as part of nature’s chorus.  Poems have been written in praise of the corncrake as a singer, but never of the cat.  All the associations we have with cats have not accustomed us to that discordant howl.  It converts love itself into a torment such as can be found only in the pages of a twentieth-century novel.  In it we hear the jungle decadent—­the beast in dissolution, but not yet civilised.  When it rises at night outside the window, we always explain to visitors:  “No; that’s not Peter.  That’s the cat next door with the yellow eyes.”  The man who will not defend the honour of his cat cannot be trusted to defend anything.

VI

MAY

May is chiefly remarkable for being the only month in which one does not like cats.  June, too, perhaps; but, after that, one does not mind if the garden is full of cats.  One likes to have a wild beast whose movements, lazy as those of Satan, will terrify the childish birds out of the gooseberry bushes and the raspberries and strawberries.  He will not, we know, have much chance of catching them as late as that.  They will be as cunning as he, and the robin will wind his alarum-clock, the starling in the plum-tree will cry out like a hysterical drake, and the blackbird will make as much noise as a farmyard.  The cat can but blink at the clamour of such a host of cunning sentinels and, pretending that he had come out only to take the air, return majestically to his dinner of leavings in the kitchen.  In May and June, however, one does not wish the birds to be frightened.  One would like one’s garden to be an Alsatia for all their wings and all their songs.  There is no hope of this in a garden full of cats.  Even a Tetrazzini would cease to be able to produce her best trills if every time she opened her mouth, a tiger padded in her direction down a path of currant bushes.  There are, it may be admitted, heroic exceptions.  The chaffinch sits in the plum and blusters out his music, cat or no cat.  To be sure, he only sings, a flush of all the colours, in order to distract our attention.  He is not an artist but a watchman.  If you look into the buddleia-tree beside him, you will see his hen moving about in silence, creeping, dancing, fluttering, as she gorges herself with insects.  She is a fly-catcher at this season, leaping into the air and pirouetting as she seizes her prey and returns to the bough.  She is restless and is not content with the spoil of a single tree.  She flings herself gracefully, like a ballet-dancer, into the plum, and takes up a caterpillar in her beak.  She does not eat it at once, but stands still, eyeing you as though awaiting your applause.  Her husband, sitting on the topmost spray, goes on singing his version of The Roast Beef of Old England.  She does not even now eat the caterpillar, but hurries along the paths of the branches with the obvious purpose of finding a tasty insect to eat long with it.