Your dad brings you up to his best friend’s house one day, a big guy with a round tummy and wide feet whose wife never seems to be around. He tells you that he got some kittens that were just born yesterday and he’s going to give them to his neices and nephews. You can look at them sleeping in the basket, but you can’t touch because they’re so young and your hands might make them sick. So you divide you attention between looking at the kittens – breathing right above them, wondering if they really are as small as they seem and if they can even fit eyeballs inside those tiny heads – and a plastic thing that can organize your change for you when you roll the coins through a slot in the top. You wish you had money so you could play with it.
When your dad brings you back a few days later, you ask where the kittens are so you can pet their heads with your little finger while they sleep. You try to picture it when his friend tells you that he accidentally stepped on the orange one with the white ear the day after you left, eyeballs and all, smushed under his big, fat feet and his nieces and nephews were so terrified that he ended up giving the rest away.
Later on, you swing your feet back and forth from the couch in the living room and sip up apple juice from your cup while the adults talk in the other room. Did he give the kitten’s basket away too? You look at the plastic money thing and wish you could play.
Sebastian Clarkin 