No one else in my family remembers this. Over twenty years ago, I told my mother and my sister this story from my childhood. They were both there when it happened. The story didn’t sound familiar to them. Maybe I just dreamed it, but I don’t think so. It feels much more like a memory than a dream. But I’m the only one who remembers Itty Bitty, the calico kitty.
When it happened, I was ten or eleven years old. We lived in a neighborhood where one side of the road had only old mill-hill style wood-siding rental houses that had seen better days; that is where the poor folks lived. And the other side of the road had a few friendly folks and a few snooty folks in nice new homes with telephones and paved driveways dotted by new cars.
Guess which side of the road I lived on.
My house and all its mill-hill companions are gone now, torn down long ago. Years after I left home, the owner told my parents he was selling the land and they would have to move. That news sent my father on a drinking spree he would not survive. My mother moved to her next home as a widow.
Now, it’s as though part of my life doesn’t exist anymore. A new post office stands on the spot where I lived for more than ten years. That forty-dollars-a-month, sagging-roofed house held a lot of unpleasant memories, and a few nice ones. The purpose of this story is to preserve one bitter-sweet memory from the time I lived there.
A half-acre field covered with scrub trees and tall weeds separated our house and the neighbor’s house. My father and I had occasionally planted a garden in that field, but it usually was just grown over with weeds.
The Meany twins lived in the house on the other side of the field. Their real last name wasn’t Meany and they weren’t actually twins; but the name suited them, so that’s what I called them. They had only lived there a few months. The Meany twins were brothers about my age, real troublemakers. I tried to be friends with them, but when they started blowing up mailboxes with cherry bombs, I decided they were too wild for me.
One Saturday morning, I was in my front yard when I saw the meany twins standing in the road beside the field between our houses. They were throwing rocks. The ditch along the road had a three-foot-high mud bank where field rats often scurried; I figured they were throwing rocks at rats. I had done that with them a few times before. So I picked up a couple of rocks and ran up the road to join them.
This time it wasn’t rats they were throwing rocks at. It was a tiny scared-to-death kitten, racing back and forth along the bank, dodging those rocks, some of them bigger than the kitten. It was the smallest cat I had ever seen that wasn’t being fed and protected by its mother. The little runt baby looked like a white cat that had fallen into several different-colored paint buckets. I’d seen and admired adult calico cats on my grandparent’s farm, but it never crossed my mind they looked like that when they were kittens.
I threw down my rocks and told the Meany twins to stop. They kept throwing. I guess they meant to kill it. The kitten ran along the bank toward my house and into my yard. I ran after it. The Meany twins followed, throwing rocks all the while.
Once we were in my yard, I turned toward them and told them again to stop throwing rocks. The oldest brother answered by whizzing a rock right past me that bounced across my front porch.
“Get outta my yard,” I ordered, pointing toward the road.
“Make us,” said the younger brother. He was my age and my size and standing right in front of me. His older sibling stood a few feet behind him with rocks in both hands. The younger brother got right up in my face, glaring at me.
I drew back my fist and punched the crap out of him. I had aimed for his nose but I closed my eyes and missed my mark; my fist hit him squarely in the chest. He sat right down in the grass and started to cry. The other brother dropped his rocks. He looked surprised.
“We’re gonna tell your mama.” He yelled at me as he helped his crying brother up.
“Go ahead.” I yelled back. That would have been a heck of a lot better than what I thought was going to happen. Trying to look tough, I stood there clinched-fisted and watched them as they went home.
The kitten was hiding in the bushes beside my house. I knew, if I didn’t do something, the Meany twins would be throwing rocks at it again. So I decided to catch it. That wasn’t as easy as I thought. It was as scared of me as it was of the Meany twins. In fact, it probably was completely wild and had never been around humans until the twins started throwing rocks at it.
I already had a name for it, if I caught it. I would call it Itty Bitty, because it was so little.
“Here kitty, kitty. Come here, Itty Bitty.” That didn’t work.
I chased the poor thing for ten or fifteen minutes until I finally cornered it at the back of the house. I dove and grabbed it with both hands. Bad idea. It bit me, scratched me, bit me, scratched me and bit me again. Hissing and growling, biting and scratching; and all I’m trying to do is protect it from the Meany twins.
I finally got it turned toward my chest and held it close to me, so it couldn’t bite my fingers anymore. I sat down on the back door steps. With one hand I held it close to my chest while I petted it with the other. It calmed down a little, but it still occasionally hissed and growled. I stood up, opened the screen porch door, and took it inside. I went to my room and lay down on the bed. For several minutes I slowly stroked the kitten’s back, making sure to hold tightly as I rubbed one hand and then the other across the soft multi-colored fur. The little thing finally stopped hissing. It stopped growling. It relaxed.
Itty Bitty fell asleep.
So there we were. A few minutes ago the Meany twins were throwing rocks at us; now I’m on my bed with an exhausted, but beautiful, tiny kitten fast asleep on my chest. I felt pretty good, better than I had in a long time. But I was almost as exhausted as the kitten. After a few more minutes of watching my sleeping new friend’s gentle breathing, I fell asleep too.
