Free Love, Let Me Not Hunger by Paul Gallico

clowns quickly took to calling him Mr. Albert, and it had stuck.
    There was something else that this late-in-life start promised Mr. Albert as well as something to love and be loved by, and this was permanency and a place to stay.
    It was a home which under no circumstances could strictly be classified as one, since it had no four walls, exit or entrance, and was always on the move, and sometimes his bed was straw and sometimes the hard ground, or the bottom of a jolting wagon with the stink of monkeys in his nostrils, or squeezed in between the bars of two adjoining cat cages; yet home it was, for he belonged. He was a member of a group, a company; when they closed ranks against the jossers and chavvies of the world without, he was on the inside. Animals and circus people were his friends.
    “And this here,” explained Mr. Albert, moving on to the next one, “is Number Three. They all work together in the ring.”
    Number Three was a panther, sleek, silky, black as darkest night, gliding on silent feet from one side of the cage to the other with a little upward swing at the end of each run—then return to the other side—upward swing—back again—always in the same impatient rhythm. As they stopped before it, the panther stood stock-still for an instant, contemplating them, and then resumed its loping run.
    “What’s her name?” Rose asked.
    “Him,” Mr. Albert corrected. “It’s a he.” And then added, “Bagheera.”
    “Bagheera! What does that mean?”
    “I don’t know! It’s supposed to be something out of a book.”
    Rose asked, “Do you pet him too?” And then added in a half-whisper, “I’d be afraid to.”
    Mr. Albert regarded the black panther fondly and foolishly. “He thinks he’s a devil,” he said. “The major—that’s Major Hoffmann that was—said his heart was as black as his head, but don’t you believe it. Look here!” He said, “Hoi!” rolled up his sleeve and stuck his bare arm through the bars.
    In a movement that was so quick the eye could hardly register it, the panther whipped about, dropped onto his side, and clamped both forepaws about the arm of the old man and lay holding it tightly while with his back legs he made jerky, kicking motions. But his claws were retracted, and at the same time he was rubbing his head and ears against the bony elbow of Mr. Albert.
    The sight put Rose into a kind of an ecstasy of delight and yearning for some kind of contact with the beautiful cat. She said, “Kin I—couldn’t I touch him, just once?”
    “Well, no,” replied Mr. Albert. “You could catch your sleeve like in a claw and that makes ’em frantic. You notice I rolled mine up first.” He freed his arm by pushing it still farther through the bars to create slack to the panther’s embrace and then gently withdrew it. “You never pull away quick from a cat,” he explained. “That makes ’em hold on. You kinda go with him, see?”
    Rose was regarding Mr. Albert with marvel and admiration and the old man warmed to her and the glance.
    “If you come around,” Mr. Albert said, “you want to be careful not to go too close to their cages, like we’ve got a sign up saying not to. They could get a claw into your sleeve or dress—see, it’s coloured like and moving, and they’re like children and they make a pass at it. And when they catch a claw or something they get scared. They don’t mean anything but when they’re frightened they just got no place to go like when they’re at home. See what I mean?”
    Rose made no reply. Her lips were parted and there was a shining in her eyes almost to match those of the big cats.
    “There was a woman last year in Alvington,” Mr. Albert continued, “pushed up against the bars calling him baby names. She had a bracelet with dangles that was shiny. Bags there struck at it and got a claw caught. So then he pulled her arm inside the cage and still couldn’t get it loose. It was awful.”
    He paused now, realising that he had