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said.  You’ll be the fourth in here.”  He paused.  "I think some
other cats live in here, so you can keep yours here if he can get along. 
Otherwise, he’ll stay in the kennels when he’s not working."
    "Working?  What kind of work does a cat do?"
    "The work a cat always does.  I told you everybody
works here.  His job is killing small pests.  Mice mostly, or what passes for
mice.  The barn is full of them, so he’ll be with you during the day. 
Sometimes, we lock the cats in the barn at night, too."
    "Lock them in?"
    "To hunt at night.  But we make sure they can’t get
out.  Some of the small animals in the woods are supposed to be there.  All of
the birds are supposed to be there.  Can’t have the cats killing them."
    Tommy began to understand the layout of the passages on the
way back to the open area.  He saw a pattern, and he was good with patterns. 
    As they climbed the stairs, Tommy asked, "Why don’t you
live outside, in houses, rather than in these tunnels?"
    "Don’t nobody live in the Commons.  The Commons is for
cleaning the air and growing things, and for animals that belong to the lords,
to keep them healthy, and for the warriors to have a place to train."  He
paused.  "And for the lords, should they want to use it.  We keep the
Commons for them, but we don’t live in it."
    "Warriors?"
    Jack looked over his shoulder at Tommy.  "You ask too
many questions.  Best not to speak of them."
    "I can't help it if I'm curious," Tommy said.  And
you might tell me something that will get me out of here.
    Potter was in the barn when they arrived, bounding after
mice through the hay.  Two other cats, one gray and white and one calico,
observed Potter's hunt from the rafters.  They seemed to find Potter's antics
entertaining without wanting to join in.  Tommy watched Potter leap high into
the air, then pounce on movement in the straw.  He emerged with a mouse in his
teeth and laid it at Tommy's feet.  At home, Potter would play with a terrified
mouse or vole for a while before killing it:  letting it go, then chasing after
it to catch it again.  Tommy's mom hated that about cats.  Here, Tommy watched
him kill three in a few minutes.  With so many in the barn, he was killing each
one and going after another.
    "We haven’t had a good mouser in a while," said a
voice from behind him.  Tommy turned to see the second Jack pushing a
wheelbarrow containing a flat shovel.  The first Jack had disappeared. 
"Your cat is something," the second Jack continued.  He glanced at
the mouse corpses scattered in the hay.  "Though he does need someone to
clean up after him."  He looked up at the cats lounging on the rafters. 
"Even the lords can't make a cat hunt if she doesn't want to."
    "He was a wild cat," Tommy explained.  "He
hunted his own food for the first year or so of his life, as far as we know. 
He was skinny but healthy when I started feeding him."  Tears ran down
Tommy’s cheeks. 
    "Hey, now.  We don’t have time for that.  Get behind
this wheelbarrow and follow me."  Jack went to the stall with the horse
Tommy had fed that morning.  "The stall on the other side's empty.  Move
the horse in this stall into the empty stall.  Shovel everything on the bottom
of this stall into the wheelbarrow."  He grinned.  "You'll need more
than one load.  Push the wheelbarrow out the side door and dump it onto the
pile.  When you finish cleaning this stall, cover the floor with straw, put the
horse in, and start on the next stall.  I’ll check on you later."
    The horse knew the routine and followed Tommy’s tugs on her
lead without trouble.  The first time, he filled the wheelbarrow but couldn’t
move it.  He had to shovel out two-thirds of the load to push the wheelbarrow
out the door.  By the fifth trip, he was so tired he was happy to move three
scoops at a time. 
    When he finished the first stall, he was sure he couldn't do
any more.  He stood next to the manure pile, his