garden, I believe, picking up plums.
Those yellow balls that rain about one's ears. I know them. You've seen her, then, I bet she scolded you. What have you been doing now.
Toby Dog self conscious, turning away his wrinkled toad like face.
She told me to return to the house because because I too was eating plums.
She did, Well, you have depraved tastes, the tastes of men.
Toby Dog, offended.
Say, no one ever sees me eating bad fish, and never never will. I understand how you can go into such fits over a dead.
Frog or that herb Valerian.
That's it. I guess an herb is medicine, isn't it medicine?
Indeed Valerian? But no, you can't understand. I've seen her laugh and go on as I do over the Valerian after having emptied a glass of fetid wine that jumped dangerously too. As for the dead frog, so dead that it seems a bit of dry Russia leather in the form of a frog, it's a sachet impregnated with rare musk, with which I wish to scent my fur.
Oh, you talk very well, but she always scolds and says that you smell bad after it, And he says the same thing.
They're nothing but two paws, both of them. You poor thing, belittle yourself by seeking to imitate them. You stand on your hind legs, wear a coat when it rains, eat plums for shame. And those big green balls the malicious trees let fall sometimes when I'm past underneath apples. Very likely she picks one up and throws it down the path, crying Apple, Toby Apple, and you rush after in unseemly fashioned, gasping for breath, looking like a fool, your tongue and your eyes sticking out.
Toby dogs scowling, his head resting on his paws.
One takes one's pleasures where one finds them.
Kiki, the demure yawning shows his pointed teeth and his palette of pink velvet.
I'm hungry, dinner is surely late tonight. Suppose you look for her.
I daren't she forbade it. She's down there in the hollow with a big basket. The dew is falling and wetting her feet, and the sun's going away. But you know how she is. She sits on the damp ground, looking ahead of her as if she were asleep, or lies flat on her stomach, whistling and watching an ant in the grass. She tears up a handful of wild thyme and smells it. Calls the tom tits and the jays,
who never come to her by any chance. She takes a heavy watering pot, and oh, it gives me the shivers, pours thousands of icy silvery threads over the roses or into the hollows of those little stone troughs way back in the woods. I always look in to see the head of a brindle bull who comes to meet me and to drink up the pictures of the leaves. But she pulls me back by the collar with Toby, Toby, that water is for the birds. Then she takes out her knife and opens nuts fifty a hundred nuts and
forgets the time. There's no end to the things she does.
Kiki, the demure, slyly.
And what do you do all that time?
I well, I just wait for her.
I admire you once in a while.
Squatting down, she eagerly scratches the earth toils and sweats over it. Then I jump round her, delighted to see her at something so useful and so familiar. But her feeble scent deceieves her. I never smell mole or shrew mouse, of the rosy paws and the whole she digs, and how explain her utter lack of purpose? Presently falling back on her haunches, she brandishes a hairy rooted herb and cries,
I have it the jade. I lie in the damp grass and tremble or dig my nose, she calls it, my snout into the earth to get the complicated odors of it. When there are three or four cents, all blended, all mixed together. Can you distinguish that of the mole from that of the hair which passed quickly or the bird which rested there?
Certainly I can. My nose is highly educated. It's smaller, regular, wide between my eyes, delicate at the shammy skin end of my nostrils. The lightest touch of a blade of grass, the shadow of smoke tickles and makes it sneeze. It doesn't bother about distinguishing the scent of moles from that of hares, did you say? But it delights in the trace left by a cat in a hedge. I've a charming nose, she calls it, his pretty little nose of
cotton velvet. Since my eye opened on this world, I've not known the day that someone has not uttered a truthful flattery on the subject of my nose. Now yours is a rough, grained truffle. What makes you move it so ridiculously at this very moment.
I'm hungry and I don't hear the plates.
Your truffle of a nose works up and down and makes another wrinkle in your irregular mug.
She always says. His square muzzle has wrinkled truffle so tenderly and so lovingly.
And you think of nothing but eating.
It's your empty stomach that scolds and complaints, wants to quarrel with me.
I've a charming stomach.
But no at your nose that's charming. You just said so.
My stomach too. There's none more fastidious, more whimsical, stronger, and at the same time more delicate. It digests the bones of soul, but meat that's the least bit tainted.
Literally turns it literally is the you have active indigestion.
Yes, the whole house is affected by it from the very first qualms. I'm in terrible distress. The earth gives way under me. My eyes dilate, I hurriedly swallow quantities of salty saliva, involuntary ventry. Loquial cries escape me, My sides bulge out.
Toby Dog disgusted.
I say, if it's all the same to you, tell me the rest.
After dinner, I'm hungry. Where can he be?
He's there in a study, scratching paper.
He's always doing that. It's a game. Two paws play at the same thing for hours and hours. I've often tried to scratch paper gently as he does, but the pleasure doesn't last long. I prefer newspapers torn into shreds that rustle and fly. There is a little part of dark, violet, muddy water on his table. I never sniff it without horror since the day a rather foolish curiosity made me dip my paw into it. This very paw, so strong and aristocratic, the tufts of useless hair you see between
my toes proclaimed the purity of my race. This very paw bore a bluish stain for eight days, and the degrading odor of rusty steel clung to it a long time after.
What's the little pot for?
He drinks from it doubtless silence.
She's not back yet, Heaven grant she isn't lost as I was. One day in the streets of Paris. I'm hungry, I'm hungry. Where are we going to eat? This evening?
I saw a chicken. It made a silly noise and dropped red blood on the kitchen floor, soiling it far more than I ever did, or you either. Yet no one whipped it, but Emily put it in the fire to teach it a lesson. I licked up some of the blood.
Toby Dog yawns.
Chicken, it makes my mouth water. She'll say, hear Toby bones and throw me the carcasse.
How badly you speak? He says, Little chicken bones, Kiki, little chicken bones.
Toby Dog's surprised.
But no, really, it's hear Toby bones that she says.
He speaks better than she does.
Toby Dog incompetent.
Ah, tell me, do birds taste anything like chicken?
Kikith the demure His eyes light up suddenly.
No, they're far better. They're alive, Ah, the quivering bird, the warm feathers the delicious little brain. You feel it all crackling between your teeth.
Oh, you make me sick. It always worries me to see tiny animals like that flutter about.
And birds are dear, good little things, Kiki the demure dryly.
Don't you believe it? They're only good to eat. They're noisy, stupid creatures infatuated with themselves, made to be eaten. You know the two jays not very well. They live in the little wood. When I walk by, they laugh a sardonic tiac tiak. Because I wear a bell at my neck in vain do. I hold my head very stiffly and put my paws down very gently. My bell tinkles, and the two creatures scream from the top of the fir tree. Just let me get hold of them one of these days.
