Suddenly I was seized with sadness. How miserable it was for a bird to lose its wings!Without someone taking care of it this small thing could not survive. But man had injured its wing. How cruel be was! Injured as it was. it still wanted to rely on man. How pitiable! The look in its eyes showed that the little creature was of two minds. It was small and by no means pretty, yet its gestures and expressions revealed that it had been wronged and landed in a difficult situation. It was anxious to keep its delicate life out of danger, but it did not know what to do. It had little confidence in itself and less trust in man, but it needed someone to rely on. It hopped and stopped, looking at me but too shy to come over. I thought of fetching some cooked rice to attract it, but I dared not leave it alone lest it should be attacked by the kitten. As the kitten was not around at the moment, I hurried to the kitchen and came back with a few grains only to find the bird missing. I ran to the outer yard and saw the kitten crouching by a flower pot in front of the screen wall. I hastened to drive her away but, with a quick jump, she caught hold of the bird. The tame sparrow, with its tail and claws dangling from the kitten's mouth, did not even know how to struggle. It looked more dead than alive.
With my eyes fixed on the bird, I watched the kitten run first to the kitchen and then to the room at the west end. I was afraid to press hard after her, but I had to follow her in case she should tighten her jaws. Though the bird's head was not visible to me, the look of anticipated danger in its eyes was vivid in my mind. Between its look and my
sympathy stood that small white cat. Having run a fev rounds after her I quit, thinking it was pointless to chase her like that because, by the time I caught her, the bird would have been half dead. When the cat slipped back to the kitchen again, I hesitated for a second and then hurried over there ton. It seemed in my mind's eye, the little bird were pleading for help with its two black bean-like eyes.
In the kitchen I noticed the cat was crouching by a tin pipe which was installed as smoke duct in winter and dismantled in spring at the corner, but the bird was not with her. The pipe leaned against the corner and, between its lower end and the floor, there was an opening through which the cat was probing with her paws. My hope revived: the bird was not dead. As the kitten was less than four months old, it had not learned how to catch mice, or how to kill for that matter. It was merely holding the bird in its mouth and having fun with it. While I was thinking along these lines the little bird suddenly emerged and the kitten, taken aback, bolted backward. The way the little bird looked was so registered to me at the first glance that I felt like shutting my eyes immediately. It was virtually crouching, with its chast close to the floor, like a man suffering from a stomachache. There was no stain of blood on its body. but it seemed to be shrinking up into itself. Its head dropped low, its small beak pointing to the floor. Its two black eyes, unseeing, were very black and large, looking lost. The little life left in it was all in the eyes. It seemed to be expecting the cat to charge again, with no strength to resistor run; or wishing that the cat would be kind enough to pardon it or that some saviour would come along to its rescue. Life and death coexisted in its eyes. I thought the bird must be confused or stunned, or else why should it have come out from pipe? Stunned as it was, it still cherished some hope which though hard to define, was the source of life. With that hope it gazed at the floor, expecting either to survive or die. It was so really scared that it became completely motionless, leaving itself all to the precarious hope. It kept quiet and still as if waiting for its life to flow out of its eyes.
The kitten made no more attempts to attack it. She only tried to touch it with her little paws. As kitten touched it, it tilted from side to side, its head undisturbed and its eyes looking blank at the floor. It would not fight back so long as there was a chance of survival. But the bird had not lost all of its courage: it acted this way only with the cat. I went over light-footed, picked up the cat and put her outside the door, the sparrow remaining where it was. When I took, it up in my hands and looked, it was not seriously injured, though some fluff bad come off its chest. It was looking at me.
I had no idea what to do. If I let it go, it was sure lo die: if I kept it with me. I did not have a cage for it. I held it in my hands as if holding all the lives in the world. not knowing what to do. The sparrow huddled up, motionless, its eyes as black as ever, still expectant. It remained that way for a long while, I look it to my bedroom, put it on the desk and watched it for a few moments. Suddenly it tilted its head left and then right, winking its black eyes once or twice, and became still again. By now its body seemed to have stretched a hit, but it still kept its head low as if it had understood something.
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