He drinks from it doubtless.

(Silence.)

TOBY-DOG

She’s not back yet!  Heaven grant She isn’t lost, as I was one day in the streets of Paris!

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

I’m hungry!

TOBY-DOG

I’m hungry!  What are we going to eat this evening?

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

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:  “Here Toby, bones!” and throw me the carcass.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

How badly you speak!  He says:  “Little chicken bones, Kiki, little chicken bones!”

TOBY-DOG, (surprised)

But no really it’s, “Here, Toby, bones!” that She says.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

He speaks better than She does.

TOBY-DOG, (incompetent)

Ah?...  Tell me, do birds taste anything like chicken?

KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (whose eyes light up suddenly)

No ... they’re far better, they’re alive.  Ha, the quivering bird, the warm feathers, the delicious little brain ... you feel it all crackling between your teeth!

TOBY-DOG

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?

TOBY-DOG

Not very well.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE They live in the little wood.  When I walk by they laugh a sardonic “tiac, tiac,” 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 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?