purring of the cat, and it seemed to him that the cat was angrily
muttering, "Small, small, small...."

And the bear whispers: "He's no giant, but what a glutton! Why, we
couldn't get through a quarter of that, and he finds it not enough.
Heaven help us if he comes after us!"

The wolf tried to see, but could not, because his head, all but his
nose, was covered with the dry leaves. Little by little he moved his
head, so as to clear the leaves away from in front of his eyes. Try as
he would to be quiet, the leaves rustled, so little, ever so little,
but enough to be heard by the one ear of the cat.

The cat stopped tearing the meat and listened.

"I haven't caught a mouse to-day," he thought.

Once more the leaves rustled.

The cat leapt through the air and dropped with all four paws, and his
claws out, on the nose of the wolf. How the wolf yelped! The leaves
flew like dust, and the wolf leapt up and ran off as fast as his legs
could carry him.

Well, the wolf was frightened, I can tell you, but he was not so
frightened as the cat.

When the great wolf leapt up out of the leaves, the cat screamed and
ran up the nearest tree, and that was the tree where Michael
Ivanovitch the bear was hiding in the topmost branches.