FERAL

Roueche, the irreproachable reporter of chilling medical and scientific phenomena, has taken just one step beyond with a story infested with horror and preternatural possibility -- an eco-catastrophe which could be happening anywhere, not just in Amagansett, Long Island, where Jack and Amy Bishop buy a house, stay for a time, adopt a stray cat Sneakers and then dump her as carelessly as all those other summer visitors. When they return, they take in a dob who has been starved and apparently mauled; other phenomena begin to puzzle and frighten them -- stables are free of rats and in the woods no birds sing. Later they find a dead deer and a neighbor is fatally bitten. As time passes, the incidents abound and before the close they are encircled by a pack of rapacious killer cats, just vagrants or? Roueche's menacing conte is all too real and will make the fur fly on your head -- it's the most frightening takeover since The Day of the Triffids.