I’m not brave and fierce like my mother but I am hungry And hungry cats do desperate things Today my belly is so empty and angry with hunger that I walk all the way uptown to a dumpster on the city hospital’s north side It is the least dangerous dumpster in the city Partly because it’s far away from the city’s center but mostly because the food you find there is terrible I smell it before I see it Old coffee Jell-O and warm yogurt Chipped green and uglier than ugly I take another smell hoping there’s something in it that’s better than spoiled egg salad Once long ago I ate the remains of an omelet with ham and cheese It was from old Mrs Gianni who normally flicks a dish towel at me but sometimes gives me food The omelet made me picky about eggs It was beyond magnificent magnificent I jump up on the dumpster dumpster and start to poke around for the spoiled egg salad I move aside a crumpled coffee coffee cup and some soggy fried 4
potatoes And then suddenly I get a small whiff of a turkey sandwich It’s bliss and joy and oh glorious food It’s not just any old turkey sandwich either but one with a bit of cheese still attached This is the blessing of being a city cat Everything is terrible until just like that it isn’t But as I start to dig for the turkey there’s a rustle down in all the tossed away things A huge rat pokes his head out of the trash and shows me his teeth I jump back in surprise feeling annoyed and scared right down to my paws Those are sharp teeth Beat it Stripy he says I have white lines that crisscross my gray fur My brother sister and our mother sometimes called me Mr Boots instead of Harvey because of the white fur on my paws As nicknames go I prefer Mr Boots to Stripy My name is Harvey I say I try to say it with the pride and dignity our mother insisted all cats in the city have We are simply the best she’d tell my brother sister and me Maybe so but it’s hard to be proud or dignified when sitting on the edge of a dumpster full of the city’s saddest garbage 5
I don’t care what your name is the rat says Get out I try not to look at his big sharp teeth I’m so hungry that I can still smell the turkey with cheese underneath the smell of my own fear Fear has a smell like vinegar It’s sharp and demanding That turkey is mine the rat says as if he can read my mind I haven’t eaten anything in two days That turkey is not his A brave city cat would fight him for it I think about my brother whose nickname is The Terrific Thief He’s even more famous than my mother What would he say to this rat I have as much right to be here as you I say But of course my brother wouldn’t speak to a rat He would chase it away If you take one step further I will bite you the rat says He stares at me with his fiery eyes big teeth and twitchy nose My famous brother got his nickname because he stole an entire steak while the nearby humans were looking for matches He jumped up on the rusty edge of the grill sank his teeth into the meat and took off 6
I’m told he did not share it I’m not like my brother I’m a city cat yes But not a brave one I do not take one step further Instead I jump off the dumpster and skitter back into the alley As I walk away I try not to think about that turkey I wish I were brave enough to fight a rat My only defense is that he was really big Of course I’m still hungry And sad Unlike turkey with cheese hungry with sad is a terrible combination I keep thinking about my empty belly and that huge rat until I remember to look up at the sky No matter how bad it gets there’s always the sky It’s the best part of living in the city During the day the clouds say Go find food you can do it And when it’s dark out and the big mean creatures are in big mean moods the silver stars say All is well have no fear Plus sparrows swoop and fly through the sky Of all the city’s creatures sparrows are the best Unlike pigeons who put humans in terrible moods sparrows make everyone happy And if you run into sparrows under a café table and I almost always do they only eat dropped bits of bread They leave the real food alone 7
