“You must have a heartbreaking time drowning kittens,” we suggested. But they said, “Oh, no! You see we care for them as you do for your valuable cattle. The fathers are few compared to the mothers, just a few very fine ones in each town; they live quite happily in walled gardens and the houses of their friends. But they only have a mating season once a year.”
“Rather hard on Thomas, isn’t it?” suggested Terry.
“Oh, no—truly! You see, it is many centuries that we have been breeding the kind of cats we wanted. They are healthy and happy and friendly, as you see. How do you manage with your dogs? Do you keep them in pairs, or segregate the fathers, or what?”
Then we explained that—well, that it wasn’t a question of fathers exactly; that nobody wanted a—a mother dog; that, well, that practically all our dogs were males—there was only a very small percentage of females allowed to live.
Then Zava, observing Terry with her grave sweet smile, quoted back at him: “Rather hard on Thomas, isn’t it? Do they enjoy it—living without mates? Are your dogs as uniformly healthy and sweet-tempered as our cats?”
Jeff laughed, eyeing Terry mischievously. As a matter of fact we began to feel Jeff something of a traitor—he so often flopped over and took their side of things; also his medical knowledge gave him a different point of view somehow.
“I’m sorry to admit,” he told them, “that the dog, with us, is the most diseased of any animal—next to man. And as to temper—there are always some dogs who bite people—especially children.”
That was pure malice. You see, children were the—the raison d’être in this country. All our interlocutors sat up straight at once. They were still gentle, still restrained, but there was a note of deep amazement in their voices.
“Do we understand that you keep an animal—an unmated male animal—that bites children? About how many are there of them, please?”
“Thousands—in a large city,” said Jeff, “and nearly every family has one in the country.”