““The cat jumped out of Willie’s arms and bounded up the stanze. The gallery fell into a hush as the cat crawled through Moses and the Prophets and the reign of David and up through the Old Testament entirely, fixing its claws on the slaying of the Holy Innocents and stopping to consider how far it wished to travel into the Gospels. The Russian priest began to scream again. A spirit-minded guard, interpreting the cat’s movements as an evil sign, fell on his knees and asked forgiveness for his many sins of the flesh. A policeman called to the cat to jump down but the cat seemed content to remain with the dying Innocents. Willie whistled sharply then. The cat turned, hesitated, then leaped down and skittered out of the gallery. Everyone turned to Willie, who stood quite still, holding his arms as if he were still cradling the cat. “Cats—men,” he said in a faraway voice, “need things to hang on. Otherwise, wouldn’t everything fall away?” The Italian word for insane rippled through the gallery.””
