“What’s this?” Vanya hears, in an angry voice.
“It’s . . . it’s the kitty, papa. . . .”
“I’ll give it you; look what you have done, you naughty boy! You’ve dirtied all my paper!”
To Vanya’s great surprise his papa does not share his partiality for the kittens, and, instead of being moved to enthusiasm and delight, he pulls Vanya’s ear and shouts:
“Stepan, take away this horrid thing.”
At dinner, too, there is a scene. . . . During the second course there is suddenly the sound of a shrill mew. They begin to investigate its origin, and discover a kitten under Nina’s pinafore.
“Nina, leave the table!” cries her father angrily. “Throw the kittens in the cesspool! I won’t have the nasty things in the house! . . .”
Vanya and Nina are horrified. Death in the cesspool, apart from its cruelty, threatens to rob the cat and the wooden horse of their children, to lay waste the cat’s box, to destroy their plans for the future, that fair future in which one cat will be a comfort to its old mother, another will live in the country, while the third will catch rats in the cellar. The children begin to cry and entreat that the kittens may be spared. Their father consents, but on the condition that the children do not go into the kitchen and touch the kittens.
After dinner, Vanya and Nina slouch about the rooms, feeling depressed. The prohibition of visits to the kitchen has reduced them to dejection. They refuse sweets, are naughty, and are rude to their mother. When their uncle Petrusha comes in the evening, they draw him aside, and complain to him of their father, who wanted to throw the kittens into the cesspool.
“Uncle Petrusha, tell mamma to have the kittens taken to the nursery,” the children beg their uncle, “do-o tell her.”