Of Bent Hairpins, Exclamation Points, and Runaway Pussycats, Part I
Music drifts through the air. The leaves outside the window seem to dance in time with the pulse of the drums, and to soar with the singing violins. The room in which the music is playing is tidy, but only because it was recently cleaned in a fit of well-meaning clutter-rage. Sings of disorganization are creeping in: clothes draped over the arm of a chair, both dirty and clean; papers, magazines, and bits of plastic spreading across the desk and onto the floor; memorabilia stacked hastily in a corner. The day calendar with the tear-off sheets on the desk is behind by several days.
Music, leaves, clothes, piles, clutter, and inaccurate calendar, all go unnoticed by the man sitting at the desk. He has pushed aside the mess and now writes furiously on a pad of lined paper. His handwriting is small and tight, but not quite neat. There are places near the top of the page where it seems the hand paused in the middle of a word, almost as if the writer had forgotten how to form the next letter. Interspersed throughout the page is the occasional printed word. Now, however, the pen is flowing through the words. There is no pausing to remember how to write. There are no breaks in this train of thought. With a flourish, the author finds the end of the story. It closes with bang, a great exclamation point leaping off the page!
The author lays the pen down on the paper, and sits back. A yawn escapes as he raises his arms in part stretch, part victory sign. Suddenly, he stops. The author looks out of the window, hands still in the air. Beneath a tree in the yard is a tiny kitten. The shivering mound of fur is huddled in a nook created by a gnarled root thrusting out of the ground. Even protected so by the root and tree, the kitten looks as if the mounting wind could easily carry it away. Eyes that seem far too large for such a small animal peer at the author, and that gaze pierces his heart with its pleading.
Thoughts and emotions rushed through the man. He had to rescue the poor thing! But what would he do with it? He had no place for a cat. The thing would have no place to pooh! He could teach it to use the toilet; a friend of his had done that once. Already leaping to potty training? His arms were still up, and he was already teaching it things in his head. Food. What do you feed cats? Cat food. That could get expensive. Plus the shots. You’re supposed to get them all kinds of shots, aren’t you? Look, just go get the thing out of the rain. You can go from there. The author gave a guilty smile to his better Angel, dropped his hands, and sprang to the coat closet, then outside to rescue the kitten!
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