"Theodore Sturgeon - Fluffy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sturgeon Theodore)

"Q. E. D.," said Fluffy triumphantly. "You make your living by being scintillant, beautiful to look at.
So do I. You help nobody but yourself; you help yourself to anything you want. So do I. No one likes
you except those you bleed; everyone admires and envys you. So with me. Get the point?"
"I think so. Cat, you draw a mean parallel. In other words, you consider my behavior catlike."
"Precisely," said Fluffy through his whiskers. "And that is both why and how I can talk with you.
You're so close to the feline in everything you do and think; your whole basic philosophy is that of a cat.
You have a feline aura about you so intense that it contacts mine; hence we find each other intelligible."
"I don't understand that," said Ransome.
"Neither do I," returned Fluffy. "But there it is. Do you like Mrs. Benedetto?"
"No!" said Ransome immediately and with considerable emphasis. "She is absolutely insufferable.
She bores me. She irritates me. She is the only woman in the world who can do both those things to me
at the same time. She talks too much. She reads too little. She thinks not at all. Her mind is mysterically
hidebound. She has a face like the cover of a book that no one has ever wanted to read. She is built like
a pinch-type whiskey bottle that never had any whiskey in it. Her voice is monotonous and unmusical.
Her eduation was insufficient. Her family background is mediocre, she can't cook, and she doesn't brush
her teeth often enough."

тАЬMY, MY," said the cat, raising both paws in surprise. "I detect a ring of sincerity in all that. It
pleases me. That is exactly the way I have felt for some years. I have never found fault with her cooking,
though; she buys special food for me. I am tired of it. I am tired of her. I am tired of her to an almost
unbelievable extent. Almost as much as I hate you."
"Me?"
"Of course. You're an imitation. You're a phony. Your birth is against you, Ransome. No animal that
sweats and shaves, that opens doors for women, that dresses itself in equally phony imitations of the
skins of animals, can achieve the status of a cat. You are presumptuous."
"You're not?"
"I am different. I am a cat, and have a right to do as I please. I disliked you so intensely when I saw
you this evening that I made up my mind to kill you."
"Why didn't you? WhyтАФdon't you?"
"I couldn't," said the cat coolly. "Not when you sleep like a cat . . . no, I thought of something far
more amusing."
"Oh?"
"Oh, yes." Fluffy stretched out a foreleg, extended his claws. Ransome noticed subconsciously how
long and strong they seemed. The moon had gone its way, and the room was filling with with slate-gray
light.
"What woke you," said the cat, leaping to the window-sill, "just before I came in?"
"I don't know," said Ransome. "Some little noise, I imagine."
"No, indeed," said fluffy, curling his tail and grinning through his whiskers. "It was the stopping of a
noise. Notice how quiet it is?"
It was indeed. There wasn't a sound in the houseтАФoh, yes, now he could hear the plodding footsteps
of the maid on her way from the kitchen to Mrs. Benedetto's bedroom, and the soft clink of a teacup.
But otherwiseтАФsuddenly he had it. "The old horse stopped snoring!"
"She did," said the cat. The door across the hall opened, there was the murmur of the maid's voice, a
loud crash, the most horrible scream Ransome had ever heard, pounding footsteps rushing down the hall,
a more distant scream, silence. Ransome bounced out of bed. "What the hellтАФ"
"Just the maid," said Fluffy, washing between his toes, but keeping the corners of his eyes on
Ransome. "She just found Mrs. Benedetto."
 "FoundтАФ"
"Yes. I tore her throat out."
"GoodтАФGod! Why?"