A traveler, in other words my friend, was journeying on foot to the house
of a companion - not me - where he was going to spend the night. He had
been walking all day, and even though it was already late and night was
coming on, he was tired enough to rest his feet when he came to a ruined
abbey. He sat down, took off his boots, leaned against an iron fence, and
began to rub his feet. An odd series of noises made him turn around and
peer through the bars of the fence.
Down below him, on the grassy floor of the old abbey, he saw a
procession of cats. They were formed into two long equal lines, and were
marching forward very slowly. Now, of course he had never seen anything
like that before, and he bent forward to look more closely. It was then that
he saw that the cats at the head of the procession were carrying a little
coffin on their backs, and were making for, were slowly approaching, a
small open grave. When my friend had seen the grave, he looked horrified
back at the coffin borne by the lead cats, and noticed that on it sat a crown.
As he watched, the lead cats began to lower the coffin into the grave.
After that he was so frightened that he could not stay in that place a
moment longer, and he thrust his feet into his boots and rushed on to the
house of his friend. During dinner, he found that he could not keep from
telling his friend what he had witnessed.
He had scarcely finished when his friend's cat, which had been dozing in
front of the fire, leaped up and cried, 'Then I am the King of the Cats!' and
disappeared in a flash up the chimney.
