A Dozen Roses Contest Entries, Entries, Featured
Wendy Joseph’s purrfect love!
Jan
Good Morning, Literati! And greetings from Moscmeow!
Wendy Joseph rose to the challenge for our contest: A Dozen Roses from a Single Thorn: A Valentine’s Day Love Story. For your chance to show some love and win prizes and a date* with Kristine Rose Grant, our love-judge(what? you would prefer Judge Judy?) just click this link!
In the meantime, get your bigglesworth —oops!–I mean money’s worth, with this entry by Wendy Joseph
Mommie
by Wendy Joseph
Mommie is gone. I miss her. And I miss sucking that warm stuff that came out the spouts on her tummy. If I pushed hard with my paws, more came out. I had to fight for it sometimes. My brothers and sisters were brats and tried to push me away. I didn’t like them, but they’re gone too, and I miss curling all tangled up with them. It was warm.
Now I am in a new place with a strange hairless cat—well it has some hair on its head but the rest is pitiful. It keeps warm by wrapping itself in the same kind of thin blanket stuff that was in my box. Sad it doesn’t have fur.
The Hairless One’s paws are almost as big as me. But it never claws me, because its claws are soft and bend. Poor thing can’t dig into the couch and pull stuff out like I can. But its claws stroke me like Mommie did when she licked me all over. I liked that.
When I was in the Hairless One’s lap I looked for spouts on its tummy, but there was only a nose thing that went in. Nothing came out. Two soft mountains were on top, but they didn’t look like spouts. Too big. But it was soft and cuddly up there.
Even though it doesn’t have spouts it feeds me, with that new stuff in a bowl. It’s OK. But I wish it would feed me more from the bag with the fish on it, and less from the chicken bag.
So it feeds me and holds me and is kind of like a Mommie, so I guess it’s a She. She even tries to talk like me sometimes, though she can’t do “meow” very well. Once she came close, but it was only a rumor.
Sometimes she holds a feather on a string in front of me and I try to kill it. But it never seems to die. I can’t figure this out. But I am going to destroy it someday.
She put me in the big box that she sleeps in, but it was almost too big to handle, even though it’s nice and soft. And it had mountains that move when she got inside, and that scared me so much I jumped off. She didn’t like that and picked me up and held me on her lap, and did her best awful meow.
Tonight the cold wet stuff was coming out of the sky, and sometimes there was a bright light and then a loud noise. It scared me even more than the moving mountains in her box, so I jumped up there just to be next to her because she is nice and like a Mommie, and a Mommie wouldn’t let a mountain fall on me. Also her box is soft and comfy and warm.
She held me close and meowed a little better, and I snuggled up to my Mommie and felt safe.
* (that was a phone date, by the way…but, you never know!)
A warm cup of coffee with a warm story curling up around my mind…meow…how lovely. For years I’ve spent my life with cats and tried to be them at times. With the purrs sounding, I adored your story Wendy, because I could wrap my paws around the impressions within a kitten with sibling rivalry, losing them, losing my birth mother, new forced friendship and human bonding with well meant mockery of that new mommie being so poor at impersonating a cat.
The strength of the writing is that I forgot I was reading words and embraced being that cat feeling the cuddles, pets and closeness of sharing the wonderful mysteries of being a cat. Thank you for this well written, richly textured and delightful tail of meows. It left me purring wanting to read fur-ther.
So you want to find out what Mommie does when Purr Paws totally shreds the couch? Thanks for the comments, Parisianne. Everybody loves a kitten, but how do they feel about us? Appreciate that the kitty’s POV came through.
To Mommies every where, happy love day. I sing the praises for this furr balled ballad as I wonder at my own two dried flat spouts, wondering if god made a mistake.
Don’t think God made a mistake, Michael. Thanks for the praises.
This just lulls you into smiles and comfy feelings. Words strung along, flowing so nicely gives a wonderful vision of a tiny fur ball, but in reality can be any tiny ball whether a two legged or a four legged. Animals can take care of each other, now if only the two legged kind would get the message…chuckling. Lovely story Wendy…purrrfectly fun to read.
Thanks a bunch, Diane.