Essy and the Christmas Kitten
Annie Reed
Published by Thunder Valley Press at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 by Annie Reed
Image licensed by Depositphotos.com/Arina Verstova
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Essy and the Christmas Kitten
Annie Reed
The kitten looked like a cross between a drowned rat and one of those scary-looking bats with huge, radar ears.
Essy had been on her way out to scrape the latest accumulation of heavy, wet snow off her ten-year-old Toyota, a car that hadn't tried -- yet -- to kill her by deciding all on its own to set a new land speed record, when she saw the kitten huddling beneath the prickly holly bush at the corner of her house. Its grey fur was sopping wet. Even without bending over to get a closer look, Essy could see it shivering as each new flake settled on its skinny body.
What in the world was a kitten doing out here all by itself? At the end of November?
Essy didn't exactly live at the edge of civilization, but her house was the last on the block. Beyond her fence, the land rose up into the first of the rugged foothills that separated her subdivision from the newest cookie-cutter shopping center in the valley a mile away. People didn't usually dump unwanted animals on her street. It was a dead end, which had suited Essy just fine when she bought her little house.
She supposed someone could have tossed the kitten out of a car and driven away. Or a coyote could have gotten its mother, even though a kitten seemed like easier pickings.
Essy had no pets. The days of pets and kids and a husband and work were long gone. But she couldn't leave a kitten out in the snow to freeze to death.
She crouched down in front of the bush, her knees protesting. The kitten backed a couple of steps away, crying at her, all wide blue eyes and pointy baby teeth. It couldn't have been more than eight weeks old, if that.
Essy's daughter had brought a baby kitten home one day from school. Six weeks old, and little more than a fuzzy black fur ball on spindly legs. "Mommy, can I keep her?" Essy and her husband had never been able to say no, not when their daughter had her heart set on something, so the kitten had joined their family. It was gone now, too.
"Come here, sweetheart," Essy said to the sopping wet kitten. "Where's your momma, baby?" She took off one leather glove and held her fingers out, hoping to entice it, but it backed away one more step, still crying.
Essy couldn't take hunching down like that for long. She already had too many aches and pains, and the cold only made them worse. She had to stand back up. At least the kitten didn't run away when she moved. "Are you hungry?" she asked it. Her daughter's kitten had always come running for food.
Tuna was a staple in Essy's kitchen. Easy food. Open a can, mix with mayo and dijon, eat in front of the television. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Back inside her warm house, in her tiny kitchen, Essy opened a fresh can. She mashed the hard flakes with the liquid in the can to make a kind of gruel and spooned a little on a saucer. She half expected the kitten to be gone when she got back outside, but it was still crouched beneath the holly.
"Here you go." She put the saucer down on the snow as close to the kitten as she could get, then backed away. Her car still needed scraping. She shuffled around the holly bush, giving the kitten a wide berth, and trudged out to her car. Only three inches of snow, but the local weather forecast said to expect another six inches by nightfall along with plummeting temperatures that would turn the slushy snow to ice.
Her neighbors on the downhill side of the street already had their Christmas lights out. LED icicles hung from the eaves of their garage, brilliant cold white light against the softer white of the falling snow. A group of wire-frame reindeer grazed in their yard, more clear bulbs illuminating their white bodies. The only color in her neighbors' yard were the plastic red and white candy canes lining their front walk.
Essy hadn't decorated for Christmas. She didn't intend to. Her Christmas decorations were packed away in the attic in plastic tubs, all neatly labeled with her daughter's blocky print. Essy couldn't stand to look at them.
Once the car was as snow-free as it would get considering the still-falling mush and Essy had shoveled away the accumulation of snow behind the tires, she approached the holly bush as quietly as she could. Even with her gloves, she couldn't feel the ends of her fingers, and her nose was starting to run. Either the kitten would let her come near or it wouldn't, but Essy couldn't stay outside much longer.
The saucer was empty, as clean as if she'd taken it out of the dishwasher.