And so I thought I'd introduce them to each other, and if the brute tried anything on I'd flay her so that she'd remember to her dying day how to behave towards canaries, because I'm very fond of animals.
In the house where I live there's a hat-maker and he trained his cat so well that after eating up three of his canaries she didn't eat any more - a canary could sit on her if it liked.
And I wanted to try that out too and so I took the canary out of its cage and let her smell it, and she, the little monkey, bit its head off before I realized it.
I really never expected such caddishness from her.
If it had been a sparrow, sir, I wouldn't have said anything, but a lovely canary like that from the Harz.
And how greedily she gobbled it up, feathers and all, and at the same time purred out of sheer joy.
They say cats have no musical education and can't stand it when a canary sings, because the brutes don't understand it. I swore at the cat, but I swear to God that I didn't do anything to her and waited for you to come to decide what's to be done with her, the scabby beast.'
While saying this Svejk looked into the lieutenant's eyes with such sincerity that although the latter approached him at first with certain cruel intentions ,he moved away from him again, sat down on a chair and asked:
'Listen, Svejk, are you really God's prize oaf?'
'Humbly report, sir,' Svejk answered solemnly, 'I am!
Ever since I was little I have had bad luck like that.
I always want to put something right, to do good, but nothing ever comes out of it except trouble for me and all around.
I really wanted these two to get to know each other so that they would understand each other, and I can't help it if she ate it up and it was the end of the acquaintance.
In a house called U Stuparru some years ago a cat even ate up a parrot, because it laughed and mimicked her miaowing. But cats cling pretty obstinately to their lives.
If you want me to do her in, sir, then I'll have to crush her in the door. Otherwise she'll never be finished.'
And Svejk with the most innocent of countenances and his gentle good-humoured smile gave the lieutenant an account of how cats are executed, the content of which would certainly send any society for the prevention of cruelty to animals into a lunatic asylum.
In telling this he revealed such expert knowledge that Lieutenant Lukas forgot his anger and asked:
'So you know how to look after animals ? Have you got some feeling for them ?
Do you love them ? '
'I like dogs best of all, sir,' said .Svejk, 'because they offer a profitable business for anyone who knows how to sell them.
I wasn't able to do it, because I've always been honest. But all the same people used to be after me and say I'd sold them a lame duck instead of a healthy thoroughbred, as though all dogs must be thoroughbred and healthy.
And everyone at once asked for a pedigree, so that I had to have pedigrees printed and turn some mongrel from KoSii'e, which had been born in a brickworks, into the most thoroughbred aristocrat from the Bavarian kennels of Armin von Barheim.
And really people were only too happy if it turned out so well that they had a thoroughbred at home.
I could perhaps have offered them a Vr5ovice porn as a dachshund, and they would only have been rather surprised that such a rare dog, coming all the way from Germany, was shaggy and didn't have bow legs.
They do that in all kennels.
You should see, sir, the fiddles which go on with these pedigrees in the big kennels.
There are really very few dogs existing which could say of themselves:
"I'm a thoroughbred."
Either its mamma forgot herself with some frightful monstrosity, or its granny did, or else it's had several papas and inherited a bit from each. From one its ears, from another its tail, from another again the tufts on its snout, from a third its muzzle, from a fourth its hobbling legs and from a fifth its size.
And if it had had twelve such papas, you can imagine, sir, what such a dog looks like.
I once bought a dog like that called Balaban. After all his papas he was so ugly that all dogs avoided him and I only bought him out of pity because he was so abandoned. And he always used to sit at home in a corner and was so unhappy, till I had to sell him as a stable pinscher.
What gave me the most trouble was dyeing him, so that he had a pepper and salt colour.
In this condition he went with his master to Moravia and from that time on I've never set eyes on him any more.'
The lieutenant began to be extremely interested by this cynological lecture and Svejk was able to continue without interruption.
'Dogs can't dye their hair like ladies do. This always has to be done by the person who wants to sell them.
If a dog is so old that it's completely grey and you want to sell it as a year-old puppy or pretend that the old dodderer is only nine months old, then you must buy some silver nitrate, dissolve it and paint the dog black so that it looks quite new.
And you must feed it like a horse with arsenic, so that it gains strength, and you must clean its teeth with sand paper like they use for cleaning rusty knives.
And before you lead it out to be sold to a customer, you must pour some slivovice down its throat, so that it gets a bit tipsy.
Then it'll immediately get lively, gay, bark joyfully and make friends with anyone, like a drunken town councillor.
But the main thing is this: you must talk to people, sir, and go on talking to them until the customer gets completely crazy.
If anyone wants to buy a miniature pinscher off you and you have nothing else at home but a pointer, you must be able to talk him into taking away with him a pointer and not a miniature pinscher, and if by chance you only have a miniature pinscher at home and someone comes to buy a fierce German mastiff for a watch dog, you must fool him so that he takes away in his pocket the tiny little miniature pinscher instead of the mastiff. When I used to be in the dog business, a lady came in to tell me that her parrot had flown out into her garden, so she said, and that some little boys who were playing Indians in front of her villa had just seized it, torn all the feathers from its tail and decked themselves up in them like police.
And this parrot, out of the shame of being tailless, fell ill, and the vet finished it off with some powders.
And so she wanted to buy a new parrot, a respectable one, not a vulgar one which would do nothing but swear.
What could I do when I hadn't a parrot at home and didn't know of one?
I only had at home a savage bulldog, which was completely blind.
And so, sir, I had to spend from four o'clock in the afternoon to seven o'clock in the evening talking that lady into buying that blind bulldog instead of a parrot.
It was worse than any diplomatic situation, and when she was going out I said:
"Now let the boys try to pull his tail out", and I never spoke to this lady any more, as she had to leave Prague on account of that bulldog, because it bit everyone in the house. Believe me, sir, it's very difficult to get hold of a decent animal.'
'I'm very fond of dogs,' said the lieutenant.
'Some of my friends at the front have their dogs with them there and have written to me that the war passes very pleasantly when you have as a companion such a faithful and devoted animal.