"Mice and rats are free for cats, but you're a sausage nibbler. Aroint! You hear me— aroint!" The seated cat was licking a pink curled paw but at the second "aroint" he high-tailed away and scrambled over the board fence behind the bank.
Aroint recalls Shakespeare's “Aroint thee, witch,” (go away) which is from Macbeth, and is the first instance of this word "aroint."
And further in the narrative we find:
"The cat was by the door, waiting. I can't remember a morning when that lean and efficient cat hasn't been waiting to try to get in the back door and I have never failed to throw a stick at him or run him off. To the best of my knowledge, he has never got in...Are cats strange animals or do they so resemble us that we find them curious as we do monkeys?"
This last sentence echoes Montaigne's comment on a cat:“Who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her."
Cats are often a window on the big questions.
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