THE CAT 



An Encounter 



One day a friend, who was going away for a 

 few weeks, left his parrot in our care. The bird, 

 homesick and unquiet, climbed to the top of his 

 perch, and rolled his golden eyes warily, wrinkling 

 the white membrane which served for eyelids. My 

 cat, Madame Theophile, had never before seen a 

 parrot, and this strange creature filled her with 

 amazement. Motionless as a cat mummy in its 

 swathing bands, she fixed a profoundly meditative 

 gaze upon the stranger, summoning to her aid all 

 the notions of natural history which she had picked 

 up on the roofs and in the garden. The shadow of 

 her thoughts passed over her changing eyes, and we 

 could read in them the results of her scrutiny: 

 " Decidedly it is a green chicken." 



This much ascertained, the cat leaped from the 

 table which she had made her observatory, and 

 crouched low in a corner of the room, flattening 

 herself on the ground, like Gerome's black panther 

 which watches the gazelles coming down to drink 

 from the lake. The parrot followed her move- 

 ments with feverish anxiety. He ruffled his feath- 

 ers, shook his chain, raised one claw after another, 

 and whetted his beak on the side of his drinking 

 cup. Instinct told him that here was an enemy 



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