OUR FRIEND JUDITH
477
inches of sand away and pushed the kitten in-on the beach,
where people are all day. So I buried it properly. He had run
off. He was chasing the poor cat. She was terrified and running
up the town. I ran too. I caught Michele and I was so angry I
hit him. I don't believe in hitting children. I've been feeling
beastly about it ever since."
"You were angry."
"It's no excuse. I would never have believed myself cap–
able of hitting a child. I hit him very hard. He went off, crying.
The poor cat had got under a big lorry parked in the square.
Then she screamed. And then a most remarkable thing hap–
pened. She screamed just once, and all at once cats just material–
ized. One minute there was just one cat, lying under a lorry,
and the next, dozens of cats. They sat in a big circle around
the lorry, all quite still, and watched my poor cat."
"Rather moving," I said.
"Why?"
"There is no evidence one way or the other," I said in
inverted commas, "that the cats were there out of concern for
a friend in trouble."
"No," she said energetically. "There isn't. It might have
been curiosity. Or anything. How do we know? However, I
crawled under the lorry. There were two paws sticking out
of the cat's back end. The kitten was the wrong way round.
It was stuck. I held the cat down with one hand and I pulled
the kitten out with the other." She held out her long white
hands. They were still covered with fading scars and scratches.
"She bit and yelled, but the kitten was alive. She left the kitten
and crawled across the square into the house. Then all the
cats got up and walked away.
It
was the most extraordinary
thing I've ever seen. They vanished again. One minute they
were all there, and then they had vanished. I went after the
cat, with the kitten. Poor little thing, it was covered with dust
-being wet, don't you know. The cat was on my bed. There
was another kitten coming, but it got stuck too. So when she
