After he'd got out fresh liver for Bast, he paused to look at her crouched daintily over her dish. Surely she was just a trifle fatter around the middle? He seemed to remember reading somewhere that Abyssinians had large litters, and suffered a dismaying vision of the apartment overrun with a dozen kittens. ``Y que sigue despues? - what then?'' he asked her severely. ``A lot of people are so peculiar that they don't like cats, it's not the easiest thing in the world to find good homes for kittens -- and, damn it, you know very well if I have them around long, impossible to give them away! And I suppose now that you've finally grown up, if a little late, you'd go on producing kittens every six months or so. Yes, well, it's a pity to spoil your girlish figure -- which all those kittens would do anyway -- but I think when you've raised these we'll just have the vet fix it so there wonn't be any more. I wonder if the Carters would take one. And it's no good looking at me like that,'' as she wound affectionately around his ankles.