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seal-point came after her and had an anxious, puckered face. The blue-point, which had been so unexpected and still looked so surprised, came last, with her head on one side.
    Martini sat down and flicked the end of her tail and the seal-point jumped on it.
    â€œGin,” Pam said. “Watch out. You ought to know how your mother—”
    Martini whirled, made a kind of clucking sound in her throat, and bit the ear of the seal-point kitten. The kitten ducked its head and waited for the storm to pass. The blue-point made an odd, irregular leap over her sister and landed on her mother’s head. Martini wrapped forepaws around the blue, wrestled the smaller cat to the floor and, apparently, began to devour her. The other kitten, clearly pleased at this development, leaped on Martini’s tail again, worrying it happily. The blue-point struggled loose, jumped backward, ran furiously halfway across the living room and stopped, sat down and began to scratch an ear all in one movement.
    â€œThere’s no doubt,” Pam said, “that three cats are a lot to watch. Of course, if she’d had all five, we’d only have had two—her and one. But when there were only two we had to have three. Because they were so fond of each other.”
    â€œWhat?” Bill said, and then said, “Never mind.”
    â€œFive kittens we couldn’t have kept,” Pam said, ignoring the last. “So we’d have given away four. But three is just possible.” She looked at the cats, which had merged again and seemed to be engaged in a battle royal. “I guess,” she said. “Sherry!” The blue-point had suddenly disentangled herself, rushed across the floor and bumped, at full run, into the leg of a chair. She bounced, sat down and looked dazed.
    â€œShe’ll knock her brains out,” Bill said, judicially.
    â€œIt’s only because she’s so cross-eyed,” Pam said. “They both are, but she’s cross-eyed and one of her eyes goes up. So she never knows, poor baby. Do you, Sherry?”
    Sherry got up and advanced toward Pam with a slight lurch. She jumped and came down in Pam’s lap.
    â€œAlways,” Pam said, “she overjumps. I think she sees too far up.”
    They digested this. The blue-point purred on Pam’s lap. Martini lay down on her side and the seal-point kitten began to nurse her. Both the Norths spoke at once, Jerry saying “Gin!” and Pam, “Martini!” Neither cat paid any attention.
    â€œShe hasn’t had any milk for weeks,” Pam said. She looked at the cats. “You’d think they’d know,” she said. “Anyway, you’d think the kitten would—miss something. Wouldn’t you? But the vet says, so what, everybody’s happy, and that it won’t go on forever.”
    Martini stood up suddenly. She backed away from her kitten, crouched, and leaped at it. The two rolled over and over, a swirl of brown ears, of waving brown tails. Then the kitten suddenly shot out of its mother’s embrace and dashed madly from the room. Martini bounded in pursuit. They disappeared and the blue-point on Pam’s lap suddenly wailed. She looked up at Pam North, weeping, and then slid from the lap and went after the other two at a gallop. There was a sound from the front of the apartment of something falling. It did not sound like a cat falling; it sounded, as Jerry North pointed out, more like a table.
    â€œSo deft,” he said. “So catlike. So precise in all movements. Good God!”
    Pam was looking at the fire again and she spoke in a different tone.
    â€œAbout the other,” she said. “About the—the hating girl. We just wait?”
    â€œRight,” Bill Weigand said. “And probably for nothing.”
    But to that, nobody said anything.

3
    S ATURDAY ,11:30 A.M. TO 2:50 P.M.
    André Maillaux, moving softly, seeing everything, came past the checker’s desk and