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Lives of Two Cats

Chapter 18: (XVI)
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About This Book

The narrator recalls two household cats—an Angora and a gray cat often called Chinese—whose characters and daily habits are rendered in affectionate vignettes. The prose interweaves playful episodes and quiet domestic rituals: sunlit idleness, nocturnal wanderings, encounters with family members and a resident tortoise, and small mischiefs. Alongside concrete scenes, the account offers gentle reflections on animal consciousness, loyalty, attachment, aging, and loss. Moving through seasons and modest adventures, these sketches compose a tender portrait of companionship that doubles as a meditation on memory, the passage of time, and the comfort and sorrow found in close domestic bonds.

(XVI)

THEY were much spoiled, the two cats; admitted to the dining-room at meal times; often seated one on my right and the other on my left; recalling to me, occasionally, their presence by a light stroke of the paw on my napkin, and watching for tit-bits that I fed them surreptitiously, like a guilty schoolboy, from the tip of my fork.

In recording this, I still farther darken my reputation, which, it seems, is already reputed incorrect and eccentric. I can however criticise a certain member of the Academy, who, having done me the honor of dining at my table, did not refrain from offering to our pussies, even in his own spoon, a little Chantilly cream.