The White Cat

One night in the back-end of the year, when the dim was coming on middling early, my father was going to shut the door, when he noticed a thing like a big white cat sitting out in the street. He went to “sthoo” it away and gave it a hoist with his foot, when, all at once, the thing stood up and began to grow and grow until it seemed to reach up nearly to the sky, and then it went away. When my father came in he was all white and shaking and he was bad all night, but he would never say whether it spoke to him or not.