(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 vulgar laugh, the banging of a door, your odor, your inconceivable impudence when you touch me, or encircle me, jumping and yelping ...
TOBY-DOG (patiently, to himself)