hat she
would make me a lady or she would abandon me.

"Permit me to give you a lesson in gentility," she said. "Understand,
Miss Beauty, that English Cats veil natural acts, which are opposed to
the laws of English respectability, in the most profound mystery, and
banish all that is improper, applying to the creature, as you have heard
the Reverend Doctor Simpson say, the laws made by God for the creation.
Have you ever seen the Earth behave itself indecently? Learn to suffer a
thousand deaths rather than reveal your desires; in this suppression
consists the virtue of the saints. The greatest privilege of Cats is to
depart with the grace that characterizes your actions, and let no one
know where you are going to make your little toilets. Thus you expose
yourself only when you are beautiful. Deceived by appearances, everybody
will take you for an angel. In the future when such a desire seizes you,
look out of the window, give the impression that you desire to go for a
walk, then run to a copse or to the gutter."

As a simple Cat of good sense, I found much hypocrisy in this doctrine,
but I was so young!

"And when I am in the gutter?" thought I, looking at the old woman.

"Once alone, and sure of not being seen by anybody, well, Beauty, you
can sacrifice respectability with much more charm because you have been
discreet in public. It is in the observance of this very precept that
the perfection of the moral English shines the brightest: they occupy
themselves exclusively with appearances, this world being, alas, only
illusion and deception."

I admit that these disguises were revolting to all my animal good sense,
but on account of the whipping, it seemed preferable to understand that
exterior propriety was all that was demanded of an English Cat. From
this moment I accustomed myself to conceal the titbits that I loved
under the bed. Nobody ever saw me eat, or drink, or make my toilet. I
was regarded as the pearl of Cats.

Now I had occasion to observe those stupid men who are called savants.
Among the doctors and others who were friends of my mistress, there was
this Simpson, a fool, a son of a rich landowner, who was waiting for a
bequest, and who, to deserve it, explained all animal actions by
religious theories. He saw me one evening lapping milk from a saucer and
complimented the old woman on the manner in which I had been bred,
seeing me lick first the edges of the saucer and gradually diminish the
circle o