He lays back his ears and raises the hair along his back. Toby Dog pensive positively.
Cat. There are times when I don't know you. We are talking quietly and suddenly you brizzle like a bottle brush, or we haven'ty playing amicably together, and I bark behind your back, o, just for fun. Then one doesn't know why, Perhaps because my nose grays the long hairs in your legs. You're so proud of you become all at once a savage beast, spitting fire and charging at me like a strange dog. Don't you think that shows a bad character.
Kiki de demure, mysterious eyes half closed.
Not at all its character, simply a cat's character. In such moments of irritability, I'm keenly alive to the humiliation of my present state and that of my race. I can remember a time when priests in long linen tunics, bending low, spoke to us and humbly tried to comprehend our chanted utterance. No dog, that it is not we who have changed. It may be there are days when
I'm more myself, when everything offends me, and justly. A brusque gesture, a vulgar laugh, the banging of a door, your odor, your inconceivable impudence, when you touch me or encircle me, jumping and yelping.
Toby Dog patiently to himself he's having one of his attacks, Kiki the Demure, with a start, did you hear?
Yes? The kitchen door and the door into the dining room, and now the drawer with the spoons are kept at last, at.
Last, ha ha, he yawns.
I stare there's any longer? Where is she? I don't hear the gravel creaking? Night's coming on.
Kiki the Demure ironically.
Go find her, and how about him?
He usually worries and comes in, asking where is she? But he's scratching still. He must have drunk up all the violet colored water in the muddy little pot.
By this time, Toby carefully stretches his legs.
Ah, I feel lively and empty. We're going to eat soon. Just smell the good kitchen smells that come under the door. Let's play. No run, I'll chase without touching you.
No, why not? I don't want to.
Oh but you're tiresome. Watch me jump and arch my neck like a little horse and try to catch my stubby tail. Now I turn round and round, and Heaven's a whole room spins. It's stopping now.
Insufferable creature, insufferable yourself.
Look out, I'm gonna run at you as she does when she's merry crying. Ha cat.
Kiki the Demure rising puts up a paw, bristling with claws and spotted with rose color and black underneath. It looks like a thorny flower. If you dare, Toby dog in a frenzy.
I do dare. We're a robberl Ha cat ha cat Kiki.
The demure, exasperated, gives a spring and hangs on the tablecloths, dragging it down a lamp and various things fall to the ground. Terrified silence. The two animals, crouching under an arm chair, await punishment. He appears at the study door, holding a pen like a bit between his teeth.
Thunder and blitzen.
What is it now?
This cursed managerie has overturned everything? Where's your mistress? What a place this is? To be sure?
Dinner never on time.
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The two guilty ones, who well know the harmlessness of such outbursts, laugh quietly to themselves, and lying flatter's bedroom slippers, look at one another through the fringes of the chair. The garden gate opens. She comes in carrying a basket full of fragrant plums. Her hands are sticky from their sugarness, her hair tumbled. She stands horrified before the disaster.
Oh they've been fighting again, have they?
Without conviction?
Dear me, what nasty creature. I'll give them away, I'll sell them, I'll kill them.
But the cat and dog, groveling in exaggerated humidity, crawl up to her and speak together.
Ah, there you are. It's very late. Toby attacked me. It's he who's broken everything. I believe he went mad from hunger. You smell good of grass and the twilight. You sat down on some wild thyme. Come tell your master to carry me on his shoulder. The meat will be overdone. I'm afraid you'll carve the chicken very quickly, won't you, And you'll keep the browned skin for me
if you wish. I'll stretch out my paw like a spoon which knows how to take up the littlest morsels, and carry them to my mouth with that human gesture that makes you laugh. So you and he come, hi.
Haye, there you are at last. I'm so unhappy when you're away. You banished me, You didn't love me. The lamb fell down all by itself.
Calm.
I'm awfully hungry, but I'll gladly go without dinner if you'll promise to take me with you always wherever you go. Yes, even out in the twilight, though it makes me sad. I will only follow you there, my nose close close to the hem of your dress.
She disarmed and quite indifferent to the ctaclysm.
Do look how pretty they are?
She is ill a bedroom in the country house. Autumnal sunshine filled his inn through closed blinds. She lies on a couch, apparently asleep, dressed in a white woolen gown. Kiki the Demuur makes his toilet on a narrow console table. Toby Dog, on the carpet, in a sphinxlike attitude, watches her, and at the same time is attentive to the words of his master, who is leaving the room on tiptoe. He, in a very low voice to the two animals.
Sh, don't wake her, be good, I'm going downstairs to write.
He closes the door noiselessly after himself. Toby Dog, Takiki the Demuur.
What did he say?
I don't know, something vague directions like stay there, good bye.
He said, sh, I'm not making any.
Noise, Kiki the Demure.
Ironically, they're astonishing. They say no noise, and thereupon walk off with a step. A deaf rat could hear two miles away some truth.
In that he looks at the sleeping figure on the couch.
Her face still looks very small. She's asleep. If you jump down from that table, don't land with a big thump.
Kiki, the demure stiffly.
Ah, you are teaching me to jump now, are you, oh worthy? Counselor put a b in your barn and he'll make himself your heir. What's that nothing? An oriental proverb. If I wished dog to disturb the silence of this room, I'd be clever enough to choose a rickety chair. Its feet would pound out a regular tick talk, tick talk, tick talk, in time with my tongue as I washed myself.
It's a means I've invented to gain my liberty. Tick talk, tick talk, says the chair she happens to be reading or writing, is easily irritated and cries be quiet, Kiki, But I go on, unconscious of any wrongdoing. Tick talk, tick talk. She jumps up, distracted and opens the door wide for me slowly, like one exiled. I cross its threshold, and, once outside laugh to find myself so superior to them all.
Toby Dog, who hasn't been listening, yawns.
What a sad week? Eh, I don't know what it is to take a walk anymore. I haven't taken any pleasure in eating either, said she fall from her horse.
Heavens, one can love people and care for one's stomach too.
Toby Dog, with ardor not.
I when she screamed and fell from her horse, I felt the heart crack inside me.
That affair couldn't have ended Otherwise, one doesn't go climbing up on a horse. People don't do such things. I see nothing but extravagance around me, to begin with. The horse is a fearful monstrosity.
Toby Dog indignantly.
Did one ever hear the like?
Do you keep the demure peremptorily?
I happen to have had the opportunity of making a very close study of.
One Toby Dog. Aside, he makes me laugh.
