Disclaimer: The “story” which follows was fully intended to be a
satirical play on a rather odd and somewhat unfortunate dream. The subconscious toys and so the writer in me
was called to respond. It’s humorous outsourcing and ultimate end fulfills what
has become a joke and comical tale in the reality of a Wesley Woods
summer. Its cynical portrayal and bitter
satire in no way reflects this author’s actual views on adoption or other means
to inclusion and additions. On the
contrary, as one quite familiar with the feeling of being unable to belong, I
would wholeheartedly support anything to the contrary in actuality. It is for the sake of the story alone, I
write…
Prequel:
Cinderella.
Goldilocks.
Hansel (and/or Gretel).
Rapunzel.
The Boy (who happened to cry
“wolf!”).
Aladdin (or Jasmine for that
matter!).
Snow White.
The Ugly Duckling.
All bear the traumatic ties of
unfortunate reality.
Oh sure, they all end “happily ever
after”…or at least that’s what everyone wants
you to believe. But in actuality, the
common denominator lies in the fact all are, at the core, stories of things
which don’t belong.
It’s a tragic truth of unforeseen
proportions.
In a dark world of sad consequence,
it’s nice to believe that everything ends in sunshine and rainbows.
We quote “all will be all right in
the end” and that “if it is not all right, it’s not the end”.
We want to believe nothing is as
bad as it seems, life will go on, and good will prevail.
We want a reason to hope and the
outcast a place to fit in with the rest.
That would be fair.
But life is not fair.
No, the reality is much more grim.
Sometimes it is cruel and brutal.
The world is an unforgiving place
with harsh certainty.
Which means that in this world, the
outcasted is pushed to the side.
And sometimes the cheese does stand
alone.
For in this life, there are things
which just don’t belong.
As is the case with Merl, the
kitten who wasn’t…
Merl, The Kitten Who Wasn't (and other stories of things that don't belong)
Once upon a time, on a crisp dark
night, a cat was traveling home to the farm where she lived. Patches, as she was called, was heavy and
round and walked slowly down the dirt road with her pregnant belly almost
rubbing on the ground. She knew her
kittens would be coming very soon and she was eager to get back to the clean
straw in the warm barn.
She heard a rustling in the
branches and the far off sound of an engine.
Patches paused and hissed, the hair on her back rose in fear. Oh, if only she hadn’t agreed to one last
bowl of warm milk with her sister down the way!
She had known this would be one of the last opportunities she would have
to go visit with her sister, a house cat, until the kittens were weaned. But she should have been wiser about the time
she left. Her little paws were aching
and she was breathless from walking. The
kittens inside her squirmed.
“Hold on little ones!” She said
gently. “We’re almost home!”
It was just then that a shadowy
creature moved about ten paces in front of her.
She focused in to see a mother raccoon carrying one of her kits by the
scruff of its neck. She dropped it on
the side of the road before going back for the second of her litter.
“It won’t be long now…” She thought of her own impending litter. She could see the light from the barn up
ahead. How eager she was to return home!
She sat for just a moment before
continuing. Was it just her or was the
barn light getting brighter? She rubbed
her eyes. It was getting brighter! And it was coming closer. A sudden fear welled up inside of her and she
felt powerless to move.
Almost out of nowhere, the moving
light appeared with two blinding beams.
A truck flew over the hill and drove down the center of the road. The mother raccoon froze in terror with her
little kit, unsure of the approaching beast.
If only she had moved! The truck
smashed into her with a resounding “thud” and continued on as if nothing had
transpired. As if the power of life and
death wasn’t in the clutches of those massive tires. As if the world were infinite and actions
bore no consequence. If only…
The mother cat continued to sit in
shocked horror as the dust settled. With
the cloud of smoke but a memory, she shuddered and whimpered a sad “meow” at
the bloody and lifeless bodies of the raccoon and her cub in the middle of the
road. Her maternal instinct flared and
she stood with a surprising amount of energy.
