e; and he sings and whistles as he works. In the
morning he goes about the streets feeding his cats; but his afternoons
are devoted to preparing their food for the next day.

Most of this food is raw meat, which, with a sharp knife, he cuts up
into very small pieces, until several hundred pounds are thus prepared.
Sometimes a small portion of the meat is boiled; but this cooked meat is
only intended for cats who are not very well, and who need something
more delicate than raw meat. Once a week--on Thursdays--the cat's-meat
man cuts up fish instead of meat; for on Fridays all his cats have a
meal of fish, of which they are very fond, and which is very good for
them.

After the meat or fish has been nicely cut into bits, it is all done up
in small brown-paper parcels, each of which weighs a pound; and these
parcels are packed into great strong baskets. Each basket holds forty
or fifty of these pound packages, and is pretty heavy for the cat's-meat
man to carry.

[Illustration: STARTING OUT]

Bright and early in the morning, soon after sunrise, the cat's-meat man
begins to feed his cats, starting out from the market with a big basket
of meat on his shoulder, and threading his way through the crooked
streets and lanes of the lower part of the city to the homes of his
little customers.

[Illustration: SOME DOWN-TOWN CATS.]

Everywhere the cats and kittens are anxiously waiting and watching for
him, and sometimes they run out and meet him at the corners half a block
or more away from their homes. Often when he is feeding the cats on one
side of the street, those living on the other side run across, and
rubbing against his legs, mewing and purring, seem to beg him to hurry
and get over to their side. Of course these cats do not belong to the
cat's-meat man, though he takes just as much interest in them, and is
just as fond of them, as though they were his own. They are the cats
that live in the stores and warehouses of the lower portion of the city,
where they are kept as a protection against the armies of fierce rats
that come up from the wharves, and do terrible damage wherever the cats
are not too strong for them. For this reason the cats are highly prized
and well cared for in this part of the city, and the cat's-meat man
finds plenty of work to do in feeding them. He is paid for this by the
owners of the cats, and as he has about four hundred customers his
business is quite a thriving one.

[Illustration: THE MOR