I came and looked at him every few hours and wondered if I ought to take him to a vet. But he seemed to be breathing all right, so I went away and thought about it some more. Come night, I pushed him gently to one side, wondering what I better do in the morning.
Well, in the morning Cat wakes up, stretches, yawns, and drops easily down off the bed and walks away. He still limps a little, but otherwise he acts like nothing had happened. He just wants to know what’s for breakfast.
“You better watch out. One day you’ll run into a cat that’s bigger and meaner than you,” I tell him.
Cat continues to wait for breakfast. He is not impressed.
But I’m worried. Suppose some big old cat chews him up and he’s hurt too bad to get home? After breakfast I take him out in the backyard for a bit, and then I shut him in my room and go over to consult Aunt Kate.
She sets me up with the usual iced tea and dish of cottage cheese.
“I had breakfast already. What do I need with cottage cheese?”
So I eat it, and then I start telling her about Cat. “He came home all chewed up night before last. I’m afraid some night he’s not going to make it.”
“Right,” says Kate. She’s not very talky, but I’m sort of surprised. I expected she’d tell me to quit worrying, Cat can take care of himself. She starts pulling Susan’s latest kittens out from under the sofa and sorting them out as if they were ribbons: one gray, two tiger, one yellow, one calico.
“So what you going to do?” she shoots at me, shoveling the kittens back to Susan.
“I—uh—I dunno. I thought maybe I ought to try to keep him in nights.”
“Huh. Don’t know much, do you?” she says. “Well, so I’ll tell you. Your Cat has probably fathered a few dozen kittens by now, and once a cat’s been out and mated, you can’t keep him in. You got to get him altered. Then he won’t want to go out so much.”
“Fixed. Castrated is the technical word. It’s a two-minute operation. Cost you three dollars. Take him to Speyer Hospital—big new building up on First Avenue.”
“You mean get him fixed so he’s not a real tomcat any more? The heck with that! I don’t want him turned into a fat old cushion cat!”
“He won’t be,” she says. “But if it makes you happier, let him get killed in a cat fight. He’s tough. He’ll last a year or two. Suit yourself.”