It was the farmer's horse that grazed in the meadow. My life for a whole month was embittered by the roving mountain lying under the hedge. I could see his heavy feet disfiguring the ground. I breathed his vulgar odor, and heard his strident cry shaking the air. Once when he was eating the lower twigs of the hedge. I saw myself, the whole of me, reflected in one of his eyes. I fled, and from that day my hatred was so strong that I wildly hoped to annihilate the monster.
I'll go up to him, thought I. I'll plant myself firmly in front of him, and the desire of his death will be so strong in my eyes that perhaps he'll die when he meets my look.
Topy Dog diverted, and then Kii the Demure, continuing.
I carried out my plan. But the horse I had waited for, in fear and trembling, just blew through his nostrils a long jet of foul smelling vapor, and I fell back in atrocious convulsions.
Toby Dog, inwardly writhing with laughter. You don't exaggerate, Kiki the Demure, serious.
Never, and she must needs go climbing on a horse's back, holding fast to four cords, one leg this side and the other that strange aberration.
We don't think alike. Cat for me, the horse is, after man, the most beautiful thing in the world.
Kiki the Demure vexed.
And where do I come in?
Toby Dog, evasive and courteous.
No, you're a cat, but a horse, and with her on his back, What a beautiful picture they make, high up in the blue air. To gaze on it, I have to throw my head way back on my thick neck. The horse lends her his speed. Now at last she can race with me. When I go off on a mad run. Sometimes I'm ahead, ears floating back and tongue hanging out like a little flag, the angular shadow of the horse on the road in front. If I follow her,
a fragrant dust blows back at me. It smells of warm leather, moist beast, and a little of her own perfume too. The road runs under me like a ribbon that someone is pulling. Oh what a joy it is to be so little and so swift, running along the shadow of a great galloping horse. When we halt, I pat like a motor between the legs of my friend, who snorts and in the kindliest way, puts down his fettered mouth and sprinkles me.
I know, I know, the horse, with long mane, a shake hoofs, heavy with tumult eyes glimmering white. You are the last of the romanticists.
I'm not the last of the romanticists. I'm a little bulldog that came into the world one evening almost under the feet of a chestnut mare. She didn't lie down all night long. She was so afraid of crushing my mother and her puppies. A little bulldog like me is almost the child of a horse. I lay in the warm straw against her warm flanks. I drank out of
the stable pails. I used to get up when I heard the sound of hoofs coming in, and I took an interest in the washing of the carriages until the day she came and picked me out, Me the best looking, the most snub nosed, the stockiest of the litter ah. And there she lies, so dreadfully quiet. It makes me sad to see her with that little cloth still round her ankle. You remember when he picked her up in
his arms. He held her, and she's a lot bigger than I am, just as if she were a little dog that he was going to drown.
Kiki de demure bitterly.
I remember, I was at the top of the stairs, irritated by the noise, but curious. He came up and pushed me aside with his foot, as he would have done if a piece of furniture had happened to be in his way.
Is that why you stayed away from this room, her room for three whole.
Days, Kiki de Demure, hesitating.
Yes, And for another reason too, What reason? Because of the.
Fever Toby Dog carried away by his love.
Her fever smells better than other people's good health.
Kiki the Demure, shrugging his shoulders.
And they talk of a dog's scent. Truly, the convictions of two paws are based upon childish fables. You know, of course, that.
Fever Toby Dog in a low.
Tone makes one afraid, Yes.
Kiki the Demure in a low tone.
Makes one afraid, gives one cold, shivers down one's back, distaste for everything, and uneasiness all over. One hesitates on the threshold of a room where there is fever, searching fearfully some hidden thing. She was in bed and burning hot. I looked at her a long time, ready to run, saying to myself, who can be with her? There? Behind the curtains? Who is it? Stifles and torments her and makes her moan in her sleep?
Toby Dog frightened retrospectively.
There wasn't any one, was there?
No one but he and the fever he the most intelligent of two paws, was leaning over her, listening to her breathing, dimly aware of an invisible presence. I overcame my aversion and looked at her. I was melancholy and jealous. He must love her, thought I to go so near and defend her, to kiss her, imbued as she is with the evil charm? Would he hold me to his heart if I?
Toby Dog imperatively sho what she stirred? No, Toby Dog alert looking at her.
No, she didn't stir, but her thoughts did. I felt them continue.
Kiki the Demure, who has recovered his equanimity.
I don't know what we were talking about. The fief enough, don't recall it. Fever is the beginning of the thing. One never speaks of.
Toby Dog's shivering.
Yes, I know, I don't like an animal that can't move, You know what I mean.
Kiki the Demure, laughing cruelly.
Ha ha ha, Nor do I.
I can only eat live birds, and as for the tiny mice, I prefer to swallow them squeak and awe.
Why does it amuse you to horrify me? You've a certain vanity that I can't understand it consists in exaggerating cruelties that are already real enough. You call me the last of the romanticist, aren't you? The first of the sadis.
Oh dog poisoned with literature. An eternal misunderstanding separates us.
I'm a little bulldog.
He replied, Just now, with that stupid sincerity which disarms me, let me say to you, in my turn, I am a cat. The name is sufficient dispensation. There is in me a hatred of pain and ugliness, an overmastering detestation of all that offends my sight or my reason. When the concierge's cat dragged around his wounded paw, I threw myself upon him, fired by a righteous anger, and until he stopped his whining.
Eye Toby dogs supplicating me, don't tell me. Quiki the demure getting.
Angry, understand then, once and for all, if the pale recital of what I did upsets you, that I wished to abolish, to annihilate in that bleeding animal, the suggestion of my own inevitable death, they're.
Quiet for a little while, Kiki the demure, shuddering.
This confinement does us no good. I would gladly go out into the soft sunshine, and do the Bayadere's dance, as he calls it. On the dry gravel, among the leaves, which look like fried potatoes. Everything is yellow. Out of doors. My green eyes would reflect the golden sun and the flaming woods, and so turn yellow too. Now I'll think only of what is joyous and yellow, the beautiful cold autumn, the rosy dawn that leaves its colors in the foliage
of the cherry tree. Come, let's prove the strength of our legs and enjoy to the fall the consciousness that youth has only just begun for us, who knows death may never come.
He jumps down from the console table without making the least noise, Toby Dog stopping him.
What are you going to do?
Scratch at the door and strike up the hymn of the sequestered cat.
Toby Dog, indicating the figure on the couch, and doubtless waken her. Kiki the Demure stubbornly.
I'll sing in a very small voice.
And you'll scratch with your tiniest claws. I suppose stay here quietly, He commanded it when he went away.
Kiki the Demure, loftily.
Does he command me he beseeches me, and that's my only reason for obeying him.
He sits down again, apparently resigned, and yawned slowly.
Toby Dog yawning, You make me how on the contrary, it's.
You who bore me temptingly.
