wonder if she knows what I'm talking about because I don't really know how
to explain it any better.

She wrings the sponge out, finally, and sits down at the kitchen table.

She says, "Cat's not a free wild animal now, and he wouldn't be even if
you turned him loose. He belongs to _you_, so you have to do whatever is
best for _him_, whether it's what you'd like or not. Ask the doctor and do
what he says."

Mom puts it on the line, all right. It doesn't make me feel any better
about Cat. She takes five dollars out of her pocketbook and gives it to
me.

I get out the wicker hamper and go down to the cellar and load Cat in. He
meows, a low resentful rumble, but he doesn't try to get away.

Cat in the hamper is no powder puff, and I get pretty hot walking to the
bus, and then from the bus stop to the animal hospital. I get there and
wait, and dogs sniff at me, and I fill in forms. The lady asks me if I can
afford to pay, and with Mom's five bucks and four of my own, I say Yes.

The doctor is a youngish guy, but bald, in a white shirt like a dentist's.
I put Cat on the table in front of him. He says, "So why don't you stay
out of fights, like your mommy told you?"

I relax a bit and smile, and he says, "That's better. Don't worry. We'll
take care of tomcat. I suppose he got this gash in a fight?"

"Yeah."

"He been altered?"

"No."

"How old is he?"

"I don't know. He was a stray. I've had him almost a year."

All the time he's talking, the doctor is soothing Cat and looking him
over. He goes on stroking him and looks up at me. "Well, son, one of these
days he's going to get in one fight too many. Shall we alter him the same
time we sew up his leg?"

So there it is. I can't seem to answer right away. If the doctor had
argued with me, I might have said No. But he just goes on humming and
stroking. Finally he says, "It's tough, I know. Maybe he's got a right to
be a tiger. But you can't keep a tiger for a pet."

I say, "O.K."

An attendant takes Cat away, and I go sit in the waiting room, feeling
sweaty and cold all over. They tell me it'll be a couple of hours, so I go
out and wander around a lot of blocks I never saw before and drink some
cokes and sit and look up at the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge to Queens.

When I go back for him, Cat looks the same as ever, except for a bandage
all up his right front leg. The doctor tells me to come back Friday and
he'll take out the stitches.

Mom sees me come in