🍁🐈🐈‍⬛🖤A Kittens' Tale 🖤🐈‍⬛🐈🍁

            When I woke it took a minute to remember where I was; Koba’s basket bed. Then I remembered all that had happened since I left the stump nest and my mother and my sisters. I began to cry. I knew I was safe here, but I missed them terribly.
            The boy woke and held me in his arms as I cried. Soon his mother came to look, and then the father. The father was very tall and covered in soft brown hair. He might have looked frightening to someone else, but I saw his kind brown eyes, and his smile, and that smile calmed me so that I was able to stop crying and look around inside the house. I had never seen such a place. Much was confusing to my eyes then, but the effect was much like a small forest of alder trees, full of interesting objects.
            “He needs a name,” said Koba, as he held me against his heart where I could hear it beating. He was looking earnestly at his father.
            A voice I came to know later as Twigg’s voice, low, gentle, and soft, said, “Yes, he should have a name. That’s right. What do you think it should be?”
            “Fish! He liked the fish. Is that a good name?” said the boy. His father smiled down at him.
            “That’s pretty good. Fish. Hm. Let’s think some more,” said Twigg. “Where did you find him?”
            “Out in the meadow, Daddy!” said Koba.
            “What was there with him?” said Twigg.
            “Grass. Flowers. Birds,” said Koba.
            “What else do you know about him?” asked Twigg. I still didn’t really know what the word ‘name’ meant, but I was very interested in this conversation.
            “I think he was lost and he was making a sad little noise. That’s how I found him, when he was making that noise,” said Koba.
            “So, he needs a happy name, to cheer him up,” said the mother, Leely.
            “Happy!” crowed Koba. “Can we call him Happy?”
            “What do you think about Joey, because it sounds like Joy?” said Twigg.
            Leely and Koba laughed because it was such a good idea and they knew it. That’s how I came to be called Joey. I realized pretty quickly that the word Joey was my special word, a name in fact.
            Then we all ate more fish cooked in butter on a round wooden table with chairs for them, and I just ate on the table because I was still so small. I had more water too.
            While it was still light outside, Koba and I went out of the doorway to look around a little and he ran and I tried to catch him. He was much faster than me with my little short legs, but we had fun, until I looked into the meadow again and started thinking about my sweet lost mother and my three little sisters.
            It was so sad that I started to cry again. Then Koba cried too because he didn’t know what to do or what was wrong with me.
            Twigg came to the door and when he saw what was happening, he said, “Tomorrow we must try to find his family, so that he can be like his name!”
            I didn’t understand their speech yet, though I would soon, but I understood that the father wanted to help me, so I was comforted. I slept that night with Koba in his basket bed with hope in my heart. I felt love all around me as I drifted off to sleep near Koba, just listening to his breathing.

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