An hour or so went by. I woke up to an odd sensation. Itty Bitty had awakened before me. As I slept, she walked up my chest to my neck, put her little paws on my chin and began licking my nose. When I say “licking my nose,” I‘m not kidding. It felt like she was going to lick the nose right off my face. Itty Bitty, the calico kitty, was in love; and pretty soon so was I. Her gleeful nose licking almost brought tears to my eyes. In recent years, the showing of affection had just about disappeared at my house. This was pretty nice. This felt good.
That sweet little face looked so happy, and the tiny claws in her front paws had such a grip on my chin, that it was difficult pulling her away from me as I sat up. She immediately jumped from my lap to my chest and started climbing up my shirt, her little claws digging right into my skin. I knew where she was headed, so I gave her my hands to stand on; and she, once again, proceeded to lick my nose.
It eventually dawned on me she might be thirsty or hungry. I carried her to the kitchen for some milk. That got her attention. She was famished. Soon it was time for another nap.
Back then, I’m not sure I even knew if cat food existed. We fed table scraps to our pets. Over the next few days I discovered that Itty Bitty loved eggs, liked cornbread, and didn’t care much for pinto beans. I always saved her a little of my food.
Each afternoon, as I arrived home from school, Itty Bitty would meet me in the driveway. She would come charging from the back of the house; meowing sweetly, always dancing and running sideways. It looked as though her hind legs were in a bigger hurry than her front legs. As soon as she got close, she would jump on my leg and begin to climb. Up my pants leg and up my shirt, she always had to greet me by licking my nose. And each day I went straight to my room to play with her. She loved to take a nap on my lap or chest; once she fell asleep on my shoulder while I was doing homework.
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Almost a week had passed. It had been a normal day at school, but the time had gone by slowly. The school bus seemed to take forever on the way home. At least, on this day the bus driver didn’t have to deal with the Meany twins and their bicycles. Usually, they straddled the middle of the road or weaved back and forth in front of the bus until the bus driver blew the horn at them. Maybe they had been sent home early again. They were always getting in trouble. Matter of fact, I didn’t remember seeing them at school all day long. They missed a lot of school days.
When the bus finally got to my stop, I jumped off and ran down the road toward home. Though I hardly noticed as I ran by, the house where the Meany twins lived looked deserted. That beatup old couch and the tall stack of junk were missing from the front porch. I entered my driveway and slowed down, expecting Itty Bitty to come bounding around the corner any second.
She didn’t.
“Mama, where’s my kitty?” I asked as I opened the back-porch screen door.
“Ain’t seen it since this morning.” She said. Mama was sitting at the kitchen table, trimming and cutting up some store-bought green beans. “Gonna be frying up some Spam for supper. I’ll bet she’ll like that.”
I went back outside. I just knew something bad had happened. Our house was about a hundred feet from a two-lane highway. A lot of dogs and cats got killed on that highway; people drove so fast on it. Maybe Itty Bitty had wandered off and got run over. I ran up and down that road looking for what I didn’t want to see. And I didn’t see it.
I headed back home, hoping she would be there, waiting for me. No Itty Bitty in sight. I sat down on the back door steps to think.
Wait a minute! What if she wandered up to the Meany twins’ house. What if they came down to my house and got her while mama wasn’t looking. What if they caught her out playing in the yard and threw rocks at her; hurt her, maybe killed her.
I had to go see the Meany twins.
I ran down our dirt driveway and up the road. I had to know if they had done something to Itty Bitty. As I got to their yard, stopping to catch my breath, I remembered how empty the house had looked earlier. I walked up to the porch. The front door was about halfway open. I peeked inside. No furniture, nothing.
The Meany twins had moved.
I went home.
“Your cat will be back by supper time.” Mama told me. “Once it gets hungry, it’ll be back, right there at that screen door trying to get in.” Itty Bitty hadn’t quite learned how to open the door like our other cats had always done. Mama often heard her pulling on the heavy door with all her might.
“Come let your cat in.” She would always call to me from the kitchen. As I lay on my bed that afternoon, I began to believe I would never hear those words again. I might never again see my little friend running sideways to greet me, feel her little tongue licking my nose or feel her sleeping on my chest. And I was right.
Itty Bitty was gone forever.
I had lost something very dear to me. Until that day I did not understand how it felt to lose something so important. It was awful.
The hurt lasted a long while. For several days I walked up and down that highway looking for Itty Bitty, calling her name. I looked in my neighbor’s yards and anywhere else I could think of. At some point, I guess I just somehow put her out of my mind.
Now, after all these years, I have remembered her and I’m glad I did, though I’ll never know what happened to her. Some of the hurt remains; but that’s ok. The things I remember most are our private moments together, especially that moment when I awoke to find a beautiful and happy-faced little calico kitten licking my nose.