Felidae on the Road - Special U.S. Edition Read Online Free PDF Page B

the matter open for at least a little longer. After all, we'd been faithful friends for years, ever since my birth, in fact. We'd come through many difficult times and celebrated many a happy event together. How about love ... was there no love left in this dark world? No trust? Once upon a time Gustav had really and truly loved me more than anything else ...
    But before they cuddled up and - this you will hardly believe - before they started making 'love' in their own disgusting way after discussing this very subject, he just said, 'All right' and 'I'll take him in tomorrow.' 'Traitor!' I felt like screeching. 'You double-crossing two-timing traitor!' But I didn't. Why not? Well, what would you expect of creatures - never mind the individual exceptions - who will train dogs to tear each other apart, who put rings through the sensitive noses of bears and tug them about by those rings to the wild applause of the crowd, and who regard the public butchering of some poor bull as the peak of virility? Would you expect trust? Pity? Respect? Even the devil keeps his pacts signed in blood. To date, however, man hasn't honoured a single clause in the contract we made with him back in primeval times when he depended on us for everything. Or to call upon my good old teacher Schopenhauer for another quotation: 'Man is a fierce wild animal at heart. We know that animal only in the tamed condition of restraint known as civilisation, and so the occasional outbreaks of its true nature horrify us. But wherever, whenever the padlock and chain of law and order fall away and anarchy sets in, then we see what man is.' And that's not the only time, I might add.
    I turned away from the two wild animals who were copulating again, unmoved by the prospect of their small friend's mutilation, ran across the kitchen and the bathroom and jumped up on the window-sill. Before me stretched the dark gardens, wet with rain, like a sinister threat. Behind me lay what in spite of occasional vexations had once seemed the best of all possible worlds. I would have liked to die in that world when my hour came. Faded pictures which I thought I'd eradicated from the memory centres of my brain rose before my mind's eye, like flowers from an up-ended cornucopia, accompanied by sweet hurdy-gurdy music. I went back over our happy days in my mind, including that episode when I laid the first mouse I ever caught on Gustav's desk as a kind of sacrificial lamb, out of pure respect. It was only half eaten, too. Yes, there had been sad times as well. But hadn't I been the ideal therapy for him, snuggling under the bedclothes in the dark of night and soaking up his tears in my fur? Hadn't he always introduced me to his few friends as his 'son'? He used to make out it was a joke, but he really meant it in all seriousness. What evil spell had so bewitched my 'father' that his heart had suddenly turned to granite?
    Tears came into my eyes, ran down my nose and dripped off my chin. The patter of the rain provided a melancholy accompaniment to my bleak mood, and I suddenly saw, with crystal clarity, all I'd have to give up if I left home now. Obviously I couldn't cast about for a new home anywhere in the neighbourhood, because Gustav would be sure to get a search operation going in the morning. No, I must go far, far away, even leave town, go where Missing notices tacked to tree-trunks and ads in the Lost and Found columns of newspapers wouldn't work. Well, asked the optimist in my head (not a fellow who inspires a lot of confidence), haven't you been feeling very keen on the country life recently? Here's your chance. It was hard to say if he meant it seriously or if he was stifling roars of laughter. I hope you realise, said the pessimist in me, that you'd have to accept a few alterations to your diet, to put it mildly? Particularly where quantity of food is concerned - always supposing you find any food at all. This pessimist made a deep impression on me - yet there was something