Quick-to-Grab walked straight out of the door.
“May no prosperity come to this house,” said he, “for denying me when I asked where the King of the Cats was pleased to speak to you.”
But he put his ear to the door when he went outside and he heard the woman say,—
“The horse will tell him that we saw the King of the Cats a mile this side of the Giant’s Causeway.” (That was a mistake. The horse could not have told it at all, because horses never know the language that is spoken in houses—only cats know it fully and dogs know a little of it.)
Quick-to-Grab now knew where the King of the Cats might be found. He went creeping by hedges, loping across fields, bounding through woods, until he came under the branch in the forest where the King of the Cats rested, his whiskers standing round his face the breadth of a dinner-dish.
When he came-under the branch Quick-to-Grab mewed a little in Egyptian, which is the ceremonial language of the Cats. The King of the Cats came to the end of the branch.
“Who are you, vassal?” said he in Phoenician.
“A humble retainer of my lord,” said Quick-to-Grab in High-Pictish (this is a language very suitable to cats but it is only their historians who now use it).
They continued their conversation in Irish.
“What sign shall I show the others that will make them know you are the King of the Cats?” said Quick-to-Grab.