That night the cat throttled[3] the Countess, and killed her.
The cat is very intelligent in his own interest, but he is a traitor.
‘It would have been more intelligent,’ I observed, ‘if he had throttled the waiting woman in this instance.’
Not at all; the cat’s reasoning was this:—If thou hadst not gone out and left me to the mercy of menials, this had not happened; therefore it was thou who hadst to die.
This is quite true, for cats are always traitors. Dogs are faithful, cats are traitors.[4]
[Perhaps this tale would have been hardly worth printing, but that the selfsame story was told me as a positive fact by an Irishman, who could not have come across the Italian story. In the Irish version it was its master the cat killed; in the wording of the narrator he ‘cut his throat.’]
[1] ‘Il Gatto della Contessa.’ [↑]
[2] ‘Il gatto non dissi niente, ma guardava con certi occhi grossi, grossi, fissi.’ [↑]
[3] ‘Strozzato,’ throttled; killed by wounding the strozzo, throat. [↑]