There are two principal scenes of action.

One is in the "greatest city" of Lirht, a planet in a galaxy other than our own. In that city is a laboratory in which a scientist has been working on a transportation device. A happy hurkle kitten (hurkles are nearly always happy) wanders into the laboratory while its staff is out, probably heading toward the center of the city, where a bomb has gone off. Like an earthly cat might, it plays with the lights and switches on the transportation device and is transported to an elementary school on earth.

The elementary school is where the confrontation between alien creature and human beings is played out. There is nothing remarkable about the school, except perhaps for its supply of powdered DDT. The particular classroom that the hurkle kitten disturbs is composed of bored children and a weary teacher, and the...