Catboy - Eric Walters [56]
“You better get going,” I said.
Hunter picked up the little kitten.
“That’s good.”
He took a few more steps toward me until we were only a couple of feet apart. I reached over, slowly, carefully, and held out my hand. He rose up on his back feet and rubbed his head against my hand.
“The next time I come back, I’ll give you a head scratch if you want,” I said. “But you have to go. We all have to go.”
“No rush,” Dr. Reynolds said from behind me. “Take your time. I’m okay with being here a little longer.”
“Yes,” Doris said. “I just want to stand here and watch.”
Hunter dropped onto all fours and set the kitten down on the ground again. He looked up at me, let out a soft little cry, then turned and walked away, leaving the kitten behind.
“Hunter, wait! What are you doing?” I cried out.
He kept walking, but he glanced over his shoulder.
“You’ve forgotten the kitten!” I called.
He turned away, moving faster until he came to the edge of the hole. He stopped, looked directly at me and disappeared inside.
I was shocked. What about the kitten? He couldn’t have forgotten it. Open mouthed, I turned to Dr. Reynolds.
“The kitten…he didn’t take the kitten,” I stammered. “He forgot it.”
“I don’t think so,” Dr. Reynolds said as he walked toward me. “He didn’t forget it.”
“He wouldn’t just abandon it,” I exclaimed.
“He didn’t abandon it,” Dr. Reynolds said. “He gave it to you.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Why would he give me a kitten?”
The kitten was crying desperately for its mother. It struggled to get to its feet but couldn’t seem to stand.
“Here,” Dr. Reynolds said as he bent down and scooped up the little ball of black fluff. “Do you see that?” he asked.
I didn’t see anything except a little black kitten.
“Look at this front paw,” he said.
“What about the front…?”
Then I saw. The front paw, the right front paw, was missing. That’s why it wasn’t able to stand.
“That’s why he gave the kitten to you,” Dr. Reynolds said. “He knew it couldn’t survive in the wild. He knew it needed you.”
Dr. Reynolds handed me the kitten. It was so small, it weighed less than nothing.
“But we can’t have a cat, can we?” I asked my mother.
“I think you already have a cat. Well, a kitten,” she said. “But it’s so small, so young, will we be able to care for it, feed it and raise it?”
“With our help, it can survive,” Doris said. “It will need to be bottle-fed every few hours, and I can do the day shift until it’s old enough to do without it.”
“But what about the foot?” Simon asked. “Can a three-pawed cat survive?”
“I have a few three-legged cats in my practice. He couldn’t survive in the wild, but he can survive as a house cat, and any medical treatment he needs, forever, is taken care of.”
“That’s so nice of you,” my mother said.
“No, I insist. It’s not every day you get to see a miracle happen,” Dr. Reynolds said.
“What are you going to call him?” Simon asked.
I looked down at the little ball of fur in my hands— its eyes hardly open, crying out for its mother. Missing paw, black fur and there on its forehead was a little brush of white, just like his father.
“His name is Hunter,” I said. “Just like his father.” I smiled. “But I’ll call him Junior so the two of them don’t get confused.”
“Now, we better get going. All of us, including your new kitten,” Dr. Reynolds said.
He and Doris picked up the last two cages, and everybody headed back to the van. I looked back. Hunter was sitting at the edge of the hole. Our eyes met. He nodded his head, and I nodded mine.
“I’ll look after him,” I said.
He opened his mouth. I couldn’t hear anything, but I knew what he said. “I know you will.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Every Monday morning for ten weeks, students across the Toronto District School Board received twenty-six pages of a new, untitled manuscript. They each read a section, decided what they liked, what they didn’t, what made sense and what they wanted changed. They would then email their feedback to me, and the book was edited and rewritten according to their suggestions. The