I’m hungry and I don’t hear the plates.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

... your truffle of a nose works up and down and makes another wrinkle in your irregular mug.

TOBY-DOG

She always says, “his square muzzle, his wrinkled truffle,” so tenderly and so lovingly!

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

...  And you think of nothing but eating.

TOBY-DOG

It’s your empty stomach that scolds and complains and wants to quarrel with me.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

I’ve a charming stomach.

TOBY-DOG

But no, it’s your nose that’s charming.  You just said so.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

My stomach too.  There’s none more fastidious, more whimsical, stronger and at the same time more delicate.  It digests the bones of sole, but meat that’s the least bit tainted literally turns it.

TOBY-DOG

Literally’s the word.  You have active indigestion.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

Yes, the whole house is affected by it.  From the very first qualms I’m in terrible distress; the earth gives way under me, my eyes dilate, I hurriedly swallow quantities of salty saliva; involuntary, ventriloquial cries escape me, my sides bulge out—­

TOBY-DOG, (disgusted)

I say, if it’s all the same to you, tell me the rest after dinner.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

I’m hungry.  Where can He be?

TOBY-DOG

He’s there, in his study, scratching paper.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

He’s always doing that.  It’s a game.  Two-Paws play at the same thing for hours and hours.  I’ve often tried to scratch paper gently, as He does, but the pleasure doesn’t last long.  I prefer newspapers torn into shreds that rustle and fly ...  There is a little pot of dark-violet, muddy water on his table.  I never sniff it without horror, since the day a rather foolish curiosity made me dip my paw into it.  This very paw, so strong and aristocratic, (the tufts of useless hair you see between my toes proclaim the purity of my race) this very paw bore a bluish stain for eight days and the degrading odor of rusty steel clung to it a long time after ...

TOBY-DOG

What’s the little pot for?

KIKI-THE-DEMURE