Lola with superb feminine
disregard of legal rights, annexed the whole cattery, maintained Quast
in his position of pupil and assistant and informed the landlord that
she would be responsible for the rent. Then she set to work to bring the
cats into their proper condition of sleekness, and, that done, to put
them through a systematic course of training. They had been thoroughly
demoralised, she declared, under Quast's maladministration, and had
almost degenerated into the unhistrionic pussies of domestic life. As
for Hephaestus, the great ferocious tom, he was more like an insane
tiger than a cat. He flew at the gate over which he used to jump,
and clawed and bit it to matchwood, and after spitting in fury at
the blazing hoop, sprang at the unhappy Quast as if he had been the
contriver of the indignities to which he was being subjected. These
tales of feline backsliding I used to hear from Lola, and when I asked
her why she devoted her energies to the unproductive education of the
uninspiring animals, she would shrug her shoulders and regard me with a
Giaconda smile.
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