She is an expert at starting a quarrel when the others sit devouring their spoil; and while they fight, she fishes in troubled waters. She hunts indeed, but after her own fashion; and most of her spoil is second-hand!
Her sympathies are unstable; she lacks personality! Sometimes she helps Black against Big, at others Grey against Black; being always on the side of the one who owns nothing against the one who has for the moment something to steal.... She is in favour of common ownership, and is the red communist of the litter!
But she is an adept at dissembling; she is not only a great juggler, but also a great hypocrite ... her tail betrays this, for in the most exciting moments it is as stiff as a poker!
In the long run, however, the narrow bounds of catborough do not offer sufficient scope for her predatory instincts, and she is compelled to eke out her spoils. When Big, Black, and Grey, with White and Tiny in tow, slink out in the gloaming over field and meadow and follow the twisting, irregular paths of the village copse, Red lounges through the field until she meets a human track.
Experience has taught her that such a track usually leads to a place where there is something to be picked up ... some cast-away food-paper or other, which, on investigation, often proves to contain tasty morsels, such as herring-bones, cheese-rind, or scraps of fat.
Sometimes, also, an old wooden clog or a pair of cast-off stockings lie on the ground near by, but they appeal to her less, and serve only to increase her faith in human footsteps.
But it happens, too, that the tracks lead to dainties such as would make even gourmands like Big and Black turn blue in the face with envy!
The errand boys of the neighbourhood are very keen on wandering round the hedges for birds’ nests—not to destroy them, but merely to feel the thrill of peeping at the eggs. Red, aided by her cunning and her deductive faculties, finds every single one of these nests!
On one occasion she raided a lark’s nest. All night long she had followed a human “spoor,” which led over grass and clover and turnips. At a certain place the track stopped and turned off abruptly towards a clump of white marguerites.
Three nights in succession she came across the same lonely track, and found it stop on each occasion exactly at this place. And yet there was nothing there; that was peculiar!