DOGS AND CATS.

Alexander Dumas.

IT is admitted that the dog has intelligence, a heart and perhaps a soul, likewise it is agreed that the cat is a traitor, deceiver, thief, an egotist, an ingrate. How many have we not heard say: “Oh, I cannot abide a cat! it is an animal that loves not its master; it is attached only to the house; one must keep it under lock and key. I had one once, for I was in the country and there were mice. The cook had the imprudence to leave upon the table a poulet that she had just purchased; the cat carried it off, no morsel of it was ever seen after. Since that day I have said: ‘I will have no cat.’” Its reputation is detestable, the fact cannot be disguised, and one must acknowledge that the cat does nothing to modify the opinion in which it is held. It is entirely unpopular, but it cares as little about this as it does about the Grand Turk. Must I confess it to you? It is for this that I love it, for in this world one can remain indifferent to things the most serious—if there are serious things, and this one knows only at the end of his life; but he cannot evade the question of dogs and cats. There is always a moment when he must declare himself. Well, then! I love cats! Ah! the times they have said to me:

“What, you love cats?”

“Yes!”

“Do you not like dogs better?”

“No, I love cats much more.”

“That is extraordinary.”

I prefer certainly to have neither cat nor dog, but were I forced to live with one of these two individuals, I would choose the cat. It has for me the manners essential to social relations. At first, in its early youth, it possesses all the graces, all the suppleness, all the unexpectedness by which the most exacting, artistic fancy can be amused! It is adroit, it always knows where it is. Prudent unto caution, it goes everywhere, it examines without soiling, breaking nothing; it is in itself a warmth and a caress; it has not a snout, but a mouth—and what a mouth! It steals the mutton as does the dog, but, unlike the latter, makes no delight of carrion; it is discreet and of fastidious cleanliness, which might be well imitated by a number of its detractors. It washes its face, and in so doing foretells the weather into the bargain. One can entertain the idea of putting a ribbon around its neck, never a collar; it cannot be enslaved. It permits no modifications in its race; it lends itself to no combinations that industries could attempt. The cat reflects, this is obvious, contrary to the dog, a lackbrain whose rabies is his crowning idiocy. In short, the cat is a dignified, proud, disdainful animal that hides its love affairs in the shadows, almost within the clouds, upon the roofs, in the vicinity of the night-working students. It defies advances, tolerates no insults, it abandons the house in which it is not treated according to its merits; in short, the cat is truly an aristocrat in type and origin, whereas the dog is and ever will be naught but a vulgar parvenu by dint of complaisance.

The sole argument at all plausible against the cat is that it destroys the birds, the nightingales as well as the sparrows. If the dog does not as much it is because he is too clumsy and stupid. He runs also after the birds, but barking, the birds escape him, and he stays behind completely dumbfounded, open-mouthed and with astonished tail. He makes up for it upon the partridges and rabbits, after two years’ submission to the strong collar in order to learn this art, and it is not for himself, but for the hunter, that he goes in quest of game. The imbecile! He persecutes the animals, an animal himself, for the profit of the man who beats him. At least, when the cat catches a bird she has an excuse; it is to eat it herself. Why would that authorize man to slander her? Let men regard one another! They will see in their race, as in that of cats, those who have claws and have no other preoccupation but to destroy those who have wings.