Few spectacles are as stirring as morning walks involving Mrs. Hargrove and her cat. That cat—whose name, I believe, is something soft and aristocratic like Percival or Archibald, though I have never been privileged to ask—walks with the deliberate dignity of a senator en route to a free lunch.

Mrs. Hargrove holds the leash as though she were leading a thoroughbred rather than a creature that spends most of its waking hours contemplating the moral shortcomings of the human race from the top of a fence post. They have passed up and down our street for months without the slightest disturbance.

Dogs that would ordinarily sell their immortal souls for the privilege of chasing a cat have, at the sight of this pair, developed sudden and urgent business on the opposite side of the thoroughfare. I used to marvel at it.

I used to think Mrs. Hargrove possessed some secret charm, some invisible talisman that rendered her feline sacred in the eyes of the canine world. Yesterday the mystery was laid bare, and I am now a wiser and, I regret to say, a poorer man for the knowledge.

My own dog, Buddy—a creature of generous proportions and limited intellect—has always treated the neighborhood’s Halloween decorations with the profound suspicion they deserve. When the house across the way erected one of those modern monstrosities known as a blow-up display, Buddy took one look at the centerpiece and decided that discretion was the better part of valor.

The centerpiece is an enormous, toothy, black cat of vinyl and forced air, and arched back, stands six feet high. Buddy will drag me bodily to the far curb whenever we approach, his ears flattened and his tail performing that peculiar circular motion which, in dog language, means, “I have seen the Devil and he is made of fabric.”

Mrs. Hargrove’s cat, however, entertained no such scruples. Yesterday morning the procession reached the scene of the crime at the usual hour.

The artificial cat stood there in all its bloated glory, smiling its fixed, idiotic grin, whiskers trembling slightly in the breeze like the antennae of some vast and foolish insect. Percival—or Archibald—paused, studied the thing with the cold, appraising eye of a professional, then, without so much as a preparatory spit or an arched back for dramatic effect, walked up and commenced operations.

What followed was less a fight than a systematic demolition. The real cat applied tooth and claw with the calm efficiency of a tax collector.

He climbed the thing. He rode it like a bronco.

He found the seams and tested them for structural integrity. Air escaped in a series of mournful sighs, as though the impostor were confessing its sins.

The grin collapsed into permanent astonishment. One ear deflated with a sound remarkably like a disappointed politician.

By the time Mrs. Hargrove managed to extract her champion from the wreckage, the once-proud blow-up cat lay upon the lawn in a shapeless heap, looking for all the world like a discarded rain-coat that had suffered a severe moral crisis.

The owner of the display emerged, surveyed the ruins, and uttered a remark I shall not record in the interests of public morality. He has since been observed purchasing a replacement—a larger and, one hopes, more heavily armored model.

Buddy and I continue to cross the street, though now with a certain quiet pride. We understand why the neighborhood dogs have always yielded the right of way to Mrs. Hargrove’s cat. It is not superstition. It is simple self-preservation.

When a creature can reduce six feet of pressurized insolence to a wrinkled memory in under 60 seconds, even the boldest mongrel is entitled to a little respectful distance.