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It's just a tiny rustle, or a breath, but I have a creepy feeling someone is standing near us.

Way down at the end of the cellar a shadow moves a little, and I can see it has a white splotch—a face.

It's a man, and he comes toward me.

I don't know why any of the building men would be way back there, but that's who I figure it is, so I start explaining.

"I was just hunting for my cat ... I mean, he's got locked in one of these cages.I just want to get him out."

The guy lets his breath out, slow, as if he's been holding it quite a while.

I realize he doesn't belong in that cellar either, and he's been scared of me.

He moves forward, saying "Sh-h-h" very quietly.

He's taller than I am, and I can't see what he really looks like, but I'm sure he's sort of a kid, maybe eighteen or so.

He looks at the padlock on the cage and says, "Huh, cheap!"

He takes a paper clip out of his pocket and opens it out, and I think maybe he has a penknife, too, and next thing I know the padlock is open.

"Gee, how'd you do that?"

"Sh-h-h. A guy showed me how. You better get your cat and scram."

Golly, I wonder, maybe the guy is a burglar, and that gives me another creepy feeling.

But would a burglar be taking time out to get a kid's cat free?

"Well, thanks for the cat. See you around," I say.

"Sh-h-h. I don't live around here. Hurry up, before we both get caught."

Maybe he's a real burglar with a gun, even, I think, and by the time I dodge past the elevators and get out in the cold April wind, the sweat down my back is freezing.

I give Cat a long lecture on staying out of basements.

After all, I can't count on having a burglar handy to get him out every time.

Back home we put some nice jailhouse blues on the record player, and we both stretch out on the bed to think.

The guy didn't really look like a burglar.

And he didn't talk "dese and dose."

Maybe real burglars don't all talk that way—only the ones on TV.

Still, he sure picked that lock fast, and he was sure down in that cellar for some reason of his own.

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