Min wiggled to freedom while the man was in the washroom down the hall. She’d feared she’d be trapped in that basket forever. First, there’d been all that commotion downstairs, and then her humans had disappeared for a goodly while. Unconfined at last, Min gave herself a good shake from nose to rump and then twitched her tail twice. The door to room 514 cracked open enough for the cat to wriggle through to the hallway. With another tail twitch the door softly closed behind her. The cat’s keen nose led her directly across the worn carpet to another door, which, with a third tail twitch, was soon ajar. Her charges, still in their travel clothes, were curled together on the bed like a litter of kittens. She sniffed around Audie and the other girl until she was reassured of their safety and well-being. They were no doubt exhausted from their long journey and that excitement in the lobby. Quite a to-do over what? A sheet and some wire? As Min had observed on countless occasions, humans have a tendency to overreact.

She leapt to the windowsill, the window itself left ajar out of habit by her best human friend. Min’s ears pricked up as she took stock of the situation. It would take five or six leaps to reach the street. With a last glance over her chocolate-striped shoulder at the girls, out she went, landing as confidently as ever on four snow-white paws.

The city smells threatened to confuse her—rat-scented steam from someplace deep below, shad and striped bass from a close-by river, and the ever-present stench of humans. Fortunately, she’d had several days on the train to get well attuned to Punk’s scent. She padded past dry goods stores, underneath fruit and vegetable displays, around street peddlers pushing carts heaped with wares, until she found the building she sought. Despite being in the shadow of the Sixth Avenue El, it loomed like an enormous perched owl, absorbing the entire block between Forty-Third and Forty-Fourth Streets. Min ducked into an entryway, Punk’s scent leading her on.

She skittered around workers carrying velvet drapes and wooden boards and lengths of rope; none seemed to see her, or if they did, chose to take no notice. She could not know that they were glad for the cat’s presence; all the feed and animal waste in the deep recesses of the theater attracted rats. And if there was one thing stage workers detested, it was rats.

Oblivious to the workers’ hopes, the cat forged ahead, motivated by one reason only: the sad aroma signaling her new friend, Punk. She turned down a dark hallway, and down a darker set of stairs. Ahead was an enormous door behind which bubbled a stew of animal scents, including that of the baby she sought.

With purpose, Min padded forward.

Only to be stopped by a snarling pair of Dobermans.