The Slum Kitten waited in vain for her mother. The morning came and
went. She became very hungry. Toward evening a deep-laid instinct drove
her forth to seek food. She slunk out of the old box, and feeling her
way silently among the rubbish, she smelt everything that seemed
eatable, but without finding food. At length she reached the wooden
steps leading down into Jap Malee's bird-store underground. The door
was open a little. She wandered into a world of rank and curious smells
and a number of living things in cages all about her. A negro was
sitting idly on a box in a corner. He saw the little stranger enter and
watched it curiously. It wandered past some Rabbits. They paid no heed.
It came to a wide-barred cage in which was a Fox. The gentleman with
the bushy tail was in a far corner. He crouched low; his eyes glowed.
The Kitten wandered, sniffing, up to the bars, put its head in, sniffed
again, then made toward the feed-pan, to be seized in a flash by the
crouching Fox. It gave a frightened "mew," but a single shake cut that
short and would have ended Kitty's nine lives at once, had not the
negro come to the rescue. He had no weapon and could not get into the
cage, but he spat with such copious vigor in the Fox's face that he
dropped the Kitten and returned to the corner, there to sit blinking
his eyes in sullen fear.
The negro pulled the Kitten out. The shake of the beast of prey seemed
to have stunned the victim, really to have saved it much suffering. The
Kitten seemed unharmed, but giddy. It tottered in a circle for a time,
then slowly revived, and a few minutes later was purring in the negro's
lap, apparently none the worse, when Jap Malee, the bird-man, came home.
Jap was not an Oriental; he was a full-blooded Cockney, but his eyes
were such little accidental slits aslant in his round, flat face, that
his first name was forgotten in the highly descriptive title of "Jap."
He was not especially unkind to the birds and beasts whose sales were
supposed to furnish his living, but his eye was on the main chance; he
knew what he wanted. He didn't want the Slum Kitten.
The negro gave it all the food it could eat, then carried it to a
distant block and dropped it in a neighboring iron-yard.