You're thinking what a good thing freedom is, aren't you? A hen has probably escaped from the chicken yard. What sport you're missing?
You really think so?
I said, probably? Have you finished exploring that rabbit hole?
Dog disturbed?
No, it's so very deep. I almost buried myself following it out yesterday. The earth that stuck to my muzzle had some of the animal's fur in it.
Kikit the demure more and more satanic.
I suppose you'll finish that tomorrow or.
Some other day, Toby Dog sadly.
Why not say next year? While you're about it.
What's the matter with you? Your shiny black lip hangs down like an el, and your froggy eyes glitter with tears. Are you crying?
Toby Dog's sniffling.
No, poor sensitive heart, console yourself. You'll have your pleasures and your friends again. At this very moment, the farmer's dog is crunching bones in the kitchen to beguile. The long wait for.
You, Toby Dog overcome.
Oh oh, the farmer's dog.
She's not alone either, That great dane, the watch dog keeps her company.
Toby Dog rebellious.
That's not true.
Go see Toby Dog. After one bound toward the door.
No, that would make noise.
You're right, it would.
A mournful silence follows. Toby curls himself up like a turban and closes his eyes because he feels like crying. His breath comes in little sobs. Kiki the demure, absently in a low, monotonous chant.
The dog, the little dog, the bones, the little dog, the rabbit, the great Dane, the rabbit's hole, the little.
Dog, the mutton, bones, the rabbit's skin.
Toby Dog at first endures the torture heroically, Then his nerves betray him, and lifting his head, he howls the long plaint of the abandoned. Oh Kigi, the demure from the top of the console table. Will you be quiet, Oh Kiki the demure aside?
That's it, that's it.
She wakes bewildered, still captive of her dreams, while the cat listens patiently to the approaching step on the stairs, which means liberty for him and punishment for Toby Dog. The first fire, because it is raining and an October wind chases wet leaves through the air, she has lit the first fire of the season in the great chimney place.
Kiki the Demure and Toby Dog, in ecstasy, side by side on a corner of the warm hearthstone, contemplate the flame with dazzled eyes and address their meditations to it. Kiki the Demure, looking very like a cushion, no pause visible.
Oh Fire, how splendid you are. You have come back more beautiful than my memory of you. You are hotter and nearer than the sun. The pupils of my eyes contract in your light, their lids half close, modestly hiding the joy I feel at seeing you again. And my inscrutable countenance shows but the semblance of a thought painted there in fawn color and black. Your crackling drowns the soft sound of my purr. Don't snap too much, be merciful, Oh,
inconstant fire, don't sputter sparks on my fur. Allow me to adore you without fear.
Toby Dog, half baked eyes, bloodshot tongue, pendant fire fire.
Here you are again. I'm still very young, but I remember how awestruck I was the first time her hand woke you in the same chimney place. The sight of a god as mysterious as you are was most impressive to a baby dog just out of the maternal stable. Oh, Fire, I've not quite gotten over my fear. Hi. You spit at me something red that smarts. I'm afraid. Well it's
gone now. How beautiful you are. Fire out from your ruddy center, shoot tatters and shreds of gold, sudden spurts of blue, and smoke that twists upward and draws queer shapes of beasts. Oh but I'm hot, Gently, gently, sovereign fire. See how my truffle of a nose is drying up and cracking in my ears? Are they not a blaze? I adjure thee with supply, and paw, I groan. Ah, I can endure it no longer.
He turns away.
Nothing is ever perfect. The east wind coming under the door nips my hind legs. Well, it can't be helped. I'll freeze behind if I must, provided I can adore you face to face.
I am a cat, and therefore aware of all that you bring in your train o fire. I foresee winter. It's coming. Both troubles and pleases me. I've already begun to thicken and embellish my fur coat in its honor. The darker stripes are becoming black. My white tippet swells into a dazzling boa, and the fur on my belly surpasses in beauty anything that has ever been seen. What shall I say of my tail broad as a club with alternate rings of fawn color and black, Or of
the sensitive, priceless agrets which spring from my ears? My ear rings? She calls them? What cat could resist me?
Ah?
The January nights, the serenades under a frosty moon, the dignified weight on the pinnacle of a roof, the encounter with a rival cat on the narrow top of a wall. But I feel quite sure of my superior strength. I'll swish my tail, put back my ears, sniff tragically as one does before vomiting, and then lift up my voice. Its modulations are infinite. I'll make it strong enough to waken all the sleeping two paws. I'll vociferate, I'll whimper,
pacing up and down the garden. My body distended, my legs bent outward, feigning madness to terrify the tom cats.
I know something of the changes and pleasures you foretell, Fire, for I'm a dog. Already. It is raining in the garden. I suppose it's raining on the road too, And in the woods. The falling drops are not warm as they were in the summer. Storms from my truffle, gray with dust to light it in the damp smell that came from the west. The sky is troubled, and the wind has grown strong enough to blow my ears out straight like little flags. A sharp cry such as I make
when I beg comes under the door. You'll be shining here every day, Fire, But I'll have to suffer for the right to worship you. For she'll continue to wander about, her head covered with the pointed hood, which changes her so that it frightens me. She'll put on wooden shoes too, and carelessly crush the puddles, the little heaps of mud, and the weeping mosses. I'll follow her, since I've promised to do so my life long, and also because I
can't help it. I'll follow her, a forlorn and piteous object, shining wet my belly covered with mud, until through very excess of misery, I'll forget and ramble in the coppice, interested in every undulation of the grass, eager to revive the drowned sense in it. She'll become communicative when she sees me hurrying along, and we'll talk. Ha, tobby dogs, You'll say, ha, a bird there on the branch. Look,
you booby, Now he's gone. Show condole with me. Then until I'm on the verge of tears, Oh, my little black boy, my sympathetic cylinder, my betraychean love, How cold you are, how wet, how sad, how you suffer? Ooh, And before I'm able to judge the sincerity of her pity, the tears will overflow my throat contract and will wail
in unison. Ah, but what delirious joy. When the capricious wooden shoes turn again toward the house, hurrying to rejoin him whom we've left scratching paper, they don't go half fast enough for me. Then I jump round her, barking with the light to see the hill diminishing, or climb at an end to smell the good stable smell and that of burning wood. As we near the house. At last, you shine forth, oh fire, oh sun, through the misty
window pane. I shall hardly have crossed the threshold, and an overpowering sleepiness will dash me to the floor in front of you, You who will reduce the mud on my belly to fine powder and change the water of the roads to smoky vapor.
