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busy.” Once again she was right.
    Charles William stared at his toe in astonishment. Never before had he experienced Scotch tape on his toe. He lay back andwaved his foot. The tape stuck fast. Fascinating! “Ah-gah-gah,” he said.
    Mrs. Risley was now able to devote her entire attention to Socks. This remarkable woman, who knew where to find things in a strange house, found Socks’s brush in the laundry and went to work brushing him with long, hard strokes. Socks stood with his back braced and his chin raised, luxuriating in the tingle the brush brought to his skin. All the time Mrs. Risley brushed, she talked. “Poor Skeezix,” she said tenderly. “With a baby in the house he feels nobody loves him. Well, Mrs. Risley loves him.” With a tip of her finger, she rubbed his nose where the hair grew short and flat. How good it felt! “Yes, he is a handsome boy.” Socks agreed.
    When Mrs. Risley cooked and ate her meat patty, she served Socks a morsel. “Just enough so you won’t feel left out,” sheexplained. “We can’t let such a handsome boy get fat, can we? No, that wouldn’t do at all.” Somehow Socks did not mind receiving only one small bite of meat.
    By this time Charles William had exhausted the possibilities of Scotch tape and was beginning to be cross with it. He had pulled it from his toe, stuck it to his right hand and then his left, back and forth, and finally succeeded in sticking it to Brown Bear. He did not want Scotch tape stuck to Brown Bear. Charles William fussed, and Socks looked anxiously to Mrs. Risley.
    â€œNow don’t you worry,” said Mrs. Risley, pausing to stroke the tabby head. “I’ll be right back.” Socks was so relaxed that only a moment seemed to go by from the time Charles William was lifted from his playpen until he was smacking away at his bottle in his bedroom crib.
    Mrs. Risley pulled a magazine from her survival kit and plumped herself down on the couch where she patted her lap. “Now,” she said to Socks, as if this was the moment she had been waiting for.
    This was the moment Socks had been waiting for, too. He leaped lightly onto the sitter’s lap, which was large, soft, and sweetly perfumed by flower-scented soap. Mrs. Risley possessed the perfect lap, a lap rarely experienced by a cat who lived in a world of people determined to stay thin.
    Except for Socks’s deep purr of contentment, the room was quiet. In Charles William’s room the smacking stopped, but this time Socks had no interest in leftover formula. He no longer had an empty feeling in his middle. The bottle fell out of the crib with a thump, and the silence that followed meant that Charles William was asleep for the night.
    Socks began to knead the perfect lap with his paws, in and out, in and out. His purr deepened, and a dreamy look came into his golden eyes. In and out, in and out. With his eyes half-closed, Socks felt as if he were with his mother and the rest of his litter that he had almost forgotten.
    Socks lost all interest in washing. He lay down on the perfect lap and wriggled until he was lying on his back with his four feet in the air and his spine in the trough between Mrs. Risley’s plump thighs. Gently and rhythmically she stroked the silky fur on his trusting belly. “Poor old Skeezix,” whispered Mrs. Risley, as she stroked Socks’s glossy fur. “You were starved for a little love.” She turned the pages of her magazine carefully so they would not flick his whiskers and the sound would not disturb him.
    Gradually the purrs petered out, and witha final sigh Socks fell into a deep sleep, the first perfect sleep he had enjoyed since Charles William had been carried home from the hospital. Mrs. Risley loved him more than she loved his rival.

5
A Visit from Nana
    A puzzling and, to Socks, inconvenient change took place in the behavior of his mistress. Mrs. Bricker, who usually