sole gradually assumes the aspect of a Polyphemus outwitted--outwitted
and humiliated to the point of not even being able to throw things
after his tormentor. Clever cat! Nobody else's cat could have done
such a thing. We should like to celebrate the Rape of the Dover Sole
in Latin verse.

As for the Achillean sort of prowess, we do not demand it of a cat,
but we are proud of it when it exists. There is a pleasure in seeing
strange cats fly at his approach, either in single file over the wall
or in the scattered aimlessness of a bursting bomb. Theoretically, we
hate him to fight, but, if he does fight and comes home with a torn
ear, we have to summon up all the resources of our finer nature in
order not to rejoice on noticing that the cat next door looks as
though it had been through a railway accident. I am sorry for the cat
next door. I hate him so, and it must be horrible to be hated. But he
should not sit on my wall and look at me with yellow eyes. If his eyes
were any other colour--even the blue that is now said to be the mark
of the runaway husband--I feel certain I could just manage to endure
him. But they are the sort of yellow eyes that you expect to see
looking out at you from a hole in the panelling in a novel by Mr Sax
Rohmer. The only reason why I am not frightened of them is that the
cat is so obviously frightened of me. I never did him any injury
unless to hate is to injure. But he lowers his head when I appear as
though he expected to be guillotined. He does not run away: he merely
crouches like a guilty thing. Perhaps he remembers how often he has
stepped delicately over my seed-beds, but not so delicately as to
leave no mark of ruin among the infant lettuces and the
less-than-infant autumn-sprouting broccoli. These things I could
forgive him, but it is not easy to forgive him the look in his eyes
when he watches a bird at its song. They are ablaze with evil. He