A delightful glow penetrates my coat to the silky down, the impalpable colorless threads which protect my delicate skin. I feel myself swelling like a cloud. I must quite fill the room. My whiskers seem charged with electricity, a sign that I will sleep. But for the time being, the contemplation of your splendor and thoughts of the coming season keep me awake. It's raining, I shall not go out. I'll wait for the sun or the dry wind, or
better still, the frost. Ah how the biting coal stimulates me. It lashes my lungs with handfuls of needles and makes a bon bon blassee of my charming nose. The rollicking frost sprite will blow his madness into me. She'll laugh, and he too, leaving his scratching paper to see me vie with the leaves in bounds, leaps and wild whirlings, resembling a floating flurry of gray smoke rather than a
cat to the top of a tree. Down again. Then seven turns after my tail, a perilous backward leap, a vertical jump with aerial domes, du ventre gyrations, sneezes, careering from the reel to the dream, until, in terror of myself, I come to a sudden stop. Everything turns before my eyes. I am the center of a strange spinning world. In my bewilderment, half feigned, I'll make a little moo like a cow, which will bring them both running to me,
she laughing and he fearing something wrong. That will suffice to sober me. And with a bold front and noble I'll regain this cushion near your altar old fire.
The hearthstone burns the horny pads of my feet. What shall I do? Move away? Never, I'll toast to death rather than give up this redoubtable bliss. Heaven prevent her coming. Now I've reason to fear the lash of the whip and the magic words which mean exile. Toby, that's stupid. I forbid you to roast yourself. You'll have sore eyes and catch cold when you go out. That's what she says, while I regard her with a stupid look of utter devotion. But she's never duped by it. I hear noises upstairs,
her step coming and going. I wonder as her vagabond fancy wearied at last this morning, she whistled to me, and in my haste to obey her, I rolled to the bottom of the stairs. Being low and thick set, with short legs, no nose, and almost no tail to balance me. Well, we set off. The last apples were rocking to and fro on swaying branches, my happy voice, a joyful shout from her now, and then the vain crowing of the cock, the creaking of wagons on the road.
All these sounds floated on a bluish, cottony, suffocating fog. She took me far, and many marvelous things happened on our way. We met terrible giant dogs. My proud bearings seemed to exasperate them, but I kept them back with a single look. Besides, a closed iron gate rendered them powerless. I chased a rabbit into the thicket. Though she cried loudly, I forbid you to touch the little animal. My mother certainly gave me swift legs, but they're short, and the
white end of the little beast kept far ahead. A bush covered with red berries detained us a very long time. She sees no objection to eating strange things. And I can truthfully say that I always taste everything she offers me, for I've great faith in her. But this morning, eat toby, nice berries.
Eat.
Here are some rose hips, Oh stupid, how can you not dote upon their delicious flavor? I assure you these are comforts of Mother Nature's making. In deference to her, I chewed a reddish ball. There are some rough hairs on it, put their outlets by her teasing hand. And what was bound to happen did happen. Ha ha, My throat rejected the nasty rose hip. But listen fire. What I saw after that passes my understanding. It was in a wood where stiff leaves rustled. Had she carried you under
her cloak? Or do gods like you come at her bidding? I saw her hands pile up the wood, arrange flat stones in some mysterious fashion, and then fire. I saw the sparks flash, and your joyous soul, palpitate, grow big, sore, naked and rose colored, veil itself in smoke, snapped noisily for yours as a belligerent soul, agonize and disappear. The
world is full of incomprehensible things. Last of all, on our way back, I discovered near the park gate, saw it before she did, one of those invincible beasts called hedgehogs, the mere sight of which brings us dogs to bay. What madness to realize that an animal is hiding under that pincushion and laughing at me, and that I can do nothing nothing, I implored her. She can do nearly everything to pluck him for me. She began by turning him over with a little stick, as if he were
a horse chestnut. Astonishing, said she, I can't find the top of him. Then she took one of his spines between two fingers and carried him home that way, I dancing behind her, and put him in her work basket. After a while, the horrid beast unrolled himself, stuck out a pig like nose, opened two shiny rats eyes, and raised himself, holding fast by his little paws, which were exactly like a mule's. How pretty he is, She cried, a real little black pig. I stood near the table,
groaning with covetousness. But she didn't pluck him for me, not then or ever. And perhaps the cook ate him, this cancer dissembler. Maybe he but away with care. I'm too excitable. I mustn't let myself think of these things. Life is beautiful, old fire, since you illumine it. I'm going to sleep. Watch over my unco body. I'm going to sleep.
One would think me asleep, because the narrow slit made by my parted eyelids seems but the continuation of that velvety line, that bold crayon stroke, a sort of oriental make up, uniting my eyelids and my ears. But I'm awake, keeping watch like a yogi, in a state of blissful ankylosis, conscious of all that's going on around me. My privileged eyes fire do but behold you better when they are closed, and I can count the various essences you mingle in
a sparkling bouquet. Here, in a flame of mauve color and blue, close the soul of a branch of arbor vitti. Yesterday it waved a plume like shadow on the garden walk to day with its delicate twigs, it is but a writhing skeleton. She cut it with one stroke of the pruning scissors. Why that it might breathe out its fervent blue and mauve colored soul. For like me, she delights in your dance fire and chastises you when you
are quiet with a stern pair of tongs. Sitting there with her head bent and her arms hanging along her sides, what does she read? I wonder, in that fiery rose, which is the labyrinthian heart of you? She knows a great deal, certainly, but not as much as a cat. That thick tear on the log represents the anguish of a very old fir tree killed by the assiduous ivy. Just a short time ago. I saw it struck down, lying on the grass, its foliage looking like a beautiful
head of reddish hair. I saw the axe that felled it too. Its trunk weeps tears of resin which trail along and drivel, then change to heavy creeping flame. But the dry red locks break into lines of living fire, whistle and shoot innumerable jets of many colors, underneath a broad gold wave that rolls voluptuously. Ah, love, hunting, fighting. It's your light fire that discovers these passions in the depths of my being. It's time the little winged creatures
searching withered berries came near. I'll have them soon. I'll watch motionless in the brushwood, wildly wishing that the earth itself might hide me, the muscles of my legs twitching with desire to make the spring, my chin trembling. Then if I don't betray my hiding place by an irrepressible quavering frightening them away in one great commotion of wings and rustling branches. But no, I'm master of myself, one bound at exactly the right moment, And my feeble prey
is panting under me. Oh, the ridiculous effort of a weak animal, its tiny, ineffectual claws and pointed wings beating against my face. My jaws will open to the splitting point, and my perfect nose wrinkle ferociously for the joy of holding a living, terrified body. I'll know the intoxication of battle. I'll prance victoriously, shaking my head to torment the bird a little, for it faints away too soon between my teeth, terrible to see I'll gallop towards the house, singing in
a strangled voice without loosening my grip. For he must stop his scratching to admire me, and she must give chase with distracted cries. Wicked savage cat, drop that bird, Drop that bird. Oh, I beg of you. It hurts me so ha. She never can have hunted. I intend to astonish the world fire during winter's reign. The cat that lives at the farm, she says, the farmer's cat, while we say the cat's farmer. The fellow that's so badly dressed, disfigured by the nose of a weasel, and
seems to walk on stilts. His legs are so long. Well, he sharpens his claws and regards me the while patience. He's strong, brutal, irresolute, and utterly lacks distinction. The slamming of a door terrifies him. He puts back his ears and flies panic stricken. Still, I've seen him kill a good sized hen without making any fuss about it. For a glance of the young cat's deceitful eyes, or right of precedence on the garden wall. For a word of double meaning, for nothing but for the fun of it,
I'll take my chances with him. He'll learn that a mysterious silence can demoralize the enemy quite as effectively as murderous cries. The low garden wall seems to me a convenient place. Let him try his horse meowling in all possible keys. May his unsightly face and more hideous body dislocate itself in a deceitful ataxia. For there still at these old tricks. I'll be proof against it all, and merely flash the green magnetism of my magnificent eyes upon him.
