The Cat returns as narrator, addressing the reader directly. She confesses she had no intention of coming back to Uz, Nebraska, but the voices of her drowned children called her home. She reflects that she cannot truly escape the foursquare and the prison—those traumas travel with her wherever she goes.

The Cat recounts her month spent wandering the towns along the shallow river. She fell in with a migrant family heading to Oklahoma but parted ways after witnessing a cruel act: a truck deliberately swerved to flip a land turtle onto her shell. The Cat leapt from the truck bed and came to the turtle's aid, butting the shell upright and grooming away debris.

Over seven days, the Cat slowly helped the turtle cross a highway, embankments, and a withered alfalfa field, until the turtle reached a lake and slipped into the water with a parting remark that goodness is its own reward. The Cat takes pride in not killing her.

Despite her efforts to flee, the Cat found she could not escape Uz. She has unfinished business with the man who drowned her babies. She reveals that the farmer's niece, Asphodel, is her amanuensis—sitting in the front row of the Grange, smiling and jotting down the Cat's words in a green notebook, mistakenly believing she is inventing the story herself.