Once upon a time there was a shack on the roof of Canessa with a great view of the TransAmerica Pyramid. The Cat helped take it apart, moved it to the country and rebuilt it completely. It works as a painting studio now.

The Cat remembers a time in San Francisco when there used to be shacks everywhere, not just a bunch of hokey restaurant names, but real shacks. When he was still just a kitty, the Cat used to live out in Dogpatch, and there was a little Bay beach nearby where the Western Pacific had a train ferry. The beach was full of tires, and there was a shack off to the side with the door not really closed. So the kitty went in late one afternoon and it was all a-jumble with junky stuff, but he had the distinct impression it was a household, so he left without disturbing anything.

Then there were all the newspaper shacks. Not the fancy French kiosks, but kind of cobbled together plywood sheds with a little lemonade stand or carnival booth front and flaps that came down at night for padlocking, no two alike, and some were big enough you could live in them, or at least have friends over while you're sitting in there poring over the Racing Form and selling 10-cent papers.