She must get herself and her unborn kittens home to where it was safe!
Patches walked with an impressive
speed for a cat in her condition.
However, she hadn’t gone but eight or nine paces before she heard the
pathetic cries of a small animal. Of
course! The first of the two raccoon cubs!
She walked a bit further and searched for the small babe.
“Mm-mm-mother? Mmooothher?” He
whimpered till at last the cat came near.
“Shush now, little one! Tell me your name.” She said in a worried frenzy.
“Mm-mmear-mm-oother?” The small raccoon cried again.
Patches looked down at its closed
eyes. “Raccoons are born deaf and blind!
He can’t see me! He has no idea anything has happened! The poor dear. He musn’t
be more than a week or two old…” A wave of motherly instinct swept over her.
“I’m not your mother but someone
must tend to you! And if you come with me now, when you open your eyes, you’ll
know me as nothing less.” With a bout of
compassion, she swept up that little raccoon kit by the scruff of his neck and
began to walk the rest of the length to the barn. The small “mews” of the little guy quieted in
the presence of a mother’s care and Patches vowed to raise him as her own.
She reached the barn, exhausted,
and laid the cub down on a straw nest.
“Welcome home, young one.” She said, looking at the sleeping baby. “I shall call you Merl…” Then she too laid down to sleep as she was
weary from her travels.
Sleep did not last long for
Patches, however. Before the night was
over Patches gave birth to three perfect kittens: Whiskers, Socks, and
Sue. She gathered her four little ones
together and was very proud of her small family.
~…~…~…~…~…~…~…~…~…~…~…~…~…~
Patches tried to praise him for his
strengths. Merl was good with his hands
and had a curiosity that far surpassed her other kittens. And he was so smart! If he got himself into a tangle his curiosity
had caused, it could be sure he would find a way out of it! But she was becoming concerned. How long before he started to ask
questions? Or the other kittens did? What would she say?
~…~…~…~…~…~…~…~…~…~…~…~…~…~
“Now Merl!” Patches chided her son. “Be sensitive to your sisters feelings! Why don’t you join Whiskers in catching
mice? Or join Sue wit the ball of yarn
the farmer’s wife gave to her? Be good!”
She had watched her eldest son walk
away from the tree but it wasn’t long before more cries were heard from her
young kittens.
“Mother!! Help!
He’s trapped me and he’s done it on purpose! Help me, mother! Help!” Patches ran exasperated and fearful towards
the grain stores in the barn. Propelled by the sound of Whiskers’ muffled
voice. Merl rounded the corner as she
approached.
“Merl! Now what have you
done??” She questioned angrily.
His eyes looked even darker behind
his black mask as his sad eyes fell. “I
didn’t mean to Mama, I promise! We were
chasing mice, just like you said. I
jumped into an old grain bin and scurried that little mouse right out! Whiskers, he followed me in! I didn’t know he was gonna get stuck!”
“Now now, see here. You may have not meant to but you did! Now help your brother get out. And then find Sue and stay out of trouble!” This boy of hers was unlike any kitten she’d
ever encountered! Some days he was so
peculiar she just didn’t know what to do!
Merl helped tip over the grain bin
and released Whiskers who curled up next to his mother. Merl walked off slowly and sheepishly until
he encountered Sue. The smallest of them
all, she was cute and everyone’s favorite and therefore the most spoiled. Like a little princess, she was eager to be
better than everyone else. Merl found
her contentedly batting a ball of yarn back and forth.
“Can I join you?” Merl asked, hoping his bratty little sister
would agree to having him around.
“Yes you may.” Sue answered surprisingly sweet and
welcoming. Then her eyes narrowed in a testy challenge. “But this is my brand new ball of yarn! It is beautiful and perfect just like
me! And if anything happens to it,
Merl! Well, I shall never forgive
you. You must be careful!” and with that she smiled and replied sweetly
“you stand over there!”
