The Pocket Kitten

It was written for a contest involving an object that was found in the trash.

I didn't re-read this before uploading.  I remember it was for a contest and that I believe it did well.  =).  It's just a cute little story, I think.

 

Picture credit to DAJ.

 

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            I can’t believe I lost it again.  Mum will have my skin for it this time, I swear.  Even Pa might raise an eyebrow.

            That stupid jacket is the only thing they’ve ever worked together to get me, and I’m always losing it.  They give me ‘the eye’ if I don’t wear it in the summer, too.  It’s really hot outside!  Why should I have to wear a cruddy jacket when it’s sweltering outside?  But of course they don’t listen to reason, they’re parents.

            I thought their divorce would be a walk in the park.  Two bedrooms, two sets of pets, to parents buying me things separately…I was living the life.  They were still civil, too, so there was none of that nasty yelling through thin walls I hear about sometimes.  Sure it hurt that they were separating, but I could feel that they were unhappy together.  I want to see my parents happy.

            They won’t be when they find that I have, once again, lost that jacket purchased from their collaboration.  I know I had it at lunch since I was sitting on it out by the pond while I ate.  When I went back after last period, it was gone.  Nothing was floating in the pond.  I gathered that someone had put it in lost and found.

            With all my luck, it turned out lost and found was being thrown out today since school is ending.  Now whatever was in that extensive, somewhat smelly bucket of random stuff is in the dumpster (which is more than somewhat smelly).

            That leads me to where I am right now, knee high in a dumpster searching in vain for a jacket I don’t even like.  I hate when I don’t like things that are so important.  It smells really horrid, since the cafeteria women served fish sticks today.  They’re never of top quality and they smell bad enough when they’re freshly cooked, let alone when they’ve been rotting in a dumpster all afternoon. The stench of it almost makes my eyes water up.

            I don’t allow myself to question why I’m putting myself through this as I work.  Instead, I jam my hands into the gooey mess below where I saw a floating sweater I had seen in the lost and found the day before (when I had left my jacket in math class).  I felt cloth of all sorts, a baseball bat, and what felt like a smashed graphing calculator.

            Then, with a yelp, I felt a moving, very feline tail.

            There was a sharp hiss-mew hybrid noise now coming from the creature I held in my hand.  I reached my hand forward and cradled the main body of the cat and, gingerly, brought it forth from the smelly wreckage.

            “What are you doing in here?” I inquired its way.  It stopped mewing and looked up at me with curious, tilting eyes.  I couldn’t tell if its fur was dark from the goop found in this horrendous place or of a naturally dark coloration.  “And what’s that?”

            I gazed at the little black and gold square held firmly in its jaws.  After wading out of the dumpster, I placed him on a low cement wall and removed the object.

            It was a journal with gold-lined edges reading “JOURNAL” in careful, looping font on the front cover.  I opened it up to view the inside page.

                        “Marie Marque, 2006-2007.  Please return.”

            I stared blankly at the text I now recognized.  Marie was in three of my classes, always talking about her kittens and various animals.  She was the sweetest girl I had ever met.

            I’ve had a crush on her since the seventh grade, but I’ve never dared to talk to her beyond what was needed for class.  This was the perfect chance. I had even found one of her precious kittens.  It was a remarkably peculiar find.  Her cell phone number was even below her name.

            I launched my honorable plan by deciding to walk home, clean off the kitten and myself, and give Marie a call.  She would answer the phone quietly—pleasantly—and would be elated to know that I had found her kitten and journal.  I knew she carried that journal around everywhere.  Maybe she was as forgetful as I was, sometimes, and had left it at her lunch table.

            As I entered my home and went to tenderly bathe the kitten, I had only one question.

            Why didn’t I have a cat to help me find my lost belongings?  My face grew blank.  What lost belongings?

 

Author's Note

Gentle, please. =).