Barks and Purrs | Page 9

himself, arches his back, yawns,--to show the rosy lining of
his mouth, and then walks to the open basket where he lies down with
an admirable air of quiet insolence. He and She exchange eloquent
glances.)

DINNER IS LATE
A parlor, in the country, at the close of a long summer's day.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE and TOBY-DOG doze; ears twitching and
eyelids obstinately shut. Now KIKI'S lids part in a narrow slit, and
disclose eyes the color of purple grapes. He yawns, with the ferocious
expression of a small dragon.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (haughtily)
You're snoring!
TOBY-DOG, (who was not really asleep)
I'm not; it's you.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
Impossible! I don't snore, I purr.
TOBY-DOG
Same thing.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (not condescending to a discussion)
Thank heaven, it isn't! (A silence.)
I'm hungry. One doesn't hear the noise of plates in the next room. Isn't
it dinner time?
TOBY-DOG, (gets up, slowly stretches his forepaws and yawns,
darting forth a heraldic tongue with curly end) I don't know ... I'm
hungry.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
Where is She? How is it you're not at her heels?

TOBY-DOG, (embarrassed, nibbling his nails)
She's in the garden I believe, picking up plums.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
Those yellow balls that rain about one's ears? I know them. You've
seen her then? I bet She scolded you ... What have you been doing
now?
TOBY-DOG, (self-conscious, turning away his wrinkled, toad-like
face)
She told me to return to the house because--because I too, was eating
plums.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
She did well! You have depraved tastes--the tastes of men.
TOBY-DOG, (offended)
Say--no one ever sees me eating bad fish! And never, never will I
understand how you can go into such fits over a dead frog, or that herb.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
Valerian.
TOBY-DOG
That's it, I guess ... An herb--is medicine, isn't it?
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
Medicine, indeed! Valerian ... but no you, can't understand ... I've seen
Her laugh and go on, as I do over the valerian, after having emptied a
glass of fetid wine that jumped dangerously too. As for the dead
frog--so dead that it seems a bit of dry russia leather in the form of a

frog--it's a sachet, impregnated with rare musk, with which I wish to
scent my fur.
TOBY-DOG
Oh, you talk very well--but She always scolds and says that you smell
bad after it, and He says the same thing.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
They're nothing but Two-Paws, both of them. You, poor thing, belittle
yourself by seeking to imitate them. You stand on your hind legs, wear
a coat when it rains, eat plums--for shame!--and those big green balls,
the malicious trees let fall sometimes, when I'm passing underneath.
TOBY-DOG
Apples?
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
Very likely. She picks one up and throws it down the path, crying:
"Apple, Toby, apple," and you rush after, in unseemly fashion, gasping
for breath, looking like a fool, your tongue and your eyes sticking
out....
TOBY-DOG, (scowling, head resting on his paws)
One takes one's pleasures where one finds them.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (yawning, shows his pointed teeth and his
palate of pink velvet)
I'm hungry. Dinner is surely late tonight. Suppose you look for Her?
TOBY-DOG
I daren't. She forbade it. She is down there in the hollow, with a big
basket. The dew is falling and wetting her feet and the sun's going away.

But you know how She is. She sits on the damp ground, looking ahead
of her, as if She were asleep--or lies flat on her stomach, whistling and
watching an ant in the grass ... She tears up a handful of wild thyme
and smells it, or calls the tomtits and the jays--who never come to her
by any chance. She takes a heavy watering pot and--ugh! it gives me
the shivers--pours thousands of icy, silvery threads over the roses or
into the hollows of those little stone troughs, 'way back in the woods. I
always look in to see the head of a brindle-bull who comes to meet me
and to drink up the pictures of the leaves, but She pulls me back by the
collar with: "Toby, Toby, that water is for the birds." ... Then She takes
out her knife and opens nuts, fifty, a hundred nuts, and forgets the
time ... There's no end to the things She does.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (slyly)
And what do you do all that time?
TOBY-DOG
I--well--I just wait for her.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
I admire you!
TOBY-DOG
Once in a while, squatting down, She eagerly scratches the earth, toils
and sweats over it; then I jump 'round her, delighted to see her at
something so useful and so familiar. But her feeble scent deceives her. I
never smell mole, or shrew-mouse-of-the-rosy-paws, in the holes She
digs. And how explain her utter lack of purpose? Presently, falling back
on her haunches, She brandishes a hairy-rooted herb and cries: "I have
it, the jade!" I