“Precisely; only I must say to you that I object to the boots in that performance. How, with such foot-gear thumping and creaking on the gravel in the road, can the cat approach the game without being heard?”
“That’s so. Let us take off the boots. We will suppose the cat leaves them at the mill while it is out hunting, and that it only wears them on great occasions.”
“How much wiser the real cat is than the one in the story! It would not wear noisy boots and run the risk of making the garret floor creak under its footsteps. If the mouse heard the slightest sound of hard soles, it would never come out of its hole. What the cat really needs is slippers and not boots or wooden shoes—slippers thick and soft so as to muffle the footfall completely.
“Let us examine the underside of the cat’s paw. [[255]]You will see under each toe a little ball of flesh, a real cushion softly stuffed. Another ball, much larger, occupies the center. In addition, tufts of down fill up the intervening spaces. Thus shod, the cat walks as if on tow or wadding, and no ear can hear it coming. Have we not there, I ask you, slippers of silence, marvelously adapted to surprise attacks?”
“It is a fact,” assented Louis, “that we never hear the cat coming.”
“The dog, too,” added Jules, “has similar little cushions, only larger, under its paws. Nevertheless we hear its footsteps, perhaps on account of the claws scraping the ground a little.”
“Your ‘perhaps’ is superfluous,” his uncle rejoined. “It is certainly the claws scraping the ground that make the dog’s walk heard in spite of the fleshy balls.”
“How does the cat manage, then?” asked Jules. “It has claws and very strong ones.”
“That is the cat’s secret. When walking and sleeping it keeps its claws drawn back in a sheath at the extremity of the toes; it has then what we call velvet paws. Thus drawn into their case, the claws do not project beyond the paw and cannot strike the ground. To this first advantage of not making any noise in walking is added another not less useful to the cat. Completely hidden inside their sheaths, the claws do not get blunt; they preserve their sharpness and fine point for the attack. They are excellent weapons, and the animal keeps them in a case [[256]]until they are needed. Then the claws shoot out of their sheaths as if pushed by a spring, and the velvet paw of a moment ago becomes a horrible harpoon that implants itself in the flesh and rends the prey in most sanguinary fashion.”
“If I give the cat’s paw a little squeeze with my fingers,” said Emile, “the claws come out of their sheaths; if I stop squeezing, the claws go in again.”