This Pit, This
Crater Of Flame, Is Their "Home For The Dying." Once Down Here, Nothing
Matters Any More.
They are safe at last from their old enemies, from
dogs and carriages and boys.
Waiting for death, they move about in a
stupid and dazed manner. Sunlight streams down upon their bodies. One
would think they preferred to expire in the shade of some pillar or
slab. Apparently not. Apparently it is all the same. It matters nothing
where one dies.
There is one immediately below me, a moth-eaten desiccated
tortoiseshell; its eyes are closed and a red tongue hangs out of the
mouth. I drop a small pebble. It wakes up and regards me stoically for a
moment. Nothing more.
These cats have lost their all - their self-respect. Grace and ardour,
sleekness of coat and buoyancy of limbs are gone out of them. Tails are
knotted with hunger and neglect; bones protrude through the skin. So
they strew the ground in discomposed, un-catlike attitudes, while the
sun burns through their parched anatomy. Do they remember their
kittenish pranks, those moonlight ecstasies on housetops, that morsel
snatched from a fishmonger's barrow and borne through the crowded
traffic in a series of delirious leaps? Who can tell! They are not even
bored with themselves. Their fur is in patches. They are alive when they
ought to be dead. Nobody knows it better than they do. They are too ill,
too far gone, to feel any sense of shame at their present degradation.
Nothing matters!
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