Kittens

The kittens are a small but recurring presence in the Larkin household, woven into its meals, interruptions, and visitors’ attempts to keep their bearings. Their appearances connect ordinary care with Cedric Charlton’s increasingly difficult effort to attend to the tax form: a kitten is offered to him, two are fed during supper, and one follows him as he leaves the table with Mariette.

Place in the Household

The kittens belong to the everyday activity of the household rather than appearing as a separate plot in their own right. When Ma calls for someone to come in before she gives something to the cats, Pop offers a pure white kitten to Cedric. The offer makes the animals part of the family’s casual hospitality, even as it reveals that their care is one more demand amid the household’s distractions.

At supper, two white kittens are nestled on Ma’s lap while the family eats and the television flickers. Ma feeds them scraps of fish and batter. The scene places animal care directly within the crowded family meal: the kittens are not kept apart from the table’s abundance, but incorporated into its shifting bustle of food, conversation, television, and other household sounds.

Food and Domestic Routine

The kittens recur around food in distinct moments of care. After Ma serves pineapple and cream, she feeds one of them the remaining cream from a spoon. The gesture extends the meal beyond the family’s plates and makes feeding the kittens part of Ma’s own eating routine, rather than a formal interruption to it.

That domestic pattern helps define their role in the narrative. A kitten is offered to Cedric as he is brought into the household, and kittens later receive scraps and cream at the table. The repeated attention to what they are given makes their presence concrete: they are dependent animals whose care fits into the family’s informal, abundant way of living.

Cedric and the White Kitten

The white kitten becomes especially significant in the scenes centered on Cedric and the tax form. While the household’s library distracts him, Cedric struggles to hold onto the obligation he has come to pursue. A kitten brushes against his leg, and he startles as it settles on his knee. The moment interrupts his concentration but also marks how thoroughly he has been drawn into the domestic environment that competes with his purpose.

Later, as Mariette leads Cedric out of the room, the white kitten brushes against his legs again. Its return links the earlier interruption to his departure: the animal remains a small, recurring point of contact as he leaves the table and follows Mariette into the kitchen. The kitten’s movements do not resolve Cedric’s concern about the form; instead, they accompany the way that concern is repeatedly displaced by life in the house.

Narrative Function

The kittens’ appearances form a quiet counterpoint to the tax form. Cedric tries to remember his official task amid the family’s food, conversation, and television; the kitten’s contact brings his attention back to the immediate domestic scene even as he attempts to recover his purpose. The contrast is not between a serious task and a dramatic obstacle, but between bureaucratic concentration and a household whose ordinary activity continually gathers him in.

Their recurrence also gives continuity to the scenes: the offered kitten, the two animals fed at supper, the kitten on Cedric’s knee, and the one brushing his legs as he leaves. These brief appearances show the care and abundance that surround the family’s guests, while making the kittens part of the texture through which Cedric’s visit and his difficulty remembering the tax form are presented.