"Seizing the kitten by the neck, the chief pierced the skin at the chest with the point of a the blade and scissored a long smooth cut to the throat. Then he pushed the skin to the sides with both hands: the gossy layer of fat beneath was like a preeled spring onion. The skinned neck, draped gracefully on the floor, seemed to be wearing a cat mask. The cat was only an exterior, life has posed as a cat.But beneath the surface was a smooth expressionles interior, a placid, glossy-white inner life in perfect consonance with Noboru and the others; and they could feel their own intricate, soot-black insides bearing down upon and shadowing it like ships moving upon the water. Now, at last, the boys and the cat, or, more accurately, what had been a cat, became perfectly at one."
