For whatever cause, when, soon after breakfast, Madam Grey appeared on the scene, she proceeded at once and in silence to the highest bare peak of the hills, a sightly place where she could overlook the thick green forest, with its shady walks and cool retreats, and have timely notice of any approach from the street. On that point she found or made a slight depression, and there she calmly dressed her fur, and then, wrapping her robe around her (so to speak), slept hours at a time.
She never did anything on the lot except sleep, and she seemed totally blind to the attractions of nature. I never saw her notice anything. As soon as she awoke she went back through the humble portal to her flat.
This piece of woods was not merely a pleasure-ground. It was a hunting-field as well, and the denizens of its quiet shades were not at all averse to a little excitement of the chase, nor to a taste now and then of wild game of their own catching. What was there I know not, but I judge from the spasmodic character of the hunt that it was grasshoppers.
The silver tabby and the white-and-black, who were daily visitors to the place, never quarreled with each other, and their intercourse, when they happened to meet on the common highway, was conducted in the courteous and dignified manner of the race.
Cats are popularly supposed to dislike wet, but I have seen two of them in a steady rain conduct an interview with all the gravity and deliberation for which these affairs are celebrated. The slow approach, with frequent pauses to sit down and meditate, or "view the landscape o'er," the earnest and musical--if melancholy--exchange of salutations, the almost imperceptible drawing nearer, with the slightly waving tail the only sign of excitement, and at last the instantaneous dash, the slap or scratch (so rapid one can never tell which), the fiery expletive and retort, and the instant retreat, to sit down again. There seems to be some canon of feline etiquette which forbids two to meet and pass without solemn formalities of this sort, reminding one of the ceremonious greetings of the Orient, where time is of no particular value.
The silver tabby was an original, and had a way of his own. He seemed impatient of these serious rites, and when within three feet of his _vis-à-vis_ he usually gave one great leap over the intervening space, administered his salute,--whatever it was,--and passed on. This cat was peculiar in other ways. Sometimes he had the whole wood to himself, and it was charming to see him wander in his leisurely way all over it, smelling daintily of this and that, now tasting a leaf, now looking intently at some creeper or crawler on the ground, now sitting down to enjoy the seclusion and the silence of the wood. He was a philosopher, or a lover of nature,