)
TOBY-DOG, (_pensive_) Positively, Cat, there are times when I don't know
you. We are talking quietly and suddenly you bristle like a
bottle-brush; or we happen to be playing amicably together and I bark
behind your back--bow, wow-wow!--just for fun; then,--one doesn't know
why, perhaps because my nose has grazed the long hairs on 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-THE-DEMURE, (_mysterious, eyes half-closed_)
Not at all. It's 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. Know,
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 .
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