Free Catalyst by Anne McCaffrey Page B

theirs took longer to develop than my own, as I was the only one to know in advance when the boy was coming. When the man came to tag us, I tried to hide under Mother, but to no avail. I was scooped up and my neck stung for a reason I did not understand. I cried lustily at the cruelty and injustice of it all. Afterward, Mother gave my poor neck a weak lick, but I forgot about my injury almost before her tongue was back in her mouth.
    That particular day stands out in my memory, however, because, as the boy scooped me up and put me on his shoulder, where I huddled under the fringe of hair curling down his neck—the part of him that seemed most like Mother—I slowly realized that I could see not only him but the man as well, and that I was looking down at my beautiful mother, at Git, and my littermates. The light was not good and colors were not strong but my new eyes were very sharp and I could see everyone and everything around me. I began mewing excitedly, and the boy plucked me from his neck and turned me to face him so that his huge blue eyes looked into my new ones.
    “Pop, look, Chester opened his eyes!”
    “Excellent! That means the rest of the litter will soon. Not too much longer and we will be wealthy, son.”
    “But not Chester, right, Pop? We don’t have to sell them all. You said I could keep one and I want to keep him. That’s okay, right?”
    The man sighed as Mother sometimes does when we are exploring her too actively. “I’m sorry, son. I meant it when I said that you could keep one when I brought the Duchess home, but withher only having the four kits instead of seven or eight, like we thought, our profits were cut in half. So how about picking out one of Git’s babies instead? You can have any one you want.”
    “No, Pop. Chester is the one who likes me.”
    “Cats like whoever feeds them, Jubal. And he’s likely to get a better life than you do once we get him a good berth. Now you look after them while I’m gone and don’t let on to your mama, you hear? I have a little job to do on the station for the next few days.”
    “You know I’ll take care of them, Pop.”
    To the best of his ability, he did too, and the tragic events that followed were not really his fault. He was simply doing what we wanted.

    During the time the man was gone, we kittens began to grow hungry for something besides milk. This became apparent the day Virgil, while nursing, bit Git and got himself slapped tail over nose into the hay pile.
    Then she shook all of the others off and stretched her forepaws out in front of her and her hind end toward the ceiling and whipped her tail back and forth a few times before announcing, “Time for you young’uns to learn to hunt.”
    I’d like to say that this happened at once and we all became the superb predators we were always destined to be, but first we had to learn to eat solid food. The boy helped. He brought us table scraps of cooked meat. The others growled and fought over it, but I realized immediately that the meat lacked something in juiciness and savor—that indefinable quality that I was hungry for without even realizing what I was missing. I looked up at him and mewed. He picked me up and asked, “What’s the matter, Chester? Don’t you like rabbit?”
    Git rose and went to the door—that was what the opening was—and scratched.
    “Okay, girl,” the boy told her. He pulled something out of apouch in a fold of his blue hind leg, reached down, and buckled the long tail-shaped strip around Git’s neck. “You can go hunting now if you want.”
    Git streaked through the door. “Freedom!” I heard her cry as she disappeared.
    The man returned and entered our room. “Hmm,” he said. He took something from
his
coat, very small, and aimed it at us. Several times light blossomed around his hands and the colors of our coats, the hay, the boy’s clothes and skin, all became bright and distinct.
    Mother blinked placidly.
    “What’s that?” I asked her.
    “I