‘Yes! Signora Countessa,’ answered the cameriera. ‘See, there are the bones on the floor, where he always leaves them.’
The Countessa could not deny the testimony of her eyes, so she said nothing more but went up to bed.
The cat followed her as he always did, for he slept on her bed; but he followed at a distance, without purring or rubbing himself against her. The Countess saw something was wrong, but she didn’t know what to make of it, and went to bed as usual.
That night the cat throttled3 the Countess, and killed her.
The cat is very intelligent in his own interest, but he is a traitor.
‘It would have been more intelligent,’ I observed, ‘if he had throttled the waiting woman in this instance.’
This is quite true, for cats are always traitors. Dogs are faithful, cats are traitors.4
[Perhaps this tale would have been hardly worth printing, but that the selfsame story was told me as a positive fact by an Irishman, who could not have come across the Italian story. In the Irish version it was its master the cat killed; in the wording of the narrator he ‘cut his throat.’]
1 ‘Il Gatto della Contessa.’ ↑
2 ‘Il gatto non dissi niente, ma guardava con certi occhi grossi, grossi, fissi.’ ↑
3 ‘Strozzato,’ throttled; killed by wounding the strozzo, throat. ↑
4 ‘E questo è un fatto vero, sa; perchè il gatto è traditore sempre. Il cane e fedele si, ma il gatto è traditore.’ ↑
‘Why do dogs and cats always fight, papa?’ we used to say.
And he used to answer, ‘I’ll tell you why;’ and we all stood round listening.
‘Once on a time dogs and cats were very good friends, and when the dogs went out of town they left their cards on the cats, and when the cats went out of town they left their cards on the dogs.’
And we all sat round and listened and laughed.
‘Once the dogs all went out of town and left their cards as usual on the cats; but they were a long time gone, for they were gone on a rat-hunt, and killed all the rats. When the cats heard that the dogs had taken to killing rats, they were furious against the dogs, and lay in wait for them and set upon them.
‘“Set upon the dogs! at them! give it them!”’2 shouted the cats, as they flew at them; and from that time to this, dogs and cats never meet without fighting.
And we all stood round and laughed fit to split our sides.
[Scheible, Schaltjahr I., 375, gives a more humorous version of this.]