" Speak, vermin! " she said again. " Or do you want my dwarf to find you a tongue with his whip? What is the meaning of all this gluttony, this waste, this self indulgence? Where did you get all these things? "
That same year, he would sit down and write a much more literal tale of metamorphosis, about Gregor Samsa, who woke up one morning from uneasy dreams to find himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.
Cats were highly prized in Egypt, owing to their tendency to catch vermin and so stopped the spread of disease, protected crops from unwanted pests and were pretty maintenance-free for their families.