His brows will fall under their persistent insult. A shudder will run along his spine. He'll do a few steps of our ancient war dance forward, back forward again. But I'll stand motionless as the statue of a cat. The green witchcraft of my gaze will strike terror and madness into my rival, and soon I'll see him writhe utter false cries, and as a last resource, try to balance himself on the nape of his neck like a forked pear tree, only to roll over shamefully into the potato field.
All that will come to pass fire exactly as I've told it to day. The future dawns in your new flame. I'm growing drowsy. My purr and your crackling are ceasing together. I see you still, and already I catch glimpses of my dreams. The silky sound of the rain against the window is soft as a caress, and the water pipe on the roof sobs low like a pigeon. Don't go out during my nap fire. Remember you're the guardian of my august repose that delicate death known as a cat's sleep.
The storm a suffocating summer's day in the country. The blinds of the house are half closed. Not a sound is heard from within, not a murmur from the parched garden, where even the sensitive leaves of the mimosa hang motionless. Kiki the Demure and Toby Dog begin to feel uncomfortably conscious of the coming storm, which is yet but a slate blue plinth thickly painted at the bottom of the dull blue sky wall. Toby Dog lying restlessly, first on one side, then the other.
No use, I can't be comfortable. What does this heat mean anyway? I must be sick. It began at breakfast. I didn't like the meat and sniffed as dainfully at my dog, biscuit. Something awful is going to happen. I haven't done anything wrong that I know of. My conscience is clear, and yet I'm suffering. There lies my chum, shivering and unable to sleep. I know why, his quick breathing that he feels just as I do. I say, can't?
Can you give it? Amure irritably in a low tone.
Be quiet what.
You're listening to? Some noise?
No heavens, No, don't mention noise. The mere sound of your voice makes the skin on my back go in waves like the sea.
Toby dog frightened.
Are you going to die?
I hope not. I've a sick headache. Can't you see the arteries throbbing under the almost hairless skin of my temples, the transparent bluish skin that denotes a thoroughbred. It's atrocious. The veins on my forehead are like writhing vipers. And I don't know what gnome forges in my brain. Oh, be quiet, or at least speak so low that the coursing of my agitator blood may drown the sound of your voice.
But it's this very silence that oppresses me. I tremble and I don't know why I long for the familiar voice of the wind in the chimney, the slamming of doors, the whispering of the garden, the popular ceaseless rustle. It always sounds like a trickling spring.
The uproar will come soon enough, do you think so?
I wish she'd scratch paper. It's an idle habit, but an honored one. And see how listless she is there in her wicker chair. Their silence frightens me more than anything. She seems asleep, but I can see her eyelashes move, and the tips of her fingers too. She's forgetting to play with the little balls of thread and doesn't sing or whistle. She suffers just as we do. Do you think this can be the end of the world?
Cat, No, it's a storm. Heaven's how uncomfortable I am. If I could only get out of my skin, cast off this fleece which is smothering me, flinging myself naked as a skinned mouse, into a fresher at me. Oh dog, you cannot see the sparks that make every separate hair on my body crackle, but I feel them. Don't come near. A blue flame is going to shoot out of.
Me Toby Dog's shuddering.
Things are coming to an awful pass.
He drags himself to the porch.
What have they done to the out of doors? Look? The trees are all blue, and the grass glistens like a sheet of water. What mournful sunlight? It shines white on the slate roofs, and the little houses over there on the hill look like brand new tombstones. A heavy odor, like bitter almond, creeps from the white bell shaped blossoms of the Deturres and makes me feel sick and faint. Far away, some smoke, heavy as the perfume of the Detourres goes slowly up in a straight line and falls
again like a broken agrit. But come and see for yourself, Kiki.
The demure walks faltering me to the porch.
My word, you're changed too, cat. You look as if you were starving. Your face is so drawn. Your fur is plastered down in some places and sticking up in other's. Gives you the expression of a weasel that had tumbled into oil.
Don't let that worry you. I'll regain my dignity if ever another day dawns for us to day, I drag myself around unwashed, uncombed, like a woman not of love with love and life.
You say such distressing things, I think I'll whine and call for help. Perhaps I better go to her and look in her face for the comfort. You refuse me. But she seems asleep now in that wicker chair, And how can I read my fate in her eyes? When their lids are down. I'll lick her hand, very respectfully and ever so lightly. That will wake her, and oh, may her first caress drive away the evil charm.
He nicks the hand hanging at the side of the chair.
She with a scream A heavens, how you frighten me? Was there ever such a ninny as this dog?
There?
She admitted, does a smart rap on the nose. Toby's nerves give way, and he howls loud and long.
Oh quiet, not a word I say out of my sight. I don't know what's the matter, but I hate you. And that cat sitting there looking at me like a bump on a log.
Kiki, the demure bristling.
If she dares to touch me, I'll devour her.
Just at this dangerous crisis. A low rumbling is heard, distant and then near impossible to tell whether it comes from the horizon or arises from the house itself, all three in whose interests in the quarrel, Toby Dog and Kiki the Demure slink away as if responding to a signal, and seeks shelter, one under the bookcase and the other under an arm chair. She turns anxiously to the leaden hued garden and the great violet bank of cloud, which all of a sudden is riven by a blinding streak
of blue f She, Toby Dog, Kiki the Demure all together. Oh, A sudden crash shakes the windows, and instantly a great rush of wind envelops the house with a noise as of flapping canvas. All the garden prostrates itself. She in anguish heavens the apples. Toby Dog invisible.
