the cat - World eBook Library

Mentu
=THE CAT
The wild nature in Mentu is as strong as his
inbred civilization; and the two are at strife to-
gether. His heart and his appetite lead him back
and back to the house; keep him there for days
together, a dainty fine gentleman, warm-hearted,
capricious. But the spirit of the wild creature
rises in him, and the night comes when, at bedtime,
no Mentu is waiting at the door to be let in; or
in the evening, as he hears the wind rise and stir
the branches, even while the rain beats on the
window pane, the compelling power of out-of-doors
is on him, and he must go ; and when the window
is lifted, and the night air streams in, there is but
one leap into the darkness.
He will return early in the morning, tired and
satiate, or spring in some evening as the dusk
gathers, with gleaming eyes where the light of
the wild woods flickers and dies down in the com-
fortable firelight of an English home.
This is the true cat, the real Mentu, this wild
creature who must go on his mysterious errands;
or who, I rather believe it, plunges out to revel in
the intoxication of innumerable scents, unaccounted
sounds, and the half-revealed forms of wood and
field in twilight, in darkness, or in dawn. In his
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