he 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 vulg