Tag: memory

When I was five, I found a kitten on the street. I called my folks at work when I got home from school (kids, even five-year-olds, could return to empty houses in those days) and told them my boyfriend gave me a kitten, I would keep it in a drawer in the garage, they never had to see it, I would feed it and take care of it, please, please, please let me keep it. When my dad got home that evening, I took him into the garage where I had indeed put the kitten in a drawer, and the pretty marmalade thing looked up at us, mewing and wide-eyed. My dad picked it up, the kitten a tiny ball of fluff in his big papa bear hand. I carry this image with me, fifty years later. Cat in hand.

I named him Puddin.

The cat, not my dad.