Pittysing jumped onto her kitty condo to see what all the noise was outside. Actually, being a plump, middle-aged Persian with short legs, she scrambled up rather than jumped. Yes, those common, low-class felines were at it again, she thought, fighting over an apparent piece of edible garbage. She thwacked her voluminous tail in disapproval, and one of them looked straight up at her, distracted, while the other ran off with the bit of food. Skinny fellow, mostly black, with such a hollow look about him. She stared back until he turned and ran off across the parking lot. Why hadn't his servant fed him? she wondered. Didn't all cats have a servant like she did?

She was a little put out at her own servant these days, who was spending more and more time away from home. Pittysing was so bored and lonely she had nearly lost her substantial appetite! Every night the rarely-seen tall lady in glasses had to open several cans of gourmet cat food before finding one that met with her approval. Worse, she'd seen her servant put some of her own food - never mind that she had refused it - in a pie plate outside under that very window. That's why the skinny fellow kept coming around, hoping for more.

Well, she hoped he didn't qualify as "company". "Company" was what her servant was threatening her with these days, as in "If you're so bored by yourself you have to spend your days shredding my quilt, you might need some company, Sweetheart." Well, yes. As in, you stay home where you belong.

Then she heard the key in the door and scrambled back down to go and welcome her servant. About time, she thought, as her servant came in and set down Pittysing's own carrier. What? With a strange cat hunkered down in it. What?? Pittysing stopped in her tracks. Not that I have any use for that thing, she thought, but it is Mine.

"I brought you some company, Sweetheart," her servant had the gall to announce, before scooping her up to hug and kiss her. Oh, ugh. Lipstick on the head, too! "I know you're lonely, Precious" the servant went on, "And I know you'll be happier with another kitty for a friend, somebody to be with you when I'm gone so much. He's a nice little guy, and he really needed a home. I got him at the shelter last week. And he's got a clean bill of health from your very own vet."

He? Well, at least it wasn't another female. That would have been unforgivable. When the hugging stopped, Pittysing looked into her carrier. The company cat was stripey brown and white, longish fur but not as long as hers. "Mrow?" he said politely, and she replied "Mmmf". At least he wasn't like that riffraff outside, so maybe she'd give him a chance. It's a good thing for you Persians are a laid-back kind of cat, she thought to her servant.

Pittysing had a good heart in spite of her regal attitude. Besides, she was lazy. In the following days, as she and Company Cat got to know each other, She really couldn't begrudge him anything, not even her gourmet food. No more went into the pie plate, because he thought it was all wonderful. He was very well mannered and never touched her dish without permission. But the main reason she was kind to him was his stories. In their long hours alone, Company Cat told her what it was like to be brutally evicted from a home (of sorts), to spend weeks starving in the streets and then days locked in a cage at a shelter. He'd been one of the lucky ones, he told her. He was a pretty cat and still young, so his cage was in a front room where people went to look first, not the dungeon in back with damp cement floors and multiple dozens of miserable cats just existing. She had never heard such sad tales in her life. She hadn't even known that most people were not servants.

Then one day there was yowlng and scuffling under the window again. "Come with me," she told Company Cat, "I want to show you something."

The skinny black fellow had apparently won that fight, because he was just finishing off some revolting mess with paper on it. "Is that what happened to him?" she asked.

"I don't know," he replied. "That guy has a wild, fearful look about him. I doubt if he ever had a home. He looks feral to me."

Pittysing turned huge golden eyes on him and made Company Cat explain what feral was. Then she nearly cried. She thwacked her tail on the window and the black cat looked up. But when he saw two cats there, he ran away in fear.

"I had no idea", whispered Pittysing. "Can we do anything to help?"

"No", said Company Cat sadly. "I wish we could. We're the ones who would do things right, because they're our own kind and we feel for them so deeply. But we have to rely on people to help them." Pittysing thought of her servant and Company Cat thought of the people in his first home. They looked at each other silently.