the kitten

A thin, not-quite-two-month-old white kitten that Pyotr Demyanych decides to drill into a mouser by repeatedly setting it before a baited mousetrap; terrified rather than instinctive at each release, it bolts every time and is shaken, cuffed, and finally thrown out of the house. A year later, grown into a tomcat, it flees in terror from a real mouse encountered in the wild -- the story's punchline, mirrored by the narrator's own lifelong flinch from Latin.