🐈🐈‍⬛A Kitten's Tale🐈‍⬛🐈

For display purposes only!

          Our nest was under an old stump in a meadow. There, my mother gave birth to me and three others. I am the only son, and I was first born. I am striped and I have spots too.
            Our time together there was very nice. When mother was hunting, we waited for her, as quietly as stones or flowers. That was her instruction, to make no sound. Mother put me in charge when she went out to hunt. I took it very seriously. My three sisters obeyed me and all went well during our time together under the old dead stump.
            Among ourselves, cats don’t have names. That’s not how we know each other. It’s appearance and scent, and even sometimes, in the dark, a typical mew or purr. So when I set out into the world, I was known by no name, such as speakers use.
            Midsummer came, and I was out using my legs a little. Mother was home under the stump with my sisters, who were not ready to go abroad yet. So, I was alone. I had never been alone before.
            It was so entrancing out in the open meadow that I just kept walking! I made little burrows in among tall grass stalks. I climbed over sticks and rocks and vines. I climbed into a huckleberry bush, and I was astounded to see all that lay before me.
            After a while I thought of my mother and realized that I had become hungry. I no longer had her scent to follow home. One way seemed much like another. So, I walked. I suppose I thought that if I kept going, that I would find her, or at least her scent, or she would find me!
            It was not to be.
            I walked, and I cried out too, for a long time, but I was truly alone, except for a few robins and crows, who were no help at all. I saw some insects, but they have no power to help at all.
            After all this searching, I came upon a strange thing. I didn’t understand what it was. It was a ring of trees pulled together at their tops where they seemed to be woven together. There was a circle of rocks at the bottom of these trees, and there was what I knew later to be a door in this strange sight. I didn’t fear it, I was too desperate. Maybe there would be help here.
            My cries must have been noticed by someone, for a very amazing thing happened. Now, I knew the sun; I knew what the moon looked like, and my little eyes had even discerned stars very far away. But it seemed that a star came to me then, with tears in my eyes alone in the meadow.
            It was blue and gentle. It caused no fear. It came down near to me and rested near the ground. It was the color of the sky, but deeper blue, and maybe the size of the full moon seen from the ground.
            It moved over the grass a few inches and waited. I followed. Then it moved again and stopped again. I followed. I was beginning to understand that I was to follow it. So, slowly this blue star led me to the very doorway of the strange thing made of woven trees. I really had no choice except to follow and hope for the best.
            I followed the blue star through the doorway.
            As I followed it in, its light faded and in its place was what I later came to know was a child, a boy. He turned and smiled at me, and he said, “What a good kitty you are!”
            He was just bending to stroke me, which was a new experience, when a much larger person, who was smooth and hairless, wearing a dress, saw us there together.
            “Koba, my son, what have you got there?” she said.
            “I found a kitty crying in the meadow, Mama,” said the boy. “I think he needs us!”
            “You are right. He looks thirsty and hungry!” said the woman, who I found out later was a mother, in fact, the boy Koba’s mother. I felt safe because she was a mother.
            Koba got a bowl, and the mother poured water from a jug into the bowl, and Koba set it down before me. Now, I had never lapped water before, since my sole drink and food had been my mother’s milk. However, the woman knelt and splashed the water a little and then touched my mouth with a wet finger, and I made the connection and learned to lap water right there. I was so relieved to have just a drink that when I had lapped a bit longer, I just sat with my eyes closed and rested.
            “He’s hungry, Mama,” said Koba.
            “I know, but I bet he hasn’t had solid food yet. Let me think,” said the mother. “Maybe he could eat a little fish if I break it up for him.”
            Later I learned that her name was Leely. Leely saved my life that day, and I will never forget it, or that Koba found me and led me to her.
            She got a little plate and on it she put some pieces of cooked fish broken up into small flakes.                She placed the plate before me. I sniffed it and walked around the plate because I knew it must be food but had never eaten solid food before.
            Koba took a little flake of the fish and showed me that he put it in his mouth. I took courage from his demonstration and took a bit into my mouth too. It was a revelation. It was so good that I ate all of the small plate of food.
            “Now he will be sleepy,” said Leely.
            “Can he sleep in my bed?” said Koba.
            “Yes, why don’t you put him to bed,” she said kindly.
            Koba carried me to a sort of big basket full of soft cloth things. I didn’t know about quilts yet. He laid me carefully in the basket bed. He said, “Go ahead and sleep. We will take of you.”
            As I was dropping off to sleep, I heard Koba tell his mother that I needed a name.
            I felt safe for the first time since I had become lost.
            “When your daddy comes home, you and he can name the kitten, Koba. I think that would be very nice,” said Leely, “Don’t you?”
            “Yes!” said Koba. “I think I will go sleep with the kitten while I wait for Daddy,”
            That was my first nap at home with Koba and his Mama and Father.

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