A Tale of Two Kitties

I am doing a 10 day Writers Bootcamp, writing 1000 words a day in response to a prompt or a word or a suggestion.  It has been fun, especially since I have had plenty of spare time so I don't feel stressed about it.  We have committed to sending 1000 words by midnight, and we don't have to edit anything, we just have to crank it out.  We really aren't meant to share these things, but this one entertained me enough to publish here in its raw form.  Those who already know this story will see that I cut some corners or forgot some parts of the story and perhaps I mischaracterized some nephews.. Ah well. It is meant to be read as a children's story, so you can just imagine the illustrations.

The prompt was: end the story with this phrase, "which was all she really wanted."  

It all started in the chicken house. The farmer could tell that an animal was coming into the chicken house in the night but nothing harmed the chickens.  There was just a flurry of movement, the sensing of a shadowy hurried exit when the farmer came in to check on things at dusk. And then one day she noticed some tiny little furballs, snugly tucked under the hens. She looked more closely – kittens! Their eyes were still closed and they looked warm and cozy, so she left them there. Now she knew who was slipping in and out at night. A feral mama.

For a few days everything seemed just fine, with the little black and white fuzzies rolling around in the henhouse. But then the farmer noticed something was amiss.  There was one less kitten.  She looked closer at the remaining kittens. They were missing some toes, or even entire feet. The chickens were quietly eating the kittens, bit by bit.  No one can accuse chickens of intentional malevolence. This was just another tasty morsel, a convenient snack bar. Kitten toes, mmmm.

The farmer gathered up the three remaining kittens and took them into the barn. She fed them and coddled them until they could stagger around on their own. They did not know they were missing toes and they didn’t have anything to complain about.  One of them had two full front feet and no back feet. One had a total of ten toes on four feet. And one was only missing a few toes.

The farmer’s nephew couldn’t resist those kittens and he wanted to take them to college with him. He took Pogo and Candi (short for Candi-Hat), and the farmer kept the least damaged kitty for herself. Taking them to school was a short-sighted plan – he left the kittens in his dorm room with a full bag of cat food and he let them have the run of the place.  It didn’t take long for the authorities to figure out there were aliens in the building.

But where should two differently-abled kitties go?  Why, to another aunt’s house, one with no pets at all. Safe from dogs and the big outdoors.  The farmer told the new hosts to be sure the cats never got outside because they could not protect themselves and they would be eaten in a flash. It was an ironic twist, having the cats move to the only house that had never wanted pets. 

So Pogo and Candi slid and slithered all over the hardwood floors, did all the cute things that cats do, and had a deluxe life.  They had special cat doors constructed for them, allowing them to go through a window onto the porch. Since they couldn’t climb, they couldn’t climb down off the porch, so it was laughably easy to keep them secure.  From time to time a bad kitty from the neighborhood would come to harass them and Pogo would puff up into a huge, round, spluttering, screaming ball and chase that cat off her porch.  Candi made herself invisible on those occasions.

Then the mother of the college boy came to live at the house and she fell in love with the cats.  When she moved to her own house, she took the cats with her.  This seemed like the best of all possible worlds.  The cats had a truly loving home, not just a pleasant and adaptive home. But nothing lasts forever and a man with a big dog moved in.  This disrupted the cats’ world immensely.  They became anxious and unpredictable. Candi couldn’t cope and she began to pee on rugs and towels and laundry. Pogo was a little more rugged and she just told the dog to keep its distance.

Candi moved back to the house with fewer challenges, but also less love. She didn’t pee on anything. She settled in and made the best of her new life as a single cat.  In fact, anytime they brought Pogo to visit her, there was a hissing fit and the visit was brief.

Then one day, another nephew decided he really wanted the cat. He knew that his aunt and uncle, the caretakers, would be okay if they didn’t have a cat anymore. So he just came one day and took it away.  In fact, this was a bit of a shock to the caretakers who had grown accustomed to the cat, but they hoped Candi would have a loving home again.  She did, sort of.  Her new house was much smaller and she had many fewer options for prowling around. But the new nephew held her and played with her and made her feel very safe.

But nothing lasts forever.  The boy moved to another place called the tree house and took the cat with him. For a while things went well, but eventually the boy found a girlfriend who had a cat. And the cat was not very tolerant of Candi.  Once again, Candi was a stranger in her own home. She began to pee on everything. And since the boy and his girlfriend left their laundry and linens on the floor, she peed on those every day.  The boy and his girlfriend learned to pick up their clothes but it was not a happy place for Candi.

Then the boy and his girlfriend built a yurt for themselves and they moved out, taking the new cat with them and leaving Candi behind in the tree house.  They would come and visit her every day, scratching her head and giving her a few minutes of attention.  But she was alone in that cold, quiet house for days and days.

This was untenable to the uncle who had created cat doors and cat spaces in his home for Candi and Pogo.  After a few weeks, he couldn’t stand it anymore and he went to the tree house and stole Candi back.

Which is all she ever really wanted.