Just before dinner, Vanya is sitting in his father’s study, gazing dreamily at the table. A kitten is moving about by the lamp, on stamped note paper. Vanya is watching its movements, and thrusting first a pencil, then a match into its little mouth.… All at once, as though he has sprung out of the floor, his father is beside the table.

“What’s this?” Vanya hears, in an angry voice.

“It’s … it’s the kitty, papa.…”

“I’ll give it you; look what you have done, you naughty boy! You’ve dirtied all my paper!”

To Vanya’s great surprise his papa does not share his partiality for the kittens, and, instead of being moved to enthusiasm and delight, he pulls Vanya’s ear and shouts:

“Stepan, take away this horrid thing.”

At dinner, too, there is a scene.… During the second course there is suddenly the sound of a shrill mew. They begin to investigate its origin, and discover a kitten under Nina’s pinafore.

“Nina, leave the table!” cries her father angrily. “Throw the kittens in the cesspool! I won’t have the nasty things in the house!…”

Vanya and Nina are horrified. Death in the cesspool, apart from its cruelty, threatens to rob the cat and the wooden horse of their children, to lay waste the cat’s box, to destroy their plans for the future, that fair future in which one cat will be a comfort to its old mother, another will live in the country, while the third will catch rats in the cellar. The children begin to cry and entreat that the kittens may be spared. Their father consents, but on the condition that the children do not go into the kitchen and touch the kittens.

After dinner, Vanya and Nina slouch about the rooms, feeling depressed. The prohibition of visits to the kitchen has reduced them to dejection. They refuse sweets, are naughty, and are rude to their mother. When their uncle Petrusha comes in the evening, they draw him aside, and complain to him of their father, who wanted to throw the kittens into the cesspool.

“Uncle Petrusha, tell mamma to have the kittens taken to the nursery,” the children beg their uncle, “do-o tell her.”

“There, there … very well,” says their uncle, waving them off. “All right.”

Uncle Petrusha does not usually come alone. He is accompanied by Nero, a big black dog of Danish breed, with drooping ears, and a tail as hard as a stick. The dog is silent, morose, and full of a sense of his own dignity. He takes not the slightest notice of the children, and when he passes them hits them with his tail as though they were chairs. The children hate him from the bottom of their hearts, but on this occasion, practical considerations override sentiment.

“I say, Nina,” says Vanya, opening his eyes wide. “Let Nero be their father, instead of the horse! The horse is dead and he is alive, you see.”

They are waiting the whole evening for the moment when papa will sit down to his cards and it will be possible to take Nero to the kitchen without being observed.… At last, papa sits down to cards, mamma is busy with the samovar and not noticing the children.…

The happy moment arrives.

“Come along!” Vanya whispers to his sister.