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The strangeness began with the zealot of Glendaloure and his cat. Not that he truly owned the cat, it was someone else's pet. That was the key to the circumstance. The zealot possessed a stolen cat and was using it on Sunday to impress the urgency of witches upon everyone in the village, though his efforts met no success. Here was the same old Muiredach, raving his usual exhortations about Hell and Jesus, only this time he had a bucket of water and that wretched animal, a smallish black kitten mewling in a tiny cage made of twig and twine, which he clearly intended to drop in the water and drown, momentarily. Surely a holy religious experience like unto a pilgrimage, though it were close to home, could do much to convince a man to mend his ways and so be closer to God and Heaven, but no one perceived watching Muiredach drown that scrawny thing was likely to be sublime. The whole spectacle reeked of mad distasteful cruelty, though no one dared say so. Not even the priest.