Most of this food is raw meat, which, with a sharp knife, he cuts up into very small pieces, until several hundred pounds are thus prepared. Sometimes a small portion of the meat is boiled; but this cooked meat is only intended for cats who are not very well, and who need something more delicate than raw meat. Once a week—on Thursdays—the cat's-meat man cuts up fish instead of meat; for on Fridays all his cats have a meal of fish, of which they are very fond, and which is very good for them.
After the meat or fish has been nicely cut into bits, it is all done up in small brown-paper parcels, each of which weighs a pound; and these parcels are packed into great strong baskets. Each basket holds forty or fifty of these pound packages, and is pretty heavy for the cat's-meat man to carry.
Bright and early in the morning, soon after sunrise, the cat's-meat man begins to feed his cats, starting out from the market with a big basket of meat on his shoulder, and threading his way through the crooked streets and lanes of the lower part of the city to the homes of his little customers.
SOME DOWN-TOWN CATS.
THE MORNING CALL.
Everywhere the cats and kittens are anxiously waiting and watching for him, and sometimes they run out and meet him at the corners half a block or more away from their homes. Often when he is feeding the cats on one side of the street, those living on the other side run across, and rubbing against his legs, mewing and purring, seem to beg him to hurry and get over to their side. Of course these cats do not belong to the cat's-meat man, though he takes just as much interest in them, and is just as fond of them, as though they were his own. They are the cats that live in the stores and warehouses of the lower portion of the city, where they are kept as a protection against the armies of fierce rats that come up from the wharves, and do terrible damage wherever the cats are not too strong for them. For this reason the cats are highly prized and well cared for in this part of the city, and the cat's-meat man finds plenty of work to do in feeding them. He is paid for this by the owners of the cats, and as he has about four hundred customers his business is quite a thriving one.
The cats all know and love him, and are generally expecting him; but if he opens the door of a store where one of his cats lives, and she is not to be seen, he calls "Pss-pss-pss," and the kitty comes racing down stairs, or from some distant corner, so fast that she nearly tumbles head over heels in her hurry to get at her breakfast.
Some of the cats are only fed every other day, and they know just as well as anybody when it is "off day," as the cat's-meat man calls it. On these off days they lie perfectly still as he passes, paying no attention to him; but on the days they are to be fed, these "every-other-day cats" are the most eager of all, and travel the greatest distances to meet their friend.