breakdown. The letters of the story are unopened mail he protects himself from by stacking it away in a box. Following his withdrawal from involvement with the world, he maintained distance until now, turning 50, he decides to open the letters along with his frightening paranoia. The Woman who wasn't Allowed to Keep Cats Americans, Spiro Hajistavros and his wife Maro are calling on the Alexious family in Athens. They start a fight on the way there along a sunburnt street, over her friendship with Kikitsa and Aleko. The fight is along class lines, the friends being impoverished intellectuals and they, wealthy New York restaurateurs. As they climb the baking streets, their wealthy American life falls away until they arrive – a couple of Greeks after all – in Kikitsa's cat-infested apartment. The story continues with the couples circling each other warily in different encounters, until one day, Maro visits Kikitsa by herself. This time, the Alexioi have moved up in the world, Aleko now a successful writer, Kikitsa is thin again, and there is a ban on cats in their lives. Due to the ban, Kikitsa takes up her own sensuality, a girlfriend fling is revisited and the Alexioi find an inspired passion for each other. Down at the Dump Wal and Mum Whalley are in the "bits and pieces trade" (scrap dealers) – Wal works the dumps. They are planning a day out at Sarsaparilla dump to avoid a funeral in the street. The Town Councillor's wife, Mrs Hogben prepares to bury her sister Daise Morrow and her daughter Meg is on leave from school for the funeral. The dump is beside the cemetery, a vantage point for the writer to explore the thoughts of men who knew Daise gathering at the grave, and the family at the dump stirring each other abusively. Daise seems to embody the only person accepting of both sides of the tracks, until a tender truce is played out between Meg and the dumpers' son, Lummy that suggests life will always slip from the controls of social standing. Critical reception White's short stories are noted for their multiplicity of symbols, myths, and allegories, as were his longer works of fiction. Critic Hameeda Hossain says, "In describing the pathos of a slow crumbling of suburban souls, his stories evoke a sense of tragedy... of a whole way of life." Scholar William Walsh describes his