Frosty paused beside the limp gunny sack. He touched it with an extended nose, then glided cautiously around it. There was nothing to indicate that the sack was dangerous, but it had trapped him once and might again. Save for scent that still lingered on the sack, there was nothing whatever to indicate that the two gray kittens had ever been.
Knowing that he must do something, but with no clear idea of what that might be or where he should go, Frosty started into the night. He halted suddenly, warned more by deep-seated instinct than anything he could see or hear, and stood quietly under a bush. A moment later, he saw a big bird, a cruising great horned owl, pass overhead. Frosty stayed where he was for ten minutes. He knew only that he must be cautious. He could not know that the owl was hunting, and that a tender young kitten would be as acceptable as anything else.
A half-hour later, Frosty came to a streamlet, one of many that pursued their winding courses across the mountain, tumbled down it and finally poured their waters into a river. He crouched full-length and lapped water with a dainty pink tongue. . . . The kitten licked his chops, waited a bit, then drank again.
His thirst satisfied, he attended to every cat's implicit duty. Sitting down, he washed himself thoroughly with his tongue and used his front paws to groom that part of his fur which his tongue would not reach.
He licked his chops once more, smoothed his whiskers and wandered on. He struck at and missed a mouse that rustled the grass in front of him and watched, wide-eyed with wonder, when a rabbit bounded away. He missed another mouse and fluffed his fur and spat when a hunting fox rippled past.
Dawn found him in a grassy meadow. Little tendrils of moisture curled upward from dew-wet grass and a thin blanket of mist overhung the meadow. When something moved sluggishly in front of him, Frosty sprang to pin it down. His prize was a fat grasshopper, too torpid with morning cold to move swiftly. The kitten's tail lashed back and forth. He looked intently at this, the first catch he had ever made. Then he ate it and found it good.
Casting back and forth across the meadow, Frosty caught and ate grasshoppers until his stomach would hold no more.
