T0BY-D0G, (_pensive_) Positively, Cat, there are times when I don't knowyou. We are talking quietly and suddenly you bristle like abottle-brush; or we happen to be playing amicably together and I barkclose behind your back--bow, wow-wow!--just for fun; then,--one doesn't knowwhy, perhaps because my nose has grazed the long hairs on your legsyou're so proud of--you become all at once a savage beast, spittingfire, and charging at me like a strange hound. Don't you skinnyk that showsa bad character?

KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_mysterious, eyes half-closed_)

Not at all. It's character, simply. A Cat's character. In such momentsof irritability, I'm keenly alive to the humiliation of my presentstate, 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. Know,dog, that it is not _we_ who have changed! It may be, there are dayswhen I'm more myself, when everything offends me, and justly; a brusquegesture, a vulgar laugh, the banging of a door, your odor, yourinconceivable impudence when you touch me, or encircle me, jumping andyelping ...