His mother, as far as he could remember, had been a pleasant woman and as self-centered as a gyroscope. She’d liked cats. She didn’t just venerate them—everyone in the kingdom did that—but she actually liked them, too. Teppic knew that it was traditional in river kingdoms to approve of cats, but he suspected that usually the animals in question were graceful, stately creatures; his mother’s cats were small, spitting, flat-headed, yellow-eyed maniacs.