I'll let them cut my ears into strips rather than leave this hiding place.
Kiki the Demure, invisible.
I can't help hearing, and it's as if I saw everything that's going on. She hastens to close the windows. Someone is running on the stairs. Aye, another awful flame, and everything is falling in silence. Now I wonder are they all dead? I look through the fringes of the chair, though it's risking my life to do so. Ah, hailstones making holes in the leaves. Here comes the rain in silvery drops, wide apart and so heavy that the gravel wrinkles up when they fall.
She heart broken.
I can hear the peaches falling, and the green nuts too.
All three are silent rain, quivering streaks of lightning hissing in the pine trees. The wind howls alung.
I'm not quite so afraid as I was. The sound of the rain relaxes my tired nerves. I seem to feel it streaming warmth on my ears in the back of my neck. Now the hubbub is further off. I can hear myself breathe. The light coming under this bookcase is brighter than it was. What is she doing? I daren't go out yet. If only the cat would move.
He sticks out his head like a weary turtle. A flash of lightning makes him draw it back again.
Ha, it's beginning all over again. Rain by the bucket falls against the window panes. Something in the chimney is trying to imitate that far away rumbling. Everything's falling to pieces, and she gave me a rap on the nose.
Drop by drop, a little brownish river is filtering under the loose window sash. It's stretching out and out on the floor, winding its way over to me. I'm so hot and thirsty, I'd like to lap up some of it. My joints ache, and my ears are tired of standing up like weather cocks at every crash. My jaws are still clenched with nervous fear. The seat of this chair is too low. It annoys me rubbing against the fur
on my back. However, it's some comfort to be able to think of such things, thanks to the piece that's descended on the house. The rain is falling quietly, and the wind has gone down, But the memory of the Din still hums in my ears. Can he be doing? The storm distresses him too? Why didn't he come forward to calm the raging elements? There she is opening the porch door. Isn't it too soon? No, for the hens are cackling like old maids as they hop over the puddles.
We're going to have fine weather. Oh, the adorable smell of wet leaves and earth refreshed. It's so new, so pure. I seem to breathe for the first time.
He creeps stealthily to the porch. Toby dogs suddenly.
Ah, how good that smells like a walk. Things change so quickly one hasn't time to think. She's opened the door.
Let's run, he dashes out.
Well, well, the garden has got back its own color again. A warmest vapor moistes my rough grained nose. I've fell with a desire to jump and run. The grass is raking, shining, Wet horned snails are filling around in the pink gravel with the tips of their eyes, and speckled black and white slugs embroider the wall with a silver ribbon. Oh what a beautiful green and gold beasty running out there in the wet Shall I catch it? Shall I scratch
his metallic shell until it breaks with a little cracking sound. No, I'd rather stay near her. She's leaning against the door, taking deep breaths and smiling quietly to herself. I'm so happy. Something inside me feels grateful to the whole world. The light is beautiful, and I'm quite sure that there'll never never be another storm.
I shan't wait any longer. I'm going out I'll find dry places between the puddles for my dainty paws to step on. An imperceptible thrill runs through the streaming garden, making the jewels hung all about tremble and sparkle. The slanting rays of the setting sun find their reflection in my eyes, which are spangled with green and gold. Down near the horizon, where the sk eye is still unsettled, a glittering sword leaps up and puts to flight the
dark fuming cloud horses that have been galloping over our heads. Now, the odor of the deturahs rises and perfumes all the air, mingled with that of lemon leaves bruised by the hail. The roses are crowned with midges. Oh sudden springtime. An involuntary smile stretches the corners of my mouth. I'm going to play at tickling my nostrils with the point of a sweet smelling blade of grass, carefully stretching my neck to avoid the falling drops. But I want him to
follow and admire me. Will he not come out and enjoy himself with us?
A voice is heard, humming a motif from the Reagenborgan So Sie ray so la si all flats, a door opens and closes again. He appears under the dripping foliage of vines framing the verandah, and at the same moment a rainbow is seen in the sky A caller a winter's afternoon in Paris the studio. A fire crackles gently in the towel shaped stove. Toby Dog and Kiki the Demure, one on the floor, the other on his own particular cushion, proceed with the minute toilet, which follows a long siesta.
Peace reigns.
My nails grow faster here than in the country.
It's the contrary with mine.
Really, Kiki the Demure, bitterly.
Not to be wondered at, she clips them for the sake of the hangings. Well, what can't be cured must be endured.
What are you going to do today?
Why nothing, Toby Dog ironically, for.
A change, I suppose, pardon to avoid change? What is this rage for change that takes possession of you? All change means destruction. Only that which remains stationary is eternal.
I'm eternal. Then these three hours passed.
But you've been out with her, haven't you. You came in like a whirlwind. Bells rang, clothes were shaken out. You were sneezing and laughing and aureoled with icy air. The end of her nose felt so cold when she kissed me on the forehead. She always kisses me there, just over the dark stripes, forming the classic M, which she assures me stands for miaw and for mine my name in French.
Yes, we had a fine run on the banks of the fortifications, and then we went into a shop.
Is that amusing?
Not often there are a great many people crowded together. I'm immediately seed with the fear of losing her, and I stick close to her heels no matter what comes. Strange feet push and knock me about and step on my paws. I yelp, but the skirts all round stifle my voice. When we're out of it, we both look as if we've been shipwrecked.
May the gods preserve me from anything of the sort. Here the moments have glided peacefully by. When she's not in this house, there's nothing to hinder me. I employ the time as my system of hygiene dictates. After my breakfast of rosy liver and milk, my kitten hood seems to come back to me. I'm filled with a foolish gayety. I go over to him. He's rumpling big blackish papers and welcomes me with a quiet smile. We loll on the same divan and revel in a few idle moments together,
sometimes with imperious paw. I tear the paper he holds like a screen between us. It always seems to me the most desirable, the one that crackles best. He cries out, and I throw myself on my back and wriggle with joy in a sort of horizontal dance he calls the dance of the Bayadier. Then somehow everything dwindles before my eyes, grows dim and far away. I want to rise and go back to my cushion, but dreams already separate me
from the world. Ah, blessed hour when you and she disappear, when the house is at rest and takes a long breath. Soon I'm in the depths of a dark, sweet sleep. My ears alone keep watch and turn like sensitive antennas toward vague sounds of doors and bells.
At this moment, some one rings. Toby Dog and Kiki the Demure start and change their positions. The cat sitting encircles himself with his fluffy tail. The dog, in a sphinxlike attitude, lifts his head boldly. What's that a tradesman, Kiki the Demure, shrugging his shoulders.
That's not the kitchen bell. Perhaps it's a caller.
Toby dog with bound What luck they have?
