The Cats

This splendidly horrific yarn opens with a couple returning to New York after a holiday on Long Island, during which they had acquired a kitten. They cannot keep the kitten in the city and so dump it, hoping it will find a new home. Berton Roueché has always based his stories on fact--and it is not difficult to imagine that the prevalent practice of dumping unwanted domestic pets in rural areas could lead to the gripping and sinister situation that is the thrust of this compulsive story.

For the cats have developed into a rapacious community of their own, and begin to plague this couple when they return to the Long Island village of Amagansett. At first the cats just seem to prowl. Then they begin attacking - rats, birds. Soon large game - deer, dogs - begin to feel their madness. Then they become cannibals, ki;lling and eating each other. In the shattering climax to this novel there is only one animal left to feel their wrath - man himself.

This is a thriller of nature gone wild. Berton Roueché, a New Yorker writer and author of the thriller, The Last Enemy, as well as several volumes of true medical detection, keeps the reader constantly on the edge of his chair.