I drop a small pebble. It wakes up and regards me stoically for a
moment. Nothing more.
These cats have lost their all--their self-respect. Grace and ardour,
sleekness of coat and buoyancy of limbs are gone out of them. Tails are
knotted with hunger and neglect; bones protrude through the skin. So
they strew the ground in discomposed, un-catlike attitudes, while the
sun burns through their parched anatomy. Do they remember their
kittenish pranks, those moonlight ecstasies on housetops, that morsel
snatched from a fishmonger's barrow and borne through the crowded
traffic in a series of delirious leaps? Who can tell! They are not even
bored with themselves. Their fur is in patches. They are alive when they
ought to be dead. Nobody knows it better than they do. They are too ill,
too far gone, to feel any sense of shame at their present degradation.
Nothing matters! What would Baudelaire, that friend of cats, have said
to this macabre exhibition?
Yonder is an old one, giving milk to the phantom of a kitten. The parent
takes no interest in the proceedings; she lies prone, her head on the
ground. Her eyes have a stony look. Is she dead? Possibly. Her own
kitten? Who cares! Her neighbour, once white but now earth-coloured,
rises stiffly as though dubious whether the joints are still in working
order. What does she think of doing? It would seem she has formed no
plan. She walks up to the mother, peers intently into her face, then
sits apart on her haunches and begins gazing at the sun.
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