Tea and cakes? Come on, sugar, sugar, little cakes, little cakes.
Kiki the Demure gloomily.
To see ladies who shriek and put gloved hands on my back, hands covered with dead skin.
RHoK.
Feminine voices are heard, hers among them, and the clear tinkling of a little bell. Then the door opens and a very diminutive toy terrier enters alone. She's black and tan, seems in love with herself, and comes forward with a mincing step. The little dog voice way up in her head.
I'm the darling little dog, so pretty.
Toby is struck dumb with admiration and astonishment. Kiki, indignant, has jumped on top of the piano and remains an unseen and hostile spectator. The little dog, astonished at not hearing the chorus of admiration that everywhere greets her, is reciting.
I'm the darling little dog, so pretty. I weigh only one pound eleven ounces. My collar's gold. My ears of black satin lined with shiny rubber. My nails are polished like the beaks of little birds.
Catching sight of Toby dog, Oh, someone, silence, he's rather good looking. They ogle and strut.
How tiny she is, sir, don't come near me? Why not?
I don't know. My mistress knows she's not here. She stayed in the other room.
How old are you?
Eleven months reciting I'm eleven months old.
At the dog show, my mother took first prize for beauty. I weigh only one pound eleven ounces.
And you've said that already. What makes you so little?
Kiki the demure from the piano.
She's ugly and has an evil odor. Her paws are deformed. She can't stand still an instant, and this dog takes pains to make himself fascinating.
The little dog very coquettish and talkative.
It's my lineage, of course. Oh one can hold me in a muff. You've seen my collar. It's gold.
And what's that hanging from it?
My mother's metal, sir. I always wear it. I come from the Palatic Glass, where I made quite a hit. Imagine I wanted to bite a gentleman who was speaking to my mistress. How they laughed.
She wriggles and chaps Toby Dog aside.
What an odd creature? Is she really a dog?
Sniffs?
Yes, smells of rice powder, But it's a dog, just the same. Aloud, Sit down a moment. It makes me quite dizzy to see you moving about. So certainly.
She lies down like a miniature greyhound, crossing her forepaws to show the slimness of her toes.
You were here all alone.
Toby Dog, looking toward the piano.
Yes, no other dog.
Why there's a strange odor.
The cat, doubtless the cat?
Who what's the cat? I've never seen one. Do they leave you in the room all alone?
It happens so now and then, and you don't bark.
I cry as soon as I'm left alone. I'm bored, afraid, feel sick, and chew up the cushions.
And then you're wept.
The little dog insulted.
I'm what did you say? You're losing your senses.
I imagine suddenly amoble again.
That would be a pity. You have lovely eyes.
Haven't died? They show well, don't they They're large? And then they stick out. She says, I have eyes like a lobster's, and sometimes she says his beautiful seal's eyes, his frog like eyes of gold.
Who she Toby Dog?
Simple she I don't understand all you say, but I find you so very sympathetic. What are you doing this evening?
Why I dine naturally?
I wanted to know whether they receive here this evening? Or do you go out?
No, I've been out already, driving walking, of course.
Why of course, I hardly stir except in a carriage. Show me the underside of your paws. Horrors, one would say to us, the stoney, sharpened knives on. Look at mine, satin on top, velvet underneath.
I'd like to see you in the country, on the cobblestones.
I've been there, sir. I was in the country last summer, and there weren't any cobblestones.
Then it wasn't the country. You don't know what country means, the little dog vexed.
Indeed I do, sir. It's fine sand and velvety lawns that are swept every morning. It's a reclining chair on the grass, great fresh cushions and cree tone foamy milk naps. In the shade and charming little red apples to play.
With, Toby Dog shaking his head.
No, it's the road covered with white powder that makes the eyelids smart and the paws burn. The tough, shriveled, sweet smelling grass where I scratch my nose and my gums. It's the fearful night, for I'm the only one to guard them. He and she I lie in my basket, but the beating of my poort overdriven heart keeps me awake. I hear a dog crying to me from far off that the bad man is passed on the road. Is he coming in my direction? Will I be obliged in
another minute? My eyes bloodshot and tongue dry as chalk, to throw myself upon him and devour his shadowy face.
The little dog trembling in an ecstasy.
Go on, go on, Oh, how frightened I am.
Toby Dog modestly, don't be afraid.
It has never happened. All that is the country, yes, and the interminable hill and the shadow of the carriage. When thirst, hunger, heat and fatigue render the soul submissive and hopeless.
The little dog quite worked up, And.
Then oh, nothing one arrives at the house after all, and the pail of dark water one drinks without taking breath. His tongue, she says, His big tongue is parted in the center like an iris petal, while sore eyelids and dusty lashes are splashed with cooling drops. The country is all that, and many things besides.
Kiki the demure on top of the piano, musingly.
All that, yes, and the habits of the year before that one finds again molded to one's shape like a cushion, marked with the imprint of a long sleep, the long nights of freedom, when the lone owlet with his sad little laugh makes his way through the air as quietly as I do on the ground, and silvery gray rats cling to the vines, eating grapes and keeping their eyes
on me at the same time. It's the sun cure on the hot stone wall from which I arise, wan and shrunken, baked through and through, but smelt enough to make the youngest tom cat envious.
Coming back to the present with a murderous look at the little dog.
Death to you, ill smelling beast for having evoked these by gone joys, aren't you going to disappear, that I may come down from this cold pedestal where my paws are growing numb.
Toby Dog enthusiastically to the little dog.
But let us forget all that with you there. I can think of nothing but you. I feel that I love you.
The little dog lowering her eyes.
Do you mean really?
Of course?
I do so soon.
We've already wasted a great deal of time, but.
We've been chatting. I've enjoyed it very much, and I fail to understand why the society of young dogs like you is forbidden me.
Allow me to make love to you.
What's that?
I'll show you first? I hold myself very erect, stiffen my legs, walk round you, barking low and melodiously. My tail wriggles, my ears.
Don't come near me.
I feel quite upset escaping you, A merrily fellow Kiki the demur standing up.
These preludes are indeed a sad parody on our wild love, making.
A loud, very angry I should think. The little dog looks to see where the dreadful voice is coming from, and despise a strange striped monster with eyes of fire and eyebrows and whiskers bristling ferociously. She dashes towards the door, crying.
Help, help, there's a tiner on the.
Piano, and falls into the arms of her mistress, who has come upon the scene and proceeds to console her with great volubility.
Phoebe, my sizette, my darling, they're there. Goo goo goo goo, you poor helpless little doggie. What did they do to her?
Oh? Was it the naughty bow wow? Et cetera, et cetera. End of Barks and Purse by Colette Willie, translated by Mary Kelly,