REJECTED!

The instinct which led the striped kitten back to the barn where it was born did not prepare it for a hostile reception. Its mother, the black-and-white cat with the crooked tail, had recently had a new litter of five, of which only one was still living. The ginger tom had killed two, rats had taken another, and a fourth, the feeblest, she had accidentally smothered. Now she had decided to move the sole survivor to a place of greater safety. After diligent search she had found an ideal spot in the tractor shed.

No foodstuffs were stored here so there was nothing to attract rats or mice, and as a result the shed was neglected by hunting cats. She chose her moment carefully, waiting till the morning pan of milk was put down outside the dairy and all the other cats were pressing round it. Then she stealthily emerged from the hay barn with a black-and-white miniature of herself dangling limply from her jaws. Slipping between the wall of the shed and the manure cart she whisked into the shed and dropped her burden in the farthest and darkest corner behind the oil drums.

She was about to lie down and suckle it when she heard a mew from somewhere close by. She sprang up and ran to the doorway. Standing outside, looking hopefully at her, was a half-grown striped kitten which did not belong to the colony at the farm. She did not recognize it as her own. It was an intruder and a potential danger. She crouched, her eyes narrowed and blazing, a ridge of hair rising along her spine.

The kitten had trotted into the yard a few minutes earlier. It had halted and stared around, recognizing the smells and shapes and sounds among which it had passed the first three months of its life. The heavy sweetish odour of the cows and the steaming tokens of their passage through the yard into the winter pasture beyond, the coughing grunt from the bull pen, rumble of men's voices from the milking shed, hiss and squirt of the hose, rattle and clank from the dairy and background whine of a radio - all was familiar to the small animal standing on the concrete and it reacted like a traveller to the sight of home after long absence.

None of the cats jostling round the milk pan in a tangle of tails and whiskers noticed the new arrival, nor did the she-cat creeping out of the barn towards the tractor shed with her burden. But the striped kitten saw her. It ran after her as far as the door of the shed and waited for her to reappear, announcing its presence by mewing.

ATTACKED !

The next moment it was knocked flat by a spitting avalanche of teeth and claws. Stupefied by the sud­denness of the attack and helpless under its mother's weight, the kitten could do no more than squirm and try to protect its throat. Tufts of fur flew about. The air was filled with yowls and screeches. The younger cats around the milk pan fled in alarm. The older ones ceased lapping and gave their attention to the spectacle. Over the bars of his pen rose the huge ringed muzzle of the Hereford bull. His dull eyes brightened, he blew out deep breaths and flicked his ears to and fro with interest.

`What the hell's going on?' Mr. Halsey said to his dairyman.

`Just another cat fight,' Ted Mostyn said. Both men went to the door to watch. The event was not uncommon at the farm, but generally the fights were no more than skirmishes establishing territorial rights. Seldom were they so ferocious as this one.

`Surely that's the kitten Jack Kowalski took home for his kiddies?' said Mr. Halsey suddenly.

`You're right,' said Ted. `That's its mother on top of it. We'd best do summat or she'll kill it.'

He had been about to hose down the yard when the commotion started. He now switched the water full on and directed it at the combatants. The effect was immediate. The she-cat ran off. The kitten staggered to its feet and, crying in terror and bewilderment, fled through the gate and did not stop till it had covered a good half-mile. By then it had lost all sense of direction and ran haphazardly over grass and plough land, down lanes and footpaths, until it finally came to a halt in the churchyard on the out­skirts of the village.

Here the bell was ringing for early service. At the gate stood four elderly women, huddling into their coats against the sharp wind. They were chatting within earshot of the kitten who crouched behind a tombstone, its heart racing and thumping after its flight.

One of the women had a high nasal voice rather like that of the caravan woman. For hours at a time the kitten had sat under the table listening to that voice as it recounted the day's doings, scolded the children and exchanged banter with their father, and it pricked up its ears and peered eagerly round the tombstone. It chanced that the woman was wearing a coat edged with coarse dark fur. Mrs. Kowalski had had a coat with dark fur on it. The coincidence was enough to make the kitten forget its fright and fill it with a wild hope.

THROWN OUT !