They’d stopped feeding the baby until he was no longer able even to cry, then had wrapped him in a black plastic bag and thrown him out on the day the rubbish was due to be collected.

Human beings are basically huge monkeys that walk upright, but they can be pretty full of themselves. They leave their cars exposed to the elements, but a few paw prints on the paintwork and they go ballistic.

Again and again I screamed, until my voice finally gave out. It killed me even to call out, to be honest with you.

WE CATS GET all limp and squishy when we have catnip; for humans, wine seems to do the trick.

On New Year’s Day, they gave me some chicken breast, but after sniffing it a few times I kicked sand on top of it. There was no actual sand there, of course, so it was only air sand.

Kosuke had no clue when she’d be back. He was beginning to get the faint sense that maybe she never would. The ridiculous thought crossed his mind that perhaps if they’d had a cat like this, things might have been different.

And yet, no matter how often he went to the hospital, his smell didn’t get any better. As several dogs and cats had told me earlier, that doesn’t smell like he’s got much longer scent was only getting stronger. No creatures ever get better once they have that smell.

He began to wonder if his wife, a true cat lover, might actually come home if he took in the cat. Perhaps if he told her he had adopted the animal but didn’t know how to look after it and begged her to help, perhaps she would come back solely out of sympathy for the cat.

Miserably bowing his head, Sugi thought, how shameful can I get? I know very well how miserable I look, yet I still go ahead and beg him.