Indeed, though the whole history of the Black and White Dynasties has been told and retold until it is as familiar as fairy stories, it must bear yet one more telling, because of the melancholy incompleteness of any cat-book from which it were omitted. Like Gray's verses to the ill-fated Selima, like the legend of Dick Whittington, like Puss-in-Boots, or the oft-repeated tale of Mohammed's Muezza, it is part of the annals of cathood. To exclude this narrative because of its charming familiarity, would be like excluding the Crusades, the tournaments, the Cavaliers, from England's glorious chronicles. Great Pasht forbid that the history of pussies should be written from the blue-book and statistic point of view; or that the shades of Madame Théophile, of Eponine, of Don Pierrot, and Gavroche should ever cease to smile upon their little brothers and sisters who frolic by our hearths to-day.
The parrot that figures so dramatically in Gautier's story was not by rights a member of the ménagerie. It was sent to the poet's hospitable home to be entertained during its owner's absence from Paris, and the fact that Madame Théophile had never before seen such a bird, intensified the interest of their meeting. "Motionless as a cat mummy in its swathing-bands," says Gautier, "she fixed a profoundly meditative gaze upon the creature, summoning to her aid all the notions of natural history
