“Do not ask me, child,” the old lady smiled. “He told me only that he stole her in a spirit of bravado from the garden of this ancient Buddhist Monastery when egged on to do so by his friends. They were spending an idle week exploring the ancient towns along the Grand Canal of China, and were attracted by the beautiful Tartar cats in this garden. It seemed the Buddhist Monks reared these cats as a sort of religious duty.
“Your grandfather always believed that a Buddhist curse of some sort went with Toi Wah after a Chinese merchant translated the Chinese characters on her collar for him. And he often said he wished that he had not whisked her into the pocket of his big sou’wester jacket, when the priests were not looking.
“Myself, I do not believe in these superstitious curses and omens, so I would not let him take the collar off. In fact, he could not do it; it was so cunningly riveted.
“He always feared some evil would come from the cat, but I have found her a great comfort and a thing to love.”
And she would hold out her hands to Toi Wah, and the great cat would leap in her lap and rub her head lovingly against my grandmother’s neck.
After that I feared Toi Wah more than ever. This fear was an intangible, elusive thing. I could not understand it or analyze it; but it was very real. If I wandered about the dim old passageways of my grandmother’s ancient house, or explored the dusty cobwebby rooms, there seemed always to follow after me the soft padding sound of Toi Wah’s paws. Following, always following after me, but never coming nearer; always just beyond where I could see.
It was maddening! Always to have following after me the stealthy, soft, almost inaudible sound of padded feet. I could never win free from it within the house.
In my bedroom, sitting alone before the fire with the door locked and bolted, every corner of the room previously explored, the bed looked under, I would always feel that she was sitting there behind me, watching me out of vigilant yellow eyes. Eyes that were full of suspicion and hate. Waiting, watching—for what? I did not know. I only feared.
Out of this fear grew many unreal terrors. I came to believe that Toi Wah was waiting a favorable chance to spring on me from behind, or when I was asleep, and to dig her great curved claws into my throat, tearing and rending it in her hate.