A MOVING STORY OF A CAT AND A PARROT.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume V, Issue 49, 6 December 1890, Page 19

A MOVING STORY OF A CAT AND A PARROT.

The history of all Gautier’s cats, as given in the ‘ Menagarie Intime,’ is delightful enough, but perhaps the most interesting of all was the animal known as Madame Theophile. This creature’s first introduction to a parrot, which Gautier was taking care of for a friend, took place under his own eyes, and his description of it is an instance of bis keen observation and sympathy. The parrot, which apparently was an Amazon, perplexed at his new lodging, had climbed to the highest point of its stand and remained there, rolling its steely eyes and workring its nicitating membrane. Madame Theophile, the eat, who had never seen a parrot before, regarded the strange creature with astonishment. Immovable as a mummied Egyptian cat, she looked, lost in thought, at the bird, recalling all the ideas on natural history which she had gathered in the garden and on the roof trees. Her shifting eyes alone conveyed her thoughts, and these thoughts were ‘ Then here is a green chicken.’ Having arrived at this conclusion, the cat leapt from the table to a corner of the room, where she lay in an attitude like that of Gerdme’s black panther watching the gazelles. The parrot followed the cat’s movements with a feverish eagerness. He rutiled his feathers, he rattled his chain, he lifted one of his hands and examined ite nails attentively, and he scrabbled his beak on the edge of his food-can. Instinct bade him beware of an enemy on his track. The cat’s eyes were fixed on the bird with a deadly charm, and these eyes said, in a language which was probably intelligible to the parrot, ‘ This fowl is green, but all the same it must be good to eat.’ Gautier, noting all this, watched the animal comedy, ready to intervene if intervention were needed. The cat drew nearer and nearer to the parrot’s stand ; her pink nose palpitated, her eyes half closed, her daws, like the feet immortalised by Suckling, went in and out. Suddenly she arched her back and with a feline bound leapt to the foot of the parrot’s stand. The parrot met the danger half way, and received the cat with a phrase delivered in a pompous bass voice, ‘ As-tu dejeune, Jacquot ?’ This phrase filled the cat with an indescribable terror, and caused it to leap backwards. A flourish of trumpets, an earthquake of broken crockery, a pistol discharged by its ear, could not have caused the cat a more headlong alarm. All the creature’s ideas on ornithology were completely upset. The parrot continued its triumphant speech with the words, • Et de quoi ? De roti du roi !’ Then the cars face said as plainly as possible, ‘ This is no bird. This is a gentleman. Listen to his conversation.’ Then the parrot, pursuing his advantage, burst at the top of his voice into the refrain of a drinking song. On this the cat cast one desperate look of interrogation upon Gautier, and fled in despair under the bed, where it remained for all the rest of the day.