r cat, but his claws
come out and he taps the mirror softly, just to make sure.

When I'm lying on the bed reading, sometimes he will curl up between my
knees and the book. But after a few days I can see he's getting more and
more restless. It gets so I can't listen to a record, for the noise of him
scratching on the rug. I can't let him loose in the apartment, at least
until we make sure Mom doesn't get asthma, so I figure I better
reintroduce him to the great outdoors in the city. One nice Sunday morning
in April we go down and sit on the stoop.

Cat sits down, very tall and neat and pear-shaped, and closes his eyes
about halfway. He glances at the street like it isn't good enough for him.
After a while, condescending, he eases down the steps and lies on a sunny,
dusty spot in the middle of the sidewalk. People walking have to step
around him, and he squints at them.

Then he gets up, quick, looks over his shoulder at nothing, and shoots
down the stairs to the cellar. I take a look to see where he's going, and
he is pacing slowly toward the backyard, head down, a tiger on the prowl.
I figure I'll sit in the sun and finish my science-fiction magazine before
I go after him.

When I do, he's not in sight, and the janitor tells me he jumped up on the
wall and probably down into one of the other yards. I look around a while
and call, but he's not in sight, and I go up to lunch. Along toward
evening Cat scratches at the door and comes in, as if he'd done it all his
life.

This gets to be a routine. Sometimes he doesn't even come home at night,
and he's sitting on the doormat when I get the milk in the morning,
looking offended.

"Is it my fault you stayed out all night?" I ask him.

He sticks his tail straight up and marches down the hall to the kitchen,
where he waits for me to open the milk and dish out the cat food. Then he
goes to bed.

One morning he's not there when I open the door, and he still hasn't
showed up when I get back from school. I get worried and go down to talk
to Butch.

"Wa-a-l," says Butch, "sometimes that cat sit and talk to me a little, but
most times he go on over to Twenty-first Street, where he sit and talk to
his lady friend. Turned cold last night, lot of buildings put on heat and
closed up their basements. Maybe he got locked in somewheres."

"Which building's his friend live in?" I ask.

"Forty-six, the big one. His friend's a little black-and-white cat, sort
of belongs to the ni