BLACK PEARLY

I just blogged about a home near the park at which a few kitties live. But I had to post a story I'd written a few years ago about another black kitty at the park because I wanted to tell you an interesting tidbit about that picture. I'll post the story here, give the info about the illustration separately, ok?

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It was past time, but would the cat be there? I hurried to the vending stand. Yes! There was the black ball of fur curled up on the wooden counter.

"So sorry I'm late," I tried to start, but the cat looked away.

"You really don't want to see me," that gesture seemed to say. "It's those pretty flowers over there by the park entrance, right?" It started cleaning its paws. "Or maybe you wanted to take pictures of the shiny Kawasemi bird?" The cat was not interested in interaction if it did not mean that much to the human. It would only get hurt again.

I could see the many scrape and bruises it was licking. I wasn't interested in the flowers or birds; it really was this cat, but what could I do to let it know I was sincere? My species probably kicked it around shamelessly.

After some time, it lowered its leg and looked at me as if to say,

"You said you'd go home and think of a name for me. Was that just something to say, or did you really get one?"

I think I was elated. "Yes. I did. Pearly."

"Pearly?"

"Pearls are precious and beautiful. I know you're going to say but they're white, and I'm black." But I continued, "but there are such things as black pearls, and they're much more rare--maybe one in a million--so they're much more valuable too."

And I looked straight at the cat. "I want you to be a one-in-a-million cat, not just any-old-cat. So I was wondering if the name "Pearly" would be OK? What do you think?"

The cat seemed to be taking her sweet old time thinking about it. I couldn't be sure, but after a while, it seemed the cat was liking the feel of the sound. From now on, whenever I see this all-black cat, it will respond to the call "Pearly".

It got up from that plywood stand and started going home. She seemed to be thinking, "Black Pearls?! What d'ya know. Learn something new every day."

END

I didn't know what I was doing

"Mew." Cats don't fly. Why was that sound coming from my 2nd-story window?

When I stuck my head out the window and looked down, I saw a kitten who'd found another kitten--a newborn--and, mistaking it for a mouse, was playing with it, flinging it up in the air. At the top of the arc, the frightened kitty had let out a little scream--which I had heard.

"Hey, stop that!" I pulled on garden gloves and brought the poor thing into our apartment--in a shoebox my daughter had emptied then lined with a towel. My husband had rushed to the pet store for feeding supplies. The kitten was so small. The umbilical cord was still attached when we found it, and it was still a bit moist, but it was all fluffy in a few hours. Unfortunately, its back was broken, and there was little we could do; my husband had to bury it the next day.

My daughter, a cat lover, surprised me with her response. She held absolutely no anger towards the larger kitten who was probably responsible for hurting the newborn; knew it had acted out of ignorance. Instead, she loved it and got it to eat out of her hand and crawl on her shoulders. When we moved, my daughter's regret was that she'd have to part with her new kitty friend.

Here's the kitty at the top landing of the apartment steps. If he could talk, I think the kitty might've said, "I'm really sorry about that newborn; I didn't know what I was doing."

Years later, my husband and I went back to that old neighborhood, and we saw some cats. They ran away when we neared them--all but one. It was skinnier and scruffier, but yes, it was that specially loved kitty.

We human critters killed the Son of Man, Who prayed, "Father, forgive them; they don't know what they're doing." And the Father's response was to love us in a special way too.

CATS & MICE

I was cleaning up some old e-mails and found two silly expressions I'd thought of years ago, Can you figure out what they mean?

1. FELINE EMANCIPATION - Welll; the first is just a fancy way to say, "Let the cat out of the bag"(!) The feline was emancipated, get it? Get it? ? Okay, not so good. The next one, maybe:

2. RODENT OLEFACTORED - Try guess. Yup. "Smell a rat". Like the cat one better? Hey, that's not fair! But I agree.

Are you done groaning? I won't send you any more quirky expressions. But can you guess what this is?

MOUSE IN A BAG - This is a Japanese expression to show the sure capturing of something that has been cornered. Ahn must've felt this way when she was kidnapped by the communists and whisked away to a home in the middle of a heavily-guarded hill. By all appearances, there was no way she could get out of this one, p. 596.

But it's not just cats who find their ways out of bags; by p.598, Ahn found herself out of breath but on the floor of a neighbor's home, free of the Communists' hold.