cannot help laughing. We are
a little nervous at first, and our mirth is tinged with pity at the
thought of the probably elderly and dyspeptic gentleman who has had
his luncheon filched away almost from under his nose. If we were quite
sure that it was from No. 14, and not from No. 9 or No. 11, that the
fish had been stolen, we might--conceivably--call round and offer to
pay for it. But with a cat one is never quite sure. And we cannot call
round on all the neighbours and make a general announcement that our
cat is a thief. In any case the next move lies with the wronged
neighbour. As day follows day, and there is no sign of his irate and
murder-bent figure advancing up the path, we recover our mental
balance and begin to see the cat's exploit in a new light. We do not
yet extol it on moral grounds, but undoubtedly, the more we think of
it, the deeper becomes our admiration. Of the two great heroes of the
Greeks we admire one for his valour and one for his cunning. The epic
of the cat is the epic of Odysseus. The old gentleman with the Dover
sole gradually assumes the aspect of a Polyphemus outwitted--outwitted
and humiliated to the point of not even being able to throw things
after his tormentor. Clever cat! Nobody else's cat could have done
such a thing. We should like to celebrate the Rape of the Dover Sole
in Latin verse.

As for the Achillean sort of prowess, we do not demand it of a cat,
but we are proud of it when it exists. There is a pleasure in seeing
strange cats fly at his approach, either in single file over the wall
or in the scattered aimlessness of a bursting bomb. Theoretically, we
hate him to fight, but, if he does fight and comes home with a torn
ear, we have to summon up all the resources of our finer nature in
order not to rejoice on noticing that the cat next door looks as
though it had been through a railway accident. I am sorry for the cat
next door. I hate him so, and it must be horrible to be hated. But he
should not sit on my wall and look at me with yellow eyes. If his eyes
were any other colour--even the blue that is now said to be the mark
of the runaway husband--I feel certain I could just manage to endure
him. But they are the sort of yellow eyes that you expect to see
looking out at you from a hole in the panelling in a novel by Mr Sax
Rohmer. The only reason why I am not frightened of them is that the
cat is so obviously frightened of me. I never did him any injury
unless to hate is t