After a while they send Tarou to see a doctor, who says that the boy is just suffering from bad nightmares and sends him home.
Then the rainy season comes! The shallowest part of the Tanaka family's backyard gets dug out by the rain, creating a small muddy ditch in the yard. Inside the ditch is a small metal box and inside the box -- a half-decomposed cat! Its collar was tied so tightly around its neck that the cat had suffocated!
Tarou's father quietly got rid of the cat's body before anyone else could find out, but that night there was a knock at the door...