much. They think I am asleep, and so they are not afraid to
talk before me; but my ears are open when my eyes are shut.'

'You surprise me,' said the Dog. 'I never listen to them, except when I
take notice of them, and then they never talk of anything except of me.'

'I could tell you a thing or two about yourself which you don't know,'
said the Cat. 'You have never heard, I dare say, that once upon a time
your fathers lived in a temple, and that people prayed to them.'

'Prayed! what is that?'

'Why, they went on their knees to you to ask you to give them good
things, just as you stand on your toes to them now to ask for your
breakfast. You don't know either that you have got one of those bright
things we see up in the air at night called after you.'

'Well, it is just what I said,' answered the Dog. 'I told you it was all
made for us. They never did anything of that sort for you?'

'Didn't they? Why, there was a whole city where the people did nothing
else, and as soon as we got stiff and couldn't move about any more,
instead of being put under the ground like poor Tom, we used to be
stuffed full of all sorts of nice things, and kept better than we were
when we were alive.'

'You are a very wise Cat,' answered her companion; 'but what good is it
knowing all this?'

'Why, don't you see,' said she, 'they don't do it any more. We are going
down in the world, we are, and that is why living on in this way is such
an unsatisfactory sort of thing. I don't mean to complain for myself,
and you needn't, Dog; we have a quiet life of it; but a quiet life is
not the thing, and if there is nothing to be done except sleep and eat,
and eat and sleep, why, as I said before, I don't see the use of it.
There is something more in it than that; there was once, and there will
be again, and I sha'n't be happy till I find it out. It is a shame, Dog,
I say. The men have been here only a few thousand years, and we--why, we
have been here hundreds of thousands; if we are older, we ought to be
wiser. I'll go and ask the creatures in the wood.'

'You'll learn more from the men,' said the Dog.

'They are stupid, and they don't know what I say to them; besides, they
are so conceited they care for nothing except themselves. No, I shall
try what I can do in the woods. I'd as soon go after poor Tom as stay
living any longer like this.'

'And where is poor Tom?' yawned the Dog.

'That is just one of the things I want to know,' answered she