There is an Italian couple with a boy of four or five at the neighboring table on the hotel terrace. It is midafternoon, and it is pretty hot. Everyone on the terrace is kind of quiet. A cat appears at some point and plops itself down in the shade of another neighboring table. I know the cat well. Rather long in the tooth, it is regularly fed by a family whose house is close to the hotel, but it occasionally comes to the terrace to beg for a few choice morsels nonetheless. They boy gets up and gingerly approaches the cat. “Don’t touch it,” his mother warns him gently, “for it will scratch you.” Indeed, it is more than obvious the cat is about food rather than petting. The boy does not heed the cat’s own warnings, either, and it ultimately scratches him. “Ouch,” he lifts his hand in alarm, but he does not cry. “Oh,” his mother rushes to him at once, “let me see your hand!” As it turns out, the scratch is quite superficial. “Wait a minute,” his father shouts and runs to the reception, soon to return with a napkin and a big glass of water. “I’m fine,” the boy keeps repeating plaintively, but his parents grab hold of him, yank out his arm, and his father washes his hand with all his might. The boy starts screeching at the top of his voice, and his mother takes him onto her lap. “Nasty cat,” she says. “It isn’t nasty,” the boy cries miserably. “Ugly cat,” the mother says. “It isn’t ugly,” the boy cries even more miserably. “Nasty, ugly cat,” she keeps repeating. He keeps sobbing and sobbing. By and by, the boy starts whispering through his sobs: “Nasty, ugly cat!”