Barks and Purrs Part 8

She always says, "his square muzzle, his wrinkled truffle," so tenderly and so lovingly!

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

... And you think of nothing but eating.

TOBY-DOG

It's _your_ empty stomach that scolds and complains and wants to quarrel with me.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

I've a charming stomach.

TOBY-DOG

But no, it's your nose that's charming. You just said so.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

My stomach too. There's none more fastidious, more whimsical, stronger and at the same time more delicate. It digests the bones of sole, but meat that's the least bit tainted literally turns it.

TOBY-DOG

Literally's the word. You have _active_ indigestion.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

Yes, the whole house is affected by it. From the very first qualms I'm in terrible distress; the earth gives way under me, my eyes dilate, I hurriedly swallow quant.i.ties of salty saliva; involuntary, ventriloquial cries escape me, my sides bulge out--

TOBY-DOG, (_disgusted_)

I say, if it's all the same to you, tell me the rest after dinner.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

I'm hungry. Where can He be?

TOBY-DOG

He's there, in his study, scratching paper.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

He's always doing that. It's a game. Two-Paws play at the same thing for hours and hours. I've often tried to scratch paper gently, as He does, but the pleasure doesn't last long. I prefer newspapers torn into shreds that rustle and fly ... There is a little pot of dark-violet, muddy water on his table. I never sniff it without horror, since the day a rather foolish curiosity made me dip my paw into it. This very paw, so strong and aristocratic, (the tufts of useless hair you see between my toes proclaim the purity of my race) this very paw bore a bluish stain for eight days and the degrading odor of rusty steel clung to it a long time after ...

TOBY-DOG

What's the little pot for?

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

He drinks from it doubtless.

(_Silence_.)

TOBY-DOG

She's not back yet! Heaven grant She isn't lost, as I was one day in the streets of Paris!

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

I'm hungry!

TOBY-DOG

I'm hungry! What are we going to eat this evening?

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

I saw a chicken. It made a silly noise and dropped red blood on the kitchen floor, soiling it far more than I ever did, or you either--yet no one whipped it. But Emily put it in the fire, to teach it a lesson. I licked up some of the blood ...

TOBY-DOG, (_yawns_)

Chicken ... it makes my mouth water. She'll say: "Here Toby, bones!" and throw me the carca.s.s.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

How badly you speak! He says: "Little chicken bones, Kiki, little chicken bones!"

TOBY-DOG, (_surprised_)

But no _really_ it's, "Here, Toby, bones!" that She says.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

He speaks better than She does.

TOBY-DOG, (_incompetent_)

Ah?... Tell me, do birds taste anything like chicken?

KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_whose eyes light up suddenly_)

No ... they're far better, they're alive. Ha, the quivering bird, the warm feathers, the delicious little brain ... you feel it all crackling between your teeth!

TOBY-DOG

Oh, you make me sick! It always worries me to see tiny animals like that flutter about ... and birds are dear, good little things.