Snap

Our oldest daughter was about ten when she came home and announced that she wanted to have a kitten. I wasn’t really in favor of it, because like all the other projects, someone else might wind up caring for it. But I didn’t want to be so harsh as to say NO.

Instead, I asked Evie, the oldest, to make two lists:

1. How a kitten would benefit our household.
2. How a kitten would NOT benefit our household.

I’d been around this girl since day one. I should have known she would be way ahead of me with positive reasons for having a cat. But I had no idea the positive list would be as long as my arm while the negative list numbered only five items.

I’d made a deal. I was boxed. So I asked details about this kitten.

“There’s three of them, Dad. Snip, Snap, and Snur.” She wasn’t sure which one she wanted. But ten minutes later she returned home with a pint-sized kitten she called Snap. All five girls lined up at the sofa – Evie, Sophia, Tina, Sonya, and Vicky, taking turns holding him.

They cared of the kitten as though he was a human infant. They dressed him in the doll clothes they had on hand, and converted a doll buggy into a kitten buggy.

They changed his diapers, trousers, dresses, shirts, blouses, and after each change then they rolled the buggy into Barb’s and my bedroom for naps.

I don’t recall how long he was a member of our family. Evie tells me he was too small to be a bull-of-the-wood cat, but not too small to scrap. And one day he didn’t make it back home.

Sad ending.