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? 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 ... TOBY-DOG, (_patiently, to himself_) He's having one of his attacks. KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_with a start_) Did you hear? TOBY-DOG