Kitty Tamed Teens UPD

The Kitty Who Came for Christmas Color Vol. 9, No. 51December 20 - 26, 2001 Current Issue The Kitty Who Came for ChristmasDock of the BayLetters to the EditorEditorialBay ReflectionsBurton on the BayChesapeake OutdoorsNot Just for Kids TidelogEight Days a WeekFlickeringsWhat's Playing WhereReviewsMusic NotesSky WatchBay Classifieds ArchivesBehind Bay WeeklyAdvertising InfoSubscriptionsDistribution spotsContact us Christmas is a hard time to find a kitty, but Bill was dogged.by Sandra Martin; recounted by Bill Lambrecht; Illustrated by Betsy KehneBill should have known that this quest wouldn’t be easy. Except at dinner time, there is never a cat when you need one. When it is time to go to the vet or come in for the night, where is the cat? Your ‘here kitty, kitty, kitties’ fall on deaf ears. Even a white cat disappears into the background — whether that be the green of spring or the butterscotch of leafy autumn — when you want him. This was a lesson Bill could have learned from experience.But he was an investigative reporter, doggedly persistent in digging up the buried bones of chicanery. Finding a kitten ought to be a walk in the park.So when his wife said, “While you’re back home for Christmas, why don’t you get my Mother a kitten?”he’d said, “I can do that.”

kitty tamed teens

Prescription KittenThe diagnosis was loneliness, seasoned with boredom.With too much time on her hands, Bill’s mother-in-law was sure to get into trouble. After a lifetime of giving orders and moving walls, if walls needed to be moved in the pursuit of her goal, Elsa lived alone. She had not a thing in the world more she needed to do than clean and reclean her empty three-bedroom house. Not a person whose comings and goings she could direct. Even her dogs, yappy little things that might have needed a lot of management, were listless.Elsa’s daughter Sandra, who lived far away, had inherited her mother’s conviction that she knew best. Now what she knew best was that Elsa needed a kitten.Her conviction had been growing since Elsa tamed Little Black Kitty.“I know what you need,” Elsa had said when the tiny refugee puffed up to twice his size and sidled away like some midnight genetic cross between a crab and a cotton ball.It had been summer on Chesapeake Bay, and the crab pots were full. Elsa fed the foundling on crab and cream. Eating, he had won her heart.As Kitty climbed trees, hopped in the canoe or stalked a crab escaped from the bushel, Elsa rediscovered the forgotten truth that nothing’s more fun than a kitten.But when the time came for Elsa to go back home, she left her kitty on Chesapeake Bay.“ I don’t see how I can take him on the plane,” she said. “And what would the dogs think?”Now with her every phone call she wondered how her Maryland kitty was doing.Christmas loomed blue for Elsa that year. One grandson was in England, the other on the West Coast. She couldn’t visit, and Sandra couldn’t come home. Except for Bill’s brief Christmas Eve visit, Elsa would be alone.“What Mother needs,” said Sandra, “is a kitty under the tree.”Which made Bill a man with a plan.

Bill’s Kitty Quest“Leave me a key so I can come back this afternoon,” Bill told Elsa after she’d fixed him one of her famous breakfasts.“Don’t you have to get home to your family?” she’d asked. It was Christmas Eve, and Bill’s family home was 160 miles away, across a prairie blowing with snow.“Not right away,” he said, and set out for the humane society.Kittens had always come easily. They jumped into your arms on doorsteps, followed you home, were wheedled into your life by friends whose mama cat had had a litter or by those who had happened upon a kitty family living in half a cinderblock.Now he’d come looking for a kitty at a place that certainly smelled like cat; it reeked like the big-cat house used to at the zoo. But the only cats in residence on Christmas Eve were hard cases who’d been around enough to know when a fellow was looking for a kitten. They didn’t bother with any cute come-ons.Neither did the human intake worker. “A kitten at Christmas? You’ve got to be kidding. Kittens aren’t born this time of year, and if we had an odd litter, they’d be long gone.”

The Kitty CaperHe’d go back to Elsa’s, leave her presents under the tree and head for home, Bill thought. There’d be plenty of time for kitties — and plenty of kitties — in the seasons ahead. Eventually, Elsa would move to Maryland; maybe that’s when they’d get her a kitty.So he took the turn onto Olive Street Road with the resigned grimness that you learn when too many Christmases have come and gone without kittens under your tree or wishes come true.He wouldn’t have turned into the strip mall if it hadn’t occurred to him to bring some real bagels home from the neighborhood deli. So what if they weren’t quite right for Christmas; they were good.He wouldn’t have seen the pet store if his parking space hadn’t been snatched by a grinch who probably had more troubles than he did.If he hadn’t, what the heck, gone in, he wouldn’t now be turning into Elsa’s driveway with the last kitty in all the city.He’d had to out-maneuver a whining kid for whom the right pet would have thick skin and cold blood. He’d never paid money for a cat before, and this one had cost $35. But he had Elsa’s kitty, and the kitty was orange. 041b061a72