(Previously published)
Sometimes it pays off to have a chat with one's dinner. Especially if you're a cat about to set teeth in a poisoned mouse or rat. An everyday event, one may say, but not to the ones who are to be eaten ot to die from eating something unhealthy.
This time the main characters of this everyday drama was Greg the mouse who was about to be eaten by Beauty, the cat. At the exact moment her teeth were about to dig into poor Greg he said in a very polite tone of voice: "Eh', excuse me, but that's not good for you, Madame Cat."
Never before had Beauty's dinner talked to her except by excessive cursings or prayers for mercy so she was very, very surprised as this happened. Also she was surprised by the polite tone in this small, but tasty treat. She looked at him in amazement when he once more began to speak: "Yes, I'm dangerous to anybody who eats me because I had the misfortune to mistake some rat poison for food the other day."
"Rat poison?!!" Beauty exclaimed. "Had you eaten rat poison you would be dead by now."
"I don't feel all too well so I'm sure to die soon, maybe in a few minutes. No matter when I die, even as a corpse I shall be a lethal meal. Yes, even for your strong stomach, Madame Cat."
"What nonsense is this?" Beauty exclaimed, "It can't have been rat poison or you would sure have been dead long ago ..."
"Everybody else who had it died," Greg said, starting to wipe his eyes with his long tail and with a woeful expression on his face. "Oh, such pain they suffered before dying. It was all so very sad, you would not want to experience anything like that. Especially not when you have all those bright and pretty young ones to look after ..."
"What do you know about my children? How did you know they are pretty and bright?"
"I'm sure they take after you, Madame Cat," Greg said with a sneaky smirk on his face.
Like all cats Beauty always succumbed to flattery of all kinds. If somebody told her that she was pretty she looooved that person no matter what. Still, the sly expression on the small mousy face made her distrust him. - Even though he is small he is a master of flattery, she thought to herself, and I bet he is an expert liar too.
"You, sir," she said, looking at him with a stern glance, "you are a most disdainful liar. Just because you don't want to be eaten you take to lying and that's the truth." Having said this she - oh horror of horrors - grabbed him and ate him, tail, ears, whiskers and the rest, in one gulp. After having done so she at once started to feel a little worried because didn't her stomach behave somewhat strangely? Wasn't it upset in some way and hadn't she better lie down? Maybe Greg had been right so that by now she had been poisened? Feeling more and more nauseated she decided to lie down . Unfortunately, she felt so worried and insecure of herself and her own judgment that she didn't even hear the actually not all that soft patterings of paws behind her until she felt the teeth of the Jones-family's dog, Tarzan, in her neck.
"Help!" she screamt at the top of her voice, but nobody seemed to hear her or came to her rescue. A fact which made Tarzan laugh out loudly and triumphantly.
"You stupid and ugly, old cat, you homeless bag of fleas, that's for lying down and not staying alert to dogs."
"I had to lie down," she yelled, "I'm sick!"
"Sick? Ha! I don't believe you."
"I've just eaten Greg the Mouse even though he was contaminated by rat poison and now my stomach is very upset."
"Oh, my God!" Tarzan exclaimed. "That's awful." He at once let go of her neck, but still pinned her down with one of his large paws.
"Yeeees," she whined, "and I feel so sick. Everything is getting black right before my eyes and I'm awfully dizzy ..."
"Not good, no, not good, especially as you're a mother of young ones. Maybe I better snap your neck to bring you out of your misery ...."
"What?!!! No, no, and besides, that would contaminate your teeth or your tongue would rot - it may already have started - so that you too may die in agony."
"Hmmmm," he said, "you may have a point, but as I didn't bite you until you bled I think I shall be all right."
"Do you mind removing your paw from my back, it makes me even more nausated to be pinned down like that? I may even come to be sick on your beautiful paw."
"If I did you would run and that wouldn't be right to either you or the little ones now that I know that you're poisonous. When nursing them your milk would kill them and you yourself would suffer a most painful death so I think I had better snap your neck right away ..."
In one flash of a moment Beauty realized that this stupid dog might actually kill her so she decided to fight the only way she could, i.e. by crying for help. "Help! Help!" she wailed and this time one of the two legged ones came running. It turned out to be the owner of Tarzan and she grabbed him by his collar and lifted him off her.
"Oh no, you poor, homeless thing," she said letting go of Tarzan and taking Beauty into her protective arms. Tarzan was very upset at this new development in the otherwise so nice dog-eats-cat drama, especially as he soon after this incident saw Beauty and her boisterous brood sitting in HIS sitting-room with HIS human being and eating HIS food while she was being petted by everyone in HIS house. To his dismay she looked fit as a fiddle, also whenever anybody mentioned Greg to her in the days to come. However, when that happened she frowned and said, full of disgust:
"Such a liar! He hadn't eaten poison at all, only wanted to scare me. I'm glad I ate him."
As to Tarzan then he was beyond himself with regret that he hadn't eaten the damn cat, this ugly criminal, such a lying mothball, who took over HIS family, HIS house and HIS favorite sleeping place: The lap of his beloved Mistress.
© Else Cederborg
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