THE CAT AND THE TOAD<\/p>\n
At the dawn of the world on a tree-sheltered road
\nan agreeable cat met a horrible toad.
\nWhen the cat saw its neighbor it fearfully shook
\nfor in those days all creatures would act as they looked
\nand the toad was all warty, and bulging, and slimy.
\nThe trembling cat mewed a terrified “Blimey!”
\n(more vigorous oaths had not yet been discovered)
\nand looked at the evil made plain on the other
\none hideous sin for each hideous feature.
\n“Oh please do not kill me, most wicked of creatures!”
\nit begged without hope. But the toad thought awhile
\nthen it gave what might almost have been called a smile
\nand it said “You may keep what you carry within
\nbut if you are to live, you must give me your skin.”
\nNow the cat had no choice, though it bitterly cried
\nbut to take off its fur and to put on the hide
\nof the venomous toad, and no creatures had made
\nsuch a villainous threat, such a terrible trade.
\nThen the cat hopped away where it once would have strode
\nfor the toad was a cat, and the cat was a toad.<\/p>\n
This explains why the toad, though so utterly charmless
\nis gentle in nature and totally harmless
\nwhile cats appear graceful and splendid and good
\nbut would murder us all in our beds if they could.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE CAT AND THE TOAD At the dawn of the world on a tree-sheltered road an agreeable cat met a horrible toad. When the cat saw its neighbor it fearfully shook for in those days all creatures would act as they looked and the toad was all warty, and bulging, and slimy. The trembling cat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=672"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":674,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions\/674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.polutexni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}