THROWN OUT !

When the bell stopped ringing and the women entered the church it followed them in. The verger saw it, but not in time to prevent the intrusion. Now he didn't know whether to close the door or leave it open while he found the animal and chased it out. The rector was standing at the altar steps waiting for the door to be closed so that he could begin the service, so the verger decided to shut the door and make a discreet search.

In the event, search proved unnecessary. For the kitten came out of hiding and walked confidently up the aisle, stopping beside the pew containing the four women. The one nearest the aisle turned her head and gave a smothered shriek. The kitten was a deplorable sight. Blood trickled from a gash in its cheek and its coat was fouled with farmyard muck. The rector, confronted by this small apparition, was saved from having to take action by the verger who, with great presence of mind, crept up on tiptoe, scooped up the kitten in one big red hand and with the other opened the church door and tossed it out into the street. He assisted its departure with the toe of his boot and then returned to sit piously in his usual seat, the one under the niche containing the statue of Saint Francis.

For the rest of that Sunday morning the kitten wandered about the village. Many people noticed it and were distressed by its woebegone appearance. A couple of weekend hikers, meeting it in the roadway, stopped to examine it more closely. They thought it must have been savaged by a dog.

`Poor little thing,' said the girl. She offered it a slice of ham from her lunch pack.

The kitten sniffed with interest but did not take it. The drying blood had made its face so stiff that it could not eat.

`Well, it's not hungry anyway,' said the man, and they walked on. The one danger to which the kitten had not been exposed that morning was attack from a dog. For the dogs that might have chased it were habitually kept on chains, and the furious barking they set up as soon as it came in sight was enough to keep it at a safe distance from them.

While prowling round a council house dustbin it narrowly missed being hit by a stone flung at it by the owner, and twice it was nearly run over by car-borne church­goers arriving for the mid-morning service. By the time the worshippers had come out again and were hastening home to their dinners the kitten had set off to find its way back to the campsite. Making a wide detour around Halsey's farm it got lost in a kale field, but by lucky chance found the rough track which Ted Mostyn used as a short cut in dry weather. Following the scent of the cowman's boots it finally arrived at the hamlet while the cottagers were sitting down to their meal.

Weary and in pain from the wound in its face it went to the pond to drink. There was an old broken wall round one end of the pond and on to this the kitten climbed. Here it crouched, its fur still damp from the drenching in the farmyard, trying to clean itself, and here it eventually curled up and slept.

During the afternoon Mrs. Trim's two cats, a black and a grey who were brother and sister, came out of the cottage. In bad weather they generally went no farther than they had to, scratching a token hole in the flowerbed and skipping back indoors as quickly as they could. The day being dry, they were in no hurry and strolled about, sniffing at crannies in the wall and interesting tracks in the grass.

From the day of its arrival they had resented the presence of the striped kitten in the hamlet. The sister had plainly shown her feelings by hissing and bristling her fur whenever she caught sight of the interloper. But so long as it had the status of family pet and was in the company of the caravan children, the pair of them kept their distance. After its protec­tors mysteriously vanished they had watched its com­ings and goings with close attention. It was alone now and friendless. The time had come to re-assert their authority.

They could see the kitten sleeping on the wall and they picked their way over to it, crossing the green and avoiding the damp margins of the pond. Having jumped on to the wall, one on each side of their quarry, strategically poised for attack, they stared at it balefully, flattening their ears and lashing their tails. They were waiting for the kitten to waken and either accept the challenge or flee in disorder. It merely went on sleeping. They were unprepared for this passive counter-move and after a while they stopped glaring and tail-swishing. The grey female jumped down from the wall, stretched herself, yawned and walked away. The black cat, after licking a front paw with great energy, followed her. Neither of them gave the kitten another look.

SOMEBODY OUGHT TO!

THE cottagers did not know until next morning that the kitten had come back. Mrs Reece saw it when she opened her door to shake the mats - always her first job after her husband had gone bouncing and stuttering up the lane on his old motor-bike. The kitten was sitting on her step. Gave her quite a turn, she said later. She hastily shut the door. Once let a stray come in and you'd never be rid of it. Didn't do to feed it neither, come to that, if you didn't want to keep it. All the same, couldn't stand by and see it starve.

Three days now since them campers went, drat them, thought Mrs. Reece fretfully. Why didn't they take their pet with them instead of turning it loose to pester other people? Just like the diddakois. After a few minutes of fuming indecision she filled a pie dish with bread and milk and went out by her back door. She went around the angle of the wall - her cottage was at the north end of the row of three - across the green to the pond and on to the flat ground beyond it. She called `Puss, puss, puss!' and the striped kitten bounded out through the front gate and came flying after her.

Having deposited the pie dish at a point, she hoped, far enough from the cottages to be unidentified with any particular occupant, Mrs. Reece stood back and watched the kitten eagerly lapping. She did not stroke it for fear of encouraging it. But she had noticed its gashed face, on which the blood had now congealed and blackened, and she shrewdly guessed the cause.

'Druv you away, did they? Well now, what's to be done with you? Us'll have to put our heads to­gether and think of summat.'

…BUT NOT ME!