As the train neared our location, everything seemed to slow down. I watched as the hobo moved towards the train and within two hops, he was in the open bed of the train car. Spinning around, he yelled, “Don’t just stand there in a daze, hurry up and grab my paw, before your left behind.”

Urging my legs to move forward, it felt like I was running in quicksand, but in an instant, I was leaping through the air, reaching out for the Hobo’s extended paw. Grasping, I thought that I would slip and fall beneath the wheels of the train and for a moment it seemed that I would. But then, I found myself swinging into the open box car. Landing on my two back paws, I stumbled and landed on my side, my knapsack falling from my hands and skidding across the bed floor and out the other side. Scrabbling to my feet, I ran to the other of side the car and watched hopelessly as my knapsack disappeared from view.

“Well, that’s a shame about your bag,” the Hobo replied. “And I could’ve gone for another sandwich.”

“Is your stomach all you carry about?” I screamed. “All I owned was in that knapsack.”

“Calm down.”

“Calm down, calm down?” I yelled. “How am I supposed to survive?”

“By the skin of your whiskers” the Hobo replied. “That is how cats in my line of work survive, and I’ll show you how. But first you need to calm down and collect your wits about you