So they batted the yarn back and
forth a few times. Merl was glad that
for once no one was angry at him and continued to swat the ball. But he was so curious! So when Sue ran off suddenly to chase a
butterfly, Merl held the ball of yarn in his hands and turned it over and
over. Without thinking, he began
unraveling the tightly wound construction until all he had was a pile of
string.
Sue returned and began to sob. “My ball!
My perfect ball! You ruined it,
Merl! You ruin everything! Why don’t you go open a jar or something and
leave me alone!”
And so Merl cast his head down and slowly
walked away.
As the days wore on, Merl was left
more and more out of the activities of his siblings. They would often go off to play and not
invite him.
“It was a game for three…” Whiskers would explain.
“You don’t fit it in…” Socks would
say emphatically.
“You’re SOO weird!” Sue would remind him.
His mother separated him even more,
although she didn’t mean to. One day she
gave each of her kittens a brand new pair of mittens. All except Merl that is. “I’m sorry Merl, your hands are just too
different!”
Everyday Merl felt more and more
like an outsider. He loved his mother
and he loved his brother and his sisters but something told him he just didn’t
belong. He wanted to be a good cat. He
didn’t know why he was so different! He
tried to fit in like the others. He
climbed in boxes and napped in the sun.
He chased mice and drank milk and tried to behave. But it didn’t work. At the end of the day, he wasn’t like the
others. He found himself pillaging the
farmer’s trashcan at night for tasty things to eat and he slept all day. “At least sleeping will mean I stay out of
the way…” He said with a melancholy
voice.
~…~…~…~…~…~…~…~…~…~…~…~…~…~
One afternoon, Merl was down at the
stream fishing for crawdads on beautiful and clear summer day. He looked down into a pool of water that had
collected between the rocks and caught his reflection. He stopped and studied his characteristics
for a while. His tail was long with lots
of stripes like Whiskers. He had dark
hands like Socks and pointy little ears like Sue. The band which crossed his eyes reminded him
a little bit of his mother’s colored patches.
But his teeth were his own. As
were his hands – far more like hands than his brother and sisters’ paws. And his fur was thick and bushy. Yet, what really caught him and left him
stranded, were his eyes. Dark and beady.
Not like a cat’s at all… Something about his reflections, was quite
wrong. Something inside told him he
didn’t belong…
Merl ran back to the barn only to
find all three of his siblings crying to their mother. “Mother dear, see here! See here!” Socks was saying. “Our mittens we have lost!”
“It’s his fault!” Sue said suddenly
pointing to Merl! “He probably stole
them and unraveled them just like my beautiful yarn ball!”
Merl began to inch backwards, “I
didn’t, I swear. I didn’t do it!”
“I’ve seen your collection of
treasures!” Whiskers accused. “You keep it in our room! Mostly coins shiny
pieces of tin and metal but I bet Sue is right.
Maybe you did steal them!”
“Why don’t you just leave! And leave us all alone! No one likes you!” Socks declared through her tears.
“Now children!” Patches exclaimed
horrified. She had seen the discord but
she didn’t know it had gotten this bad.
“Be kind to your brother! Just
because he is a little different…”
“But why? Why mother?
Why am I different?” Merl
exclaimed through sobs and tears which reminded her of the cries which came
from such a small raccoon the night she found him.
“Come children. You all must listen to this. It is far past time I told you, Merl. Told you all.” And so Patches sat her four kittens down and
told them about the horrifying night they were born. And about how Merl alone had survived the
accident. And how she vowed to raise him
as her own.
“How could you, mother!” Socks exclaimed. “Raise a raccoon as your own? You can’t!
He’s not your own!”
Sue chimed in. “He’s not a real cat! He’s not a cat at all. You’re practically a weasel!”
“Some brother you are!” Whisker
spat. “Adopted doesn’t make you one of us!
You don’t fit in!”
And so Merl was shunned and cast
out once and for all. It was confirmed
for him that day what he’d known in his heart all along… He wasn’t a kitten and
he